Reading Empirical Articles
Before trying this approach, we recommend that you read the Fundamentals of Efficient Reading for an overview of college-level reading strategies. The below strategy is specifically designed for reading science articles that report correlational or experimental research, such those generally assigned in STEM, sociology, and psychology courses.
Triple read the chapter
- Why this works: By previewing the article a couple of times before diving in, you're building an outline in your mind that will make learning the content easier and more comfortable.
- How to do it: Be prepared to focus and know the goal of your reading. Keeping the goal in mind, try to be selective about which articles to focus on. If five articles were assigned in a week, you might prioritize one article that seems most important to the course or most interesting to you and spend a couple of hours on that one. Then, spend half an hour each on the other articles, extracting and writing down main points. For the article you have prioritized:
- Page through the article, asking, “How is this organized?” (5 mins): Pay attention to how the title of the article is expanded on in the abstract. Count the figures and graphs. See if the Introduction, Method, Results, and Discussion sections have any sub-categories. Pay attention to these structural markers to start creating a framework in your mind.
- Now that you have the structure, determine the main message (5–15 mins): Be able to explain in a few sentences the hypotheses, method, and results—that is, the abstract—in your own words. The point is to grasp the core of the study and activate curiosity. If you self test at this point by writing down your own rough abstract, your grasp on the material will be strong.
- Read and write to meet your reading goal (duration depends on your goal and available time): Next, estimate what pace you have to read at to meet your goal in the time window you have. Then, read to meet that goal. Write, type, or draw as needed to support your learning. Again, strengthen what you know by self testing in the last 10 minutes of your reading session.
The triple-read strategy can really help you learn efficiently from articles. But it requires tolerating some discomfort, especially when you are just learning it. So, pat yourself on the back for any bit of it you add to your reading practice! You can keep re-reading these instructions throughout the quarter to really make deep, efficient reading a habit.
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Reading Empirical Articles
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