Making the Most of Your Reading—The First

(and only!) Time

With Writing SpecialistJamie Patterson

Why Talk About Reading?

Our Time and Priorities

And…

• Let’s face it. If you can’t read it, or can’t remember what you read, or don’t

understand what it means, you can’t write about it. Which leads to…

Session Objectives• Review of strategies to improve reading

comprehension and recall.• Methods for taking more planned and useful notes.• Examination of paraphrasing and plagiarism.• Ideas to help you transition from reading into writing.

Increasing your reading comprehension means moving from memorization to analysis, evaluation, and synthesis.

It’s tweaking the thinking that goes along with the reading.

Strategies

•Pre-Reading

•During Reading

Pre-Reading Strategies

• Brain warm-up

Research Says…“According to Aebersold and Field (1997),

during reading, readers' minds repeatedly engage in a variety of processes. Using bottom-up strategies, readers start by processing information at the sentence level. In other words, they focus on identification of the meaning and grammatical category of a word, sentence syntax, text details, and so forth.”

(As cited in Salataci & Akyel, 2002, para 3)

Pre-Reading Strategies• Change the processing your mind

does by making a more complex integration (top – down).

• By making more complex connections, you will be more likely to recall this information for use at a later date.

Activating Background Knowledge• Thinking about what you

already know.

• Triggering your schema.

• Putting the new information into context.

Why?

Background knowledge is directly and positively connected to recall

regardless of a student’s IQ or reading ability

(Langer, 1984).

Set a Purpose

• Ask yourself, “What do I need to get out of this reading?”

Possibilities:

• Background or general knowledge

• Data

• Evidence for my ideas

Use this to later Use this to later determine what you determine what you

spend the most time on spend the most time on and how you take your and how you take your

notes.notes.

Don’t Fill Up on Bread!

Make Predictions

Possibilities for Predictions

• Title

• Headings

• Hypothesis

• Author’s views

Why?

Make sure you’re getting specific. You need to engage your entire mind and schema

with the text.

During Reading Strategies

•Staying engaged

•Choosing what to keep

•Creating connections

•Making it right

Questioning

Why Questions?(especially if you’re not going to answer them!)

• Questions can help you realize what’s important.

• Questions activate your prefrontal cortex.

• Questions can help you evaluate research or literature.

• Questions are possible topics for discussion postings and reflections.

C o n

n e c t

t i o n s

Connections

•Text to Self

•Text to Text

•Text to World

Examples of Connections“This isn’t at all what the other researcher said!”

“We tried that approach as a department. It didn’t work.”

“If this theory was used to guide America’s actions in the War on Terror, Guantanamo Bay never would have happened.”

Clarifying• Clarifying is active thinking,

monitoring, and correcting of whatever confusions we encounter while reading.

• Common pitfalls to clarify: vocabulary words, theories and models, field jargon, new concepts.

Knowing When to Stop

Transition: Any Questions?

Note Taking

The Problem with Note Taking

If you’ve had problems with note taking in the past, try writing less. Sometimes less is more.

Common Note Taking Questions

• What do I write?

• How do I write it?

• What format do I use?

Guiding Ideas

• What are you going to use your notes for?

• What kinds of assignments will you reference this reading for?

• What feels right to you?• What kind of learner are you? (Visual,

auditory, kinesthetic?)

Note Taking for Understanding

• Predicting

• Questioning

• Clarifying

• Connecting

If you need help…

Note Taking for Research(Also good for a lit review)

• Again, first ask yourself, “Why am I reading this?”

• What are some reasons you read research?

Note Taking for Writing

• Summarizing

•Comparing & Contrasting

•Evaluating

Examples of Reading Strategies for Writing

“The field of nursing is dramatically changing, so much that nursing in five years it will barely resemble its present self. This is all due to informatics. Informatics has motivated stations of nurses to move at an increasingly rapid pace, allowing communication between staff in different areas to eventuate and overlap.”

• Question: Is this really in line with what I see? Our email lag time is 6 hours because we never have time to check it.

• This article is written about a hospital in Minneapolis with 3,000 beds.

• Summary (also paraphrasing): Informatics caused huge changes in nursing. It positively affects communication.

• Also, building on our last topic, what does “eventuate” mean?

• Include a brief citation in your notes, so you don’t have to look it up later.

No citation. I made this up.

Remember…

• Before you write, sit down and look at your notes. If you took good notes, this will help you build an outline for your writing.

• Things to look for: summaries, evaluations, data, gut feelings.

The Big Picture

Paraphrasing and Plagiarism

• Why talk about paraphrasing in a reading presentation?

–Because most bad paraphrasing (which counts as plagiarism) begins with noncritical reading.

–Because it is a skill almost all students could improve.

“Students frequently overuse direct quotation in taking notes, and as a result they overuse quotations in the final [research] paper. Probably only about 10% of your final manuscript should appear as directly quoted matter. Therefore, you should strive to limit the amount of exact transcribing of source materials while taking notes.” Lester, James D. Writing Research Papers. 2nd ed. (1976): 46-47.

Example: Original Passage

From The Writing Lab, The OWL at Purdue, & Purdue University. (2009). Quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing. Retrieved June 8, 2009, from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/563/02/

Paraphrase?

Students often use too many direct quotations when they take notes, resulting in too many of them in the final research paper. In fact, probably only about 10% of the final copy should consist of directly quoted material. So it is important to limit the amount of source material copied while taking notes (Lester, 1976).

From The Writing Lab, The OWL at Purdue, & Purdue University. (2009). Quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing. Retrieved June 8, 2009, from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/563/02/

Plagiarism

Paraphrase?

In research papers students often quote excessively, failing to keep quoted material down to a desirable level. Since the problem usually originates during note taking, it is essential to minimize the material recorded verbatim (Lester, 1976).

From The Writing Lab, The OWL at Purdue, & Purdue University. (2009). Quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing. Retrieved June 8, 2009, from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/563/02/

Problem

Ask Yourself:

• Am I really taking the time to understand this?

• Could I explain it to someone else?

• Are there terms that need to be quoted?

• Use the reading strategies discussed earlier purposefully in situations like these to gain a better understand before you write.

Realistic Example: Marzano (2003)

“Effective feedback is specific and formative in nature. Certainly feedback once a year from state test or standardized tests falls well below the minimum frequency level. At a minimum, students should receive quarterly feedback on their academic performance.

Consequently, schools much establish an assessment system that provides feedback on specific knowledge and skills at least every nine weeks. This automatically rules out state-developed tests on standards, off-the-shelf standardized tests, or even both working in tandem” (Marzano, 2003, p. 39)

“Paraphrase”

According to Marzano (2003), for feedback to be useful, it must be specific and formative. That means feedback from state or standardized tests, which only comes once a year, is not enough. Students need feedback on their performance at least four times a year.

• Let’s stop there… Do you see the problem?

Paraphrase purposefully

• Note the specific ideas that are most helpful.

• Provide context – integrate ideas from the whole source that will help your reader understand its importance. Don’t limit yourself to two sentences.

• If necessary, it’s preferable to directly quote small phrases rather than entire paragraphs.

Let’s Try Again

Marzano (2003) cited the positive impact of timely, targeted feedback on student achievement. In light of the need for timely feedback, he noted that state and standardized tests, which produce results months later, are inappropriate sources. In fact, Marzano suggested that schools develop an alternative system that provides feedback quarterly.

Another Strategy: Writing from Questions

If you wrote down your questions while reading (hint, hint), you may be able to use these to formulate a thesis, evidence, or discussion posting topics. Look for:

• Things the author left out

• Things you don’t agree with

• Things that don’t make sense

Examples of Writing Points from Questions

• Why are there only 25 participants in this study?

• What does this mean?

• “One important weakness in Verneck’s (1992) study is the small number of participants. Incidence of drug side effects from 25 people cannot be safely projected onto the entire public.”

• “While Frank (2004) thoroughly explained the use of informatics in the hospital setting, he did not explain its importance, or speculate to the effectiveness of their use. At Seattle Grace Hospital…”

The key here is analysis,

evaluation, and synthesis.

Review

Increasing your reading comprehension will make your academic life easier. (I can’t

make any promises about the rest of your life, though.)

The First Step to Increasing Your Reading Comprehension is Using

Pre-Reading Strategies:

• Activating background knowledge

• Setting a purpose for reading

• Making predictions

While Reading, Continue Active Thought:

• Asking questions

• Making connections

• Clarifying

Make a Note Taking Plan.

Base it on:

• What you need to know

• How you want to write it

• How you are going to use it

Use your notes to guide and inform your writing.

References

• Marzano, R. (2003). What works in schools: Translating research into action. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

• The Writing Lab, The OWL at Purdue, & Purdue University. (2009). Quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing. Retrieved June 8, 2009, from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/563/02/

http://writingcenter.waldenu.edu