While you read

When you read in an academic context, it is usually helpful to learn techniques for asking active questions and taking notes on what you read. That way you take in both what the text is about and how it is written. Below you will find reading tips that help you become a more conscious and experienced academic reader.

Reading techniques for academic texts

It can be demanding to read an academic text. To understand its content and meaning—whether for a seminar or an exam—it helps to be conscious of how you read. Remember that a good reader is an active reader. The text should not think for you; you should think with the help of the text!

Here are three techniques you can practise to get the most out of your reading.

Reading for overview (skimming)

You read to orient yourself in the text and to form your own impression of what it is about, how extensive it is, and how it is presented. You focus first on the introduction and conclusion, headings, and the first sentences of each paragraph.

The purpose of gaining an overview can be to find out which parts of the text you want to read more thoroughly, or to decide how much time to spend on it—for example depending on difficulty or relevance (such as when you are considering using it in part of your assignment).

Reading for understanding (deep reading)

You read to understand the text’s content and meaning in your own terms. You read more concentratedly and focus on the text’s main message, line of thought, argumentation, and research question. Sometimes it is also relevant to look more closely at how the text is structured and its rhetorical whole.

A common technique for deeper understanding is to ask questions of the text. You can question the claims in the text and the reasons given for them. You can also question the method used to move from data to the results presented. The answers may lead to new questions, so you can have a kind of conversation with the text.

You can also look up words and expressions you do not understand. For example:

• Ordbokene.no (Norwegian dictionaries)
• Subject-specific dictionaries and encyclopedias
• Termportalen.no (Norwegian terminology portal)

Reading to extract information (close reading)

You read parts of the material more thoroughly to learn in detail. You read “word for word” to learn the content, to extract precise, concrete information, to know the material by heart, or to notice nuances.

How to use the techniques by reading a text in several passes

Before you spend a lot of time on a text, it is important to assess whether the text is reliable. It can also be useful to form an impression of the text as a whole before you go into depth. Here are some steps you can follow to use the different techniques:

1. Orient yourself in the text (skim). Get a first overview, find out what kind of text it is and what it is about. Study the table of contents, headings, subheadings, abstract, and reference list. You may also read the introduction and conclusion. That way you are better prepared for the actual reading: you already have an idea of what is coming.

2. Read through the text quickly (skim). Read the whole text without taking notes, apart from perhaps small marks. If there is something you do not understand: keep reading. If you feel you do not understand anything at all: keep reading anyway. You will come back to it once or twice.

3. Read the text thoroughly (deep read). This time you read to understand as much as possible. Engage with the text. Use pen and paper or an electronic note tool, and take notes while you read. Over the semester you can build a “notes” or “syllabus archive”. Such an archive is invaluable when you revise for exams or write assignments.

4. Read for revision (skim and close read). Once you have oriented yourself, read quickly through the text, and worked thoroughly with reading and note-taking, you can set the text aside. When you return to it, for example a week later, you can read through it quickly and perhaps look more closely at the most important parts. You will probably perceive the text slightly differently now.

Academic genres

When you study, you read different types of texts: textbooks, reference works, scholarly and popular science articles and essays, conference papers, reports, and dissertations. In other words, you read texts in different genres. Being aware of what kind of genre you are dealing with when you read is part of understanding the text.

Genre is also useful to keep in mind when you write academic texts yourself, and when you let texts you read inspire you (for example model texts). If you are writing a take-home exam or bachelor’s thesis where you are expected to discuss and weigh arguments, it can be useful to look at a scholarly article rather than a textbook chapter. A scholarly article, in addition to using speech acts such as explaining, describing, and narrating the subject matter—as a textbook does—also takes a position on the material by problematising and arguing, in other words by discussing it.

Which speech acts are emphasised varies from genre to genre and between disciplines. At school you learn about both literary genres (poetry, short stories, novels, plays) and non-fiction genres. Within non-fiction we find both academic and non-academic genres. Examples of the latter include journalistic genres such as editorials and news reports.