Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources

Reading Games: Strategies for

Reading Scholarly Sources

by Karen Rosenberg

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210

Reading Games: Strategies for

Reading Scholarly Sources

Karen Rosenberg

If at First You Fall Asleep . . .

During my first year in college, I feared many things: calculus, cafete-

ria food, the stained, sweet smelling mattress in the basement of my

dorm.

But I did not fear reading. I didn’t really think about reading at

all, that automatic making of meaning from symbols in books, news-

papers, on cereal boxes. And, indeed, some of my coziest memories of

that bewildering first year involved reading. I adopted an overstuffed

red chair in the library that enveloped me like the lap of a depart-

ment store Santa. I curled up many evenings during that first, bril-

liant autumn with my English homework: Toni Morrison’s The Bluest

Eye, Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day, Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango

Street. I’d read a gorgeous passage, snuggle deeper into my chair, and

glance out to the sunset and fall leaves outside of the library window.

This felt deeply, unmistakably collegiate.

But English was a requirement—I planned to major in political sci-

ence. I took an intro course my first semester and brought my readings

to that same chair. I curled up, opened a book on the Chinese Revolu-

tion, started reading, and fell asleep. I woke up a little drooly, surprised

at the harsh fluorescent light, the sudden pitch outside. Not to be de-

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Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources 211

terred, I bit my lip and started over. I’d hold on for a paragraph or two,

and then suddenly I’d be thinking about my classmate Joel’s elbows,

the casual way he’d put them on the desk when our professor lectured,

sometimes resting his chin in his hands. He was a long limbed runner

and smelled scrubbed—a mixture of laundry detergent and shampoo.

He had black hair and startling blue eyes. Did I find him sexy?

Crap! How many paragraphs had my eyes grazed over while I was

thinking about Joel’s stupid elbows? By the end of that first semester, I

abandoned ideas of majoring in political science. I vacillated between

intense irritation with my assigned readings and a sneaking suspicion

that perhaps the problem was me—I was too dumb to read academic

texts. Whichever it was—a problem with the readings or with me—I

carefully chose my classes so that I could read novels, poetry, and plays

for credit. But even in my English classes, I discovered, I had to read

dense scholarly articles. By my Junior year, I trained myself to spend

days from dawn until dusk hunkered over a carrel in the library’s base-

ment armed with a dictionary and a rainbow of highlighters. Enjoying

my reading seemed hopelessly naïve—an indulgence best reserved for

beach blankets and bathtubs. A combination of obstinacy, butt-numb-

ingly hard chairs, and caffeine helped me survive my scholarly reading

assignments. But it wasn’t fun.

Seven years later I entered graduate school. I was also working and

living on my own, cooking for myself instead of eating off cafeteria

trays. In short, I had a life. My days were not the blank canvas they

had been when I was an undergraduate and could sequester myself in

the dungeon of the library basement. And so, I finally learned how

to read smarter, not harder. Perhaps the strangest part of my reading

transformation was that I came to like reading those dense scholarly

articles; I came to crave the process of sucking the marrow from the

texts. If you can relate to this, if you also love wrestling with academic

journal articles, take joy in arguing with authors in the margins of the

page, I am not writing for you.

However, if your reading assignments confound you, if they send

you into slumber, or you avoid them, or they seem to take you way too

long, then pay attention. Based on my experience as a frustrated stu-

dent and now as a teacher of reading strategies, I have some insights to

share with you designed to make the reading process more productive,

more interesting, and more enjoyable.

Karen Rosenberg212

Joining the Conversation

Even though it may seem like a solitary, isolated activity, when you read

a scholarly work, you are participating in a conversation. Academic

writers do not make up their arguments off the top of their heads

(or solely from creative inspiration). Rather, they look at how others

have approached similar issues and problems. Your job—and one for

which you’ll get plenty of help from your professors and your peers—is

to locate the writer and yourself in this larger conversation. Reading

academic texts is a deeply social activity; talking with your professors

and peers about texts can not only help you understand your readings

better, but it can push your thinking and clarify your own stances on

issues that really matter to you.

In your college courses, you may have come across the term “rhe-

torical reading.”

Rhetoric in this context refers to how texts work to

persuade readers—a bit different from the common connotation of

empty, misleading, or puffed up speech. Rhetorical reading refers to a

set of practices designed to help us understand how texts work and to

engage more deeply and fully in a conversation that extends beyond

the boundaries of any particular reading. Rhetorical reading practices

ask us to think deliberately about the role and relationship between the

writer, reader, and text.

When thinking about the writer, we are particularly interested in

clues about the writer’s motivation and agenda. If we know something

about what the writer cares about and is trying to accomplish, it can

help orient us to the reading and understand some of the choices the

writer makes in his or her work.

As readers, our role is quite active. We pay attention to our own

motivation and agenda for each reading. On one level, our motiva-

tion may be as simple as wanting to do well in a class, and our agenda

may involve wanting to understand as much as necessary in order to

complete our assignments. In order to meet these goals, we need to go

deeper, asking, “Why is my professor asking me to read this piece?”

You may find clues in your course syllabus, comments your professor

makes in class, or comments from your classmates. If you aren’t sure

why you are being asked to read something, ask! Most professors will

be more than happy to discuss in general terms what “work” they want

a reading to do—for example, to introduce you to a set of debates, to

provide information on a specific topic, or to challenge conventional

thinking on an issue.

Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources 213

Finally, there is the text—the thing that the writer wrote and that

you are reading. In addition to figuring out what the text says, rhe-

torical reading strategies ask us to focus on how the text delivers its

message. In this way of thinking about texts, there is not one right

and perfect meaning for the diligent reader to uncover; rather, inter-

pretations of the reading will differ depending on the questions and

contexts readers bring to the text.

Strategies for Rhetorical Reading

Here are some ways to approach your reading that better equip you

for the larger conversation. First, consider the audience. When the

writer sat down to write your assigned reading, to whom was he or

she implicitly talking? Textbooks, for the most part, have students like

you in mind. They may be boring, but you’ve probably learned what to

do with them: pay attention to the goals of the chapter, check out the

summary at the end, ignore the text in the boxes because it’s usually

more of a “fun fact” than something that will be on the test, and so

on. Magazines in the checkout line at the supermarket also have you in

mind: you can’t help but notice headlines about who is cheating or fat

or anorexic or suicidal. Writers of scholarly sources, on the other hand,

likely don’t think much about you at all when they sit down to write.

Often, academics write primarily for other academics. But just because

it’s people with PhDs writing for other people with PhDs doesn’t mean

that you should throw in the towel. There’s a formula for these types of

texts, just like there’s a formula for all the Cosmo articles that beckon

with titles that involve the words “hot,” “sex tips,” “your man,” and

“naughty” in different configurations.

It’s just that the formula is a little more complicated.

The formula also changes depending on the flavor of study (phys-

ics, management, sociology, English, etc.) and the venue. However, if

you determine that the audience for your reading is other academics,

recognize that you are in foreign territory. You won’t understand all of

the chatter you hear on street corners, you may not be able to read the

menus in the restaurants, but, with a little practice, you will be able

to find and understand the major road signs, go in the right direction,

and find your way.

How can you figure out the primary audience? First, look at the

publication venue. (Here, to some extent, you can judge a book by its

Karen Rosenberg214

cover). If the reading comes from an academic journal, then chances

are good that the primary audience is other academics. Clues that a

journal is academic (as opposed to popular, like Time or Newsweek)

include a citation format that refers to a volume number and an issue

number, and often this information appears at the top or bottom of

every page. Sometimes you can tell if a reading comes from an aca-

demic journal based on the title—e.g., do the Journal for Research in

Mathematics Education or Qualitative Research in Psychology sound like

they are written for a popular audience? What if you’re still not sure?

Ask your reference librarians, classmates, your instructor, or friends

and family who have more experience with these types of readings

than you do.

There are two implications that you should be aware of if you are

not the primary audience for a text. First, the author will assume prior

knowledge that you likely don’t have. You can expect sentences like “as

Durkheim has so famously argued . . .” or “much ink has been spilled

on the implications of the modernization hypothesis” where you have

no idea who Durkheim is or what the modernization hypothesis says.

That’s OK. It might even be OK to not look these things up at all and

still get what you need from the reading (but you won’t know that yet).

In the first reading of an article, it’s smart to hold off on looking too

many things up. Just be prepared to face a wall of references that don’t

mean a whole lot to you.

Second, if you’re not the primary audience, don’t be surprised if

you find that the writing isn’t appealing to you. Whereas a novelist

or a magazine writer works hard to draw us in as readers, many aca-

demic authors don’t use strategies to keep us hooked. In fact, many of

these strategies (use of sensory language, suspense, etc.) would never

get published in academic venues. By the same token, you’ll use very

different strategies to read these scholarly texts.

You may be wondering, if you’re not the intended audience for the

text, why do you have to read it in the first place? This is an excellent

question, and one that you need to answer before you do your reading.

As I mentioned earlier in the discussion of the role of the reader, you

may need to do a little sleuthing to figure this out. In addition to the

suggestions I provided earlier, look to your course notes and syllabus

for answers. Often professors will tell you why they assign specific

readings. Pay attention—they will likely offer insights on the context

of the reading and the most important points. If after all of this, you

Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources 215

still have no idea why you’re supposed to read six articles on the his-

tory of Newtonian physics, then ask your professor. Use the answers to

help you focus on the really important aspects of the texts and to gloss

over the parts that are less relevant to your coursework. If you remain

confused, continue to ask for clarification. Ask questions in class (your

classmates will be grateful). Go to office hours. Most faculty love the

opportunity to talk about readings that they have chosen with care.

Once you have an idea who the intended audience is for the article

and why you are assigned to read it, don’t sit down and read the article

from start to finish, like a good mystery. Get a lay of the land before

you go too deep. One way to do this is to study the architecture of the

article. Here are some key components to look for:

The title. As obvious as it sounds, pay attention to the title because

it can convey a lot of information that can help you figure out how to

read the rest of the article more efficiently. Let’s say that I know my

reading will be about the Russian Revolution. Let’s say I even know

that it will be about the role of music in the Russian Revolution. Let’s

say the title is “‘Like the beating of my heart’: A discourse analysis

of Muscovite musicians’ letters during the Russian Revolution.” This

tells me not only the subject matter of the article (something about

letters Russian musicians wrote during the Revolution) but it also tells

me something about the methodology, or the way that the author ap-

proaches the subject matter. I might not know exactly what discourse

analysis is, but I can guess that you can do it to letters and that I

should pay particular attention to it when the author mentions it in

the article. On the other hand, if the title of the article were “Garbage

cans and metal pipes: Bolshevik music and the politics of proletariat

propaganda” I would know to look out for very different words and

concepts. Note, also, that the convention within some academic disci-

plines to have a pretty long title separated by a colon usually follows a

predictable pattern. The text to the left of the colon serves as a teaser,

or as something to grab a reader’s attention (remember that the au-

thor is likely not trying to grab your attention, so you may not find

these teasers particularly effective—though it is probably packed with

phrases that would entice someone who already studies the topic). The

information to the right of the colon typically is a more straightfor-

ward explanation of what the article is about.

The abstract. Not all of your readings will come with abstracts,

but when they do, pay close attention. An abstract is like an execu-

Karen Rosenberg216

tive summary. Usually one paragraph at the beginning of an article,

the abstract serves to encapsulate the main points of the article. It’s

generally a pretty specialized summary that seeks to answer specific

questions. These include: the main problem or question, the approach

(how did the author(s) do the work they write about in the article?),

the shiny new thing that this article does (more on this later, but to

be published in an academic journal you often need to argue that you

are doing something that has not been done before), and why people

who are already invested in this field should care (in other words, you

should be able to figure out why another academic should find the ar-

ticle important). The abstract often appears in database searches, and

helps scholars decide if they want to seek out the full article.

That’s a whole lot to accomplish in one paragraph.

As a result, authors often use specialized jargon to convey complex

ideas in few words, make assumptions of prior knowledge, and don’t

worry much about general readability. Abstracts, thus, are generally

dense, and it’s not uncommon to read through an abstract and not

have a clue about what you just read. This is a good place to re-read,

highlight, underline, look up what you don’t know. You still may not

have a firm grasp on everything in the abstract, but treat the key terms

in the abstract like parts of a map when you see them in the main text,

leading you to treasure: understanding the main argument.

The introduction. The introduction serves some of the same func-

tions as the abstract, but there is a lot more breathing room here. When

I started reading academic texts, I’d breeze through the introduction

to get to the “meat” of the text. This was exactly the wrong thing to

do. I can’t remember how many times I’d find myself in the middle of

some dense reading, perhaps understanding the content of a particular

paragraph, but completely unable to connect that paragraph with the

overall structure of the article. I’d jump from the lily pad of one para-

graph to the next, continually fearful that I’d slip off and lose myself

in a sea of total confusion (and I often did slip).

If the author is doing her/his job well, the introduction will not

only summarize the whole piece, present the main idea, and tell us

why we should care, but it will also often offer a road map for the rest

of the article. Sometimes, the introduction will be called “introduc-

tion,” which makes things easy. Sometimes, it’s not. Generally, treat

the first section of an article as the introduction, regardless if it’s ex-

plicitly called that or not.

Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources 217

There are times where your reading will have the introduction

chopped off. This makes your work harder. The two most common

instances of introduction-less readings are assigned excerpts of articles

and lone book chapters. In the first case, you only have a portion of

an article so you cannot take advantage of many of the context clues

the writer set out for readers. You will need to rely more heavily on the

context of your course in general and your assignment in particular

to find your bearings here. If the reading is high stakes (e.g., if you

have to write a paper or take an exam on it), you may want to ask your

professor how you can get the whole article. In the second case, your

professor assigns a chapter or two from the middle of an academic

book. The chapter will hopefully contain some introductory material

(and generally will include much more than the middle of a journal ar-

ticle), but you will likely be missing some context clues that the author

included in the introduction to the whole book. If you have trouble

finding your footing here, and it’s important that you grasp the mean-

ing and significance of the chapter, seek out the book itself and skim

the introductory chapter to ground you in the larger questions that the

author is addressing. Oddly, even though you’ll be doing more read-

ing, it may save you time because you can read your assigned chapter(s)

more efficiently.

Roadmaps included in the introduction are often surprisingly

straightforward. They often are as simple as “in the first section, we

examine . . . in the second section we argue . . .” etc. Search for these

maps. Underline them. Highlight them. Go back to them when you

find your comprehension slipping.

Section headings. A section heading serves as a title for a particu-

lar part of an article. Read all of these to get a sense of the trajectory

of the text before delving into the content in each section (with the ex-

ception of the introduction and the conclusion which you should read

in detail). Get a passing familiarity with the meanings of the words in

the section headings—they are likely important to understanding the

main argument of the text.

Conclusion. When writing papers, you’ve likely heard the cliché

“in the introduction, write what you will say, then say it, then write

what you just said.” With this formula, it would seem logical to gloss

over the conclusion, because, essentially, you’ve already read it already.

However, this is not the case. Instead, pay close attention to the con-

clusion. It can help you make sure you understood the introduction.

Karen Rosenberg218

Sometimes a slight re-phrasing can help you understand the author’s

arguments in an important, new way. In addition, the conclusion is

often where authors indicate the limitations of their work, the unan-

swered questions, the horizons left unexplored. And this is often the

land of exam and essay questions . . . asking you to extend the author’s

analysis beyond its own shores.

At this point, you have pored over the title, the introduction, the

section headings, and the conclusion. You haven’t really read the body

of the article yet. Your next step is to see if you can answer the ques-

tion: what is the main argument or idea in this text?

Figuring out the main argument is the key to reading the text effec-

tively and efficiently. Once you can identify the main argument, you

can determine how much energy to spend on various parts of the read-

ing. For example, if I am drowning in details about the temperance

movement in the United States in the 19

Century, I need to know

the main argument of the text to know if I need to slow down or if a

swift skim will do. If the main argument is that women’s organizing

has taken different forms in different times, it will probably be enough

for me to understand that women organized against the sale and con-

sumption of alcohol. That might involve me looking up “temperance”

and getting the gist of women’s organizing. However, if the main ar-

gument were that scholars have misunderstood the role of upper class

white women in temperance organizing in Boston from 1840–1865,

then I would probably need to slow down and pay closer attention.

Unless the reading is billed as a review or a synthesis, the only way

that an academic text can even get published is if it claims to argue

something new or different. However, unlike laundry detergent or soft

drinks, academic articles don’t advertise what makes them new and

different in block letters inside cartoon bubbles. In fact, finding the

main argument can sometimes be tricky. Mostly, though, it’s just a

matter of knowing where to look. The abstract and the introduction

are the best places to look first. With complicated texts, do this work

with your classmates, visit your campus writing center (many of them

help with reading assignments), or drag a friend into it.

Once you understand the different parts of the text and the writer’s

main argument, use this information to see how and where you can

enter the conversation. In addition, keep your own agenda as a reader

in mind as you do this work.

Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources 219

Putting It All Together

Collectively, these suggestions and guidelines will help you read and

understand academic texts. They ask you to bring a great deal of aware-

ness and preparation to your reading—for example, figuring out who

the primary audience is for the text and, if you are not that audience,

why your professor is asking you to read it anyway. Then, instead of

passively reading the text from start to finish, my suggestions encour-

age you to pull the reading into its constituent parts—the abstract, the

introduction, the section headings, conclusion, etc.—and read them

unevenly and out of order to look for the holy grail of the main argu-

ment. Once you have the main argument you can make wise decisions

about which parts of the text you need to pore over and which you can

blithely skim. The final key to reading smarter, not harder is to make

it social. When you have questions, ask. Start conversations with your

professors about the reading. Ask your classmates to work with you to

find the main arguments. Offer a hand to your peers who are drown-

ing in dense details. Academics write to join scholarly conversations.

Your professors assign you their texts so that you can join them too.

Discussion

1. Pick one reading strategy above that you may have used in

reading a text previously (like paying close attention to the in-

troduction of a book, chapter, or article). Discuss the ways in

which this strategy worked for you and/or didn’t work for you.

Would you recommend friends use this strategy? (How) might

you amend it, and when might you use it again?

2. The author writes in several places about reading academic

texts as entering a conversation. What does this mean to you?

How can you have a conversation with a text?

3. How might the reading strategies discussed in this article have

an impact on your writing? Will you be more aware of your in-

troduction, conclusion, and clues you leave throughout the text

for readers? Talk with other writers to see what they may have

learned about writing from this article on reading strategies.

Karen Rosenberg220

Notes

1. In this discussion I draw on Norgaard’s excellent discussion of read-

ing as joining a conversation (1–28). By letting you, the reader, know this

in a footnote, I am not only citing my source (I’d be plagiarizing if I didn’t

mention this somewhere), but I’m also showing how I enter this conversation

and give you a trail to follow if you want to learn more about the metaphor

of the conversation. Following standard academic convention, I put the full

reference to Norgaard’s text at the end of this article, in the references.

2. I draw on—and recommend—Rounsaville et al.’s discussion of rhe-

torical sensitivity, critical reading and rhetorical reading (1–35).

Works Cited

Norgaard, Rolf. Composing Knowledge: Readings for College Writers. Boston:

Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007. Print.

Rounsaville, Angela, Rachel Goldberg, Keith Feldman, Cathryn Cabral, and

Anis Bawarshi, eds. Situating Inquiry: An Introduction to Reading, Re-

search, and Writing at the University of Washington. Boston: Bedford/St.

Martin’s, 2008. Print.