READING FOR SCHOLARLY ACTIVITIES
ACTIVE READING
With intent and focus
Scholarly reading is an activity, not background; it requires your full attention,
critical thinking, analysis, problem-solving.
Consider: How do scholars read each other’s work?
For a purpose
What purposes do you have, as scholars, for your reading?
for facts (knowledge acquisition)
for opinions (figuring out a conversation)
for models (figuring out conventions, structures)
for theories (lessons, ways to apply ideas)
to write about it (analysis, response, argument)
Engage with the text; never resign yourself to passive absorption.
How to engage
Rephrase: Putting things in your own words shows you understand; if you can explain it
to someone else, you’ve got it. Write in the margins, or in a separate document/page for full
notes.
Respond: React to what you’re reading: does it resonate with you? Why? Do you feel a
certain way or start thinking about something specific while reading? Talk back to the text, in the
margins or in a separate page/journal.
Repurpose: apply what you’ve read to your own interests, projects, etc. write up a brief
explanation of how what you’ve read would (or would not) apply to something else, how you
can use what you’ve read in other situations.
A few tools
Dual-response journaling
Mapping (function outline)
Freewriting
Conversation
READING FOR SCHOLARLY ACTIVITIES
A few things to keep in mind about scholarly texts (that can help make sense of them):
1. They are written for an audience of other scholars. Expect unexplained references, dense
prose, and specialist/insider terms.
For each of these, try using context—
 unexplained references are usually examples to support a claim, so focus on the claim
and assume the author’s reference actually works
 dense prose: look for signposting to identify where the key ideas or claims are within the
section, and try to determine what function that section serves in the overall argument
(maybe you need to pick through it carefully, maybe you can skip it because its ideas are
repeated elsewhere more clearly)
 specialist/insider terms: (often words you know but that seem to be used in a strange
way) first determine whether you need to be able to define that term to understand the
argument, and if so, a specialized dictionary or “smurfing”—marking the word as a smurf
every time it shows up and using context to try to understand its basic meaning—can be
very useful.
2. Scholarly texts are written to contribute something to a larger conversation that started before
the text was written and will continue (hopefully) long after the author has died. You can:
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look for claims
look for challenges to other views—which tells you what other reasonable views exist
look for where the text identifies problems, where/if it offers solutions
3. Scholars are all familiar with the conventions of academic writing. Use what you know about
organization and signposting to identify the major moves of the author’s argument.
4. Other scholars read scholarly texts while developing their own research. You can, too:
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look for the parts that are useful/interesting to you (in addition to major arguments)
take notes that identify how parts of the argument are interesting/useful to you, including
whether it echoes something you’ve seen elsewhere, raises a question you hadn’t thought
about, makes a claim or cites evidence you don’t agree with or think is factual—respond
as you would if you were actually talking with the author