Your reading reviews will include extracts from books, academic papers, and websites (including other blogs). Here are some guidelines for how to approach each text in order to write a meaningful weekly review.
1. As you read each text, try to answer the following questions.
- What are the key points made by the author?
- What theories/strategies has the author used to structure the key issues and points?
- What conclusions has the author drawn?
- Look at what kinds of support are given forthese key issues and points. ls it based on empirical data, reasoned arguments or experience?
- Make an appraisal of how tight and well argued these key issues and points are.
2. When looking at a website, ask yourself:
- ls this website produced by an academic, artist, government, NGO or commercial organization?
- What is its purpose?
- What kind of information does it make available?
- How well supported is this information? Can it be verified?
3. How to locate relevant literature
The required texts will be a good source of further information. When you locate a new text you must read with purpose. This helps you quickly find, appraise and read relevant literature:
- Look at the table of contents
- Read the abstract
- Scan headings or sub-headings to see if the text is suitable for your purpose.
- lf the text appears to be relevant to your phenomenon, then you should read it in-depth to find specific research to support your weekly review.
- Scan footnotes and endnotes; and follow leads. This will also help you assess the validity of the argument. ls the same research referenced in other sources?
4. Evaluate your sources, material and readings
- Ask yourself who conducted the research (is the author an authority in their field of study)? What evidence is there to support this? Look at other footnotes/endnotes, bibliographies.
- Where has this research come from? ls it a valid source, i.e. from an educational institution, a refereed journal article, or a scholarly book? lf it is from a website, does it contain the author’s details ls it from an educational site, and does it have a publication date? If you are doing a Google search you may find non academic sites that have not been peerassessed.
- Evaluate the reading. If it is not authoritative, try again. Also try using http://scholar.google.com) instead.
- ls the literature accurate? How do you know this? ls the same research referenced in other academic sources?
- ls there evidence of bias/prejudice in the article? ls the argument convincing?
- How do you know if the evidence is true (what kind of backing does the author use)?
- How up-to-date is the material that you are looking at? ls it likely that more current literature is available? Always include current and up-to-date material in a literature review.
- Ask yourself how this literature refers to your topic? What is it telling you about it?
5. Analyzing your readings
- Identify the key issues, points, discussed in your literature? Make detailed notes of what you read.
- what theories has the author(s) used to structure the key issues and points?
- What is the authors’ purpose?
- What conclusions has the author drawn?
- What points support that conclusion?
- Always record all bibliographic information. If you are quoting the author you will need use quotations and cite the year and page number.
- It is also useful to get into the habit of summarising each article alter you have read it. This enables you to keep a record of all the arguments you have encountered. It also enables you to keep a record of your own thoughts on each article.