SUMMARY OF THE BOOK "WRITING AT UNIVERSITY" PAGES 51-57

Name : Tiara Maharani

Class : 4C

NIM : 2223210043

Reading As Part of Writing

A. Approaching Reading

     With academic reading, it is necessary to maintain a constant grip on what the author is saying. Yet, many academic texts are densely written in unfamiliar ways which makes them much more difficult to manage than, for example, a novel or a magazine article. Although sometimes there may be reasons why you need to skim-read an article or book, this is likely to be only to get the general gist of what is being said, as a strategy for deciding whether it is appropriate reading material or not. In general, skim-reading is not a useful strategy for reading as a student, but you may well be used to doing this in other contexts, for example, skimming through a newspaper article, or skipping through a novel, not bothering much about learning or pronouncing the names of characters or places and paying little attention to some of the more complicated parts of the plot.

B. Choosing Your Reading for An Assignment

    The first thing to do is to consult the reading list for books and articles that seem relevant to your particular assignment. Doing a library search, by keywords or subject, is also useful if the references on your reading list are already on loan from the library. Your tutor should also be able to advise you as to which are the most relevant publications or websites (see Chapter 8). Once you have got a few references you need to be able to decide which will be the most useful to you. At this stage it is important that you pay particular attention to the signposting in the book; this will tell you how the book deals with the subject matter that is relevant to your assignment. Starting with the index, look up relevant words and subject areas until you find the parts of the book that seem most important. Turn to these sections and chapters. Using the section headings as signposts, skip through and see if it looks as if the book deals with the subject matter in a way that will be relevant for your assignment. Do not choose the book if it doesn’t seem to be appropriate to your assignment. You may find that you choose a publication that is not as relevant as you first thought. If this happens then leave it to one side and find something relevant for you.

C. Working With Your Reading

   There seem to be two major difficulties that students have when they are reading academic books and materials. One is struggling with the ways in which things are written. The other is the length of time that things can take to read. Many students express surprise at the need to make repeated readings of the same material. We cannot stress enough that you are likely to find yourself having to read things more than once, and this is in no way to be seen as strange or unusual. Academics themselves find it necessary to ‘repeat-read’ articles and books. This is in part due to the dense nature of such texts and the fact that so many ideas are packed into the text. To put it another way, ideas are embedded in the text and it can take a lot of rereading to unravel them so that they appear clear and understandable.

D. Thinking About The Different Texts

    The texts that you have chosen to look at will have different features and your list will not be the same, although there are likely to be some similarities with our example. However, whatever the kind of text chosen, thinking about the differences that you have identified can help with your reading. If you can see why you find reading a particular article, chapter or book difficult – in other words, what it is about the text and your reading of it that makes it hard – then you are halfway to solving the problem. Think again about why a particular piece of reading seems difficult. Is it because the sentences are very long? Is it because there are a lot of new and unfamiliar ideas being explained? Is it because the vocabulary is new to you? Is it a combination of all three, or is there something else that makes it difficult for you? For example, you may disagree with the ideas expressed in the text and therefore become irritated or bored when reading it. If this happens try to use the text constructively. Examine what it is that you do not like about the text. Think about why you disagree with the author. Sometimes you will find yourself having to read a text that you just do not get on with because it is essential reading.