My undergraduate students often tell me that it’s really hard for them to discern how to read a paper, particularly dense articles written by people with PhDs who often speak in “academiquese”, but that their faculty assign them to read. This frustrates me because I know that there is nothing I can do to change how other academics’ write. I can only try to help my students learn some heuristics about how to identify the key idea within a paragraph, and read/highlight/scribble accordingly.
I wrote a Twitter thread explaining how some writers whose prose I enjoy generate their text and how we could find the core idea of a paragraph when it’s at the beginning (as a topic sentence) or when it’s embedded within the paragraph. The first example (by Dr. Malini Ranga and Dr. Carolina Balazs) is a perfect article to showcase how to read when a paragraph starts with a topic sentence, as the vast majority of the paper is written using this model.
I'll start with @maliniranga and Balasz's piece as it allows me to show something I've reiterated in previous threads: writing the core idea of your paragraph at the beginning (i.e., as a "topic sentence") allows the reader to detect it (and facilitates reading the piece).
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) July 7, 2019
Dr. Ranganathan and Dr. Balazs do an excellent job of outlining their paper using topic sentences, and it shows throughout the manuscript, as you can tell from my Twitter thread.
Before you ask: I usually highlight in print, but I left my copy of Malini and Carolina's paper back in Aguascalientes, so I'm using the digital version and highlighting in Mendeley. https://t.co/ONTZ4xcNFl (this is my colour coding scheme).
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) July 7, 2019
You'll have to read it (it's an excellent piece), you'll discover that the entire article is written with topic sentences at the beginning of a paragraph. This strategy is incrediby useful to readers, because it allows them to skim the entire article by looking at Topic Sentences
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) July 7, 2019
The second example I used came from Dr. Farhana Sultana’s piece in Water International on water justice. Here you can tell how to discern the main idea because she clearly outlines the two key factors under study, and links back-and-forth to those ideas.
… by linking to the next idea (yellow highlights). Once she posits a key idea (yellow highlight), she provides evidence/argues why it is important (orange highlights). She highlights again the two key factors, but then provides key insights (intersectionality, power). pic.twitter.com/2GagGW53ym
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) July 7, 2019
… 3 key ideas: 1) water is about power (purple highlight) 2) we need to think about water through an intersectionality lens (blue highlight) and 3) we can't isolate issues that affect water (green highlight). And at the core, the main idea (water can be affected by CC and $$$)
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) July 7, 2019
The third example comes from Dr. Christiana Zenner’s Just Water book. While she mostly starts with a topic sentence, sometimes she does not, but she clearly outlines the core idea of what she is trying to transmit in the paragraph.
At the end of Chapter 2, @christyzen reiterates her main points: 1) Water is a problem of “the common good” 2) Responses to water crises need to take social and physical realities into account 3) we need to think about adaptation and long-term water management. Note her outline: pic.twitter.com/Db3bBCgzFw
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) July 7, 2019
This particular paragraph doesn’t start with a topic sentence, but it does provide me with a chance to show how to find the core idea. Note how the chapter is about water as an economic commodity. I search the paragraph for “how do we value water” (yellow highlight) pic.twitter.com/LCRO7B8BH4
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) July 7, 2019
In this paragraph, @christyzen does lead with a topic sentence. Note how I follow her logic using yellow, orange, pink, green and purple. For those reading They Say/I Say, here’s a classic (note my “however” on the margins!). I also link to my own work and Malini’s too. pic.twitter.com/ZYfjV57pNt
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) July 7, 2019
While I’m writing these blog posts to guide my undergraduate students, I am hoping others will benefit from using these heuristics as well. You may be interested in my other blog posts on reading strategies for undergraduates.
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.