Reading academic writing (papers, essays and research articles)
Academic papers and research are written in a formal way which includes a high standard of vocabulary and complex sentences with attached phrases and clauses. Academic articles and research are written by scholars and academics mostly for other educated people. Academic articles are not necessarily written for the public consumption or the masses of people who have a lower level of education. What this means is that academic papers are challenging for most university students to read and it takes special understanding of the layout and purpose of the paper for it to be understood.
Below are a few paragraphs of academic writing taken from the Social Science Encyclopedia. Some strategies for reading these kinds of articles will be employed in the attempt to help the reader generate more comprehension in a quicker manner.
Reading strategies employed in academic texts and articles
Deconstruct or reverse engineer the text by analyzing the word choices and their connection to each other. What was the author thinking and attempting to convey?
Note the key words the author chooses and determine the word’s importance by identifying the author’s usage or function within the text. Is the word only mentioned or is it explained? Is it defined or just introduced? Is the word in the text compared to other words, is it criticized or established as important to the meaning being conveyed?
Identify the overall layout and process the author uses to make points including the structure of the article.
Paraphrase phrases and sentences for understanding and comprehension. It may also be necessary to more formally paraphrase passages for use in other academic writing.
Become familiar with research terminology which is commonly used in articles.
Oral History Section 1
Task 1
Task 2
Task 3
Task 4
Task One
Below is an academic article on Oral History. Highlight the key words in the three paragraphs. Note how these words are connected or contrasted with other words to attempt to impart understanding. Highlight the function using the appropriate color.
The function of the phrases and sentences are as follows:
(click the on color boxes to change highlight color)
Defined
Only mentioned without elaboration
Explained
Example
Compared
Criticized
Response to criticism
Established with further elaboration
(Eraser)
Oral History
By Prof. Michael Roper, the University of Essex. From Kuper, A, and Kuper, J. (1996) Social Science Encyclopedia, 2nd Edition. London: Routledge. p. 579f.
Part ONE (three paragraphs)
Your Answer
Answer
Oral history is the recording and interpretation of spoken testimonies about an individual’s past. In contrast to oral tradition, it is more often concerned with experiences in the recent past than with the transmission of memories across generations (Henige 1982). A variety of theories and methods fall within this rubric. Oral testimonies may be used to give a detailed account of an individual life (a ‘life history’ or ‘personal narrative’) or to facilitate historical reconstruction and the analysis of social change (‘cross-analysis’) (Bertaux 1981; Lummis 1987; P. Thompson, 1988)
The life history method was pioneered by the Chicago School in studies of immigrant experience, youth culture, and crime and deviance (Plummer 1983). Life-history interviews are usually semi-structured or unstructured. They aim, as Malinowski (1922) put it, ‘to grasp the native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of the world’. Cross-analyses based on oral testimony typically use larger samples with more structured interviews. An influential UK example is Paul Thompson’s (1993) study of social structure and social change in Edwardian Britain. Begun in 1968, this project gathered personal recollections from a representative sample (based on the 1911 census) of 500 people. In practice, despite these disparate foundations, techniques of cross-analysis and life history are often used together.
Oral testimony is one of the oldest and most widely used forms of historical evidence. It is the main form of historical record in non-literate societies, and was commonly used in European historical research before the mid-nineteenth century (for example in the work of the French historian Jules Michelet (1847). As the influence of positivism grew, however, oral sources were increasingly viewed with suspicion on grounds of reliability (Henige 1982)
Oral history is the recording and interpretation of spoken testimonies about an individual’s past.In contrast to oral tradition, it is more often concerned with experiences in the recent pastthan with the transmission of memories across generations (Henige 1982). A variety of theories and methods fall within this rubric. Oral testimonies may be used to give a detailed account of an individual life (a ‘life history’ or ‘personal narrative’) or to facilitate historical reconstruction and the analysis of social change (‘cross-analysis’) (Bertaux 1981; Lummis 1987; P. Thompson, 1988)
The life history method was pioneered by the Chicago School in studiesof immigrant experience, youth culture, and crime and deviance (Plummer 1983). Life-history interviews are usually semi-structured or unstructured. They aim, as Malinowski (1922) put it, ‘to grasp the native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of the world’.Cross-analyses based on oral testimony typically use larger samples with more structured interviews.An influential UK example is Paul Thompson’s (1993) study of social structure and social change in Edwardian Britain. Begun in 1968, this project gathered personal recollections from a representative sample (based on the 1911 census) of 500 people.In practice, despite these disparate foundations,techniques of cross-analysis and life history are often used together.
Oral testimony is one of the oldest and most widely used forms of historical evidence.It is the main form of historical record in non-literate societies, and was commonly used in European historical research before the mid-nineteenth century(for example in the work of the French historian Jules Michelet (1847).As the influence of positivism grew, however, oral sources were increasingly viewed with suspicion on grounds of reliability (Henige 1982)
Task Two Re-order these steps into the correct sequence for reading a research study article
When you are ready to begin reading the research study article. It is not necessary to read from page one to the end but to first of catch the overall significance of the report.
Re-order the steps below into a proper sequence of success of reading research articles.
Task Three
Which paraphrase of the quotation (from Malinowski in paragraph two) is useful, understandable and accurate?
Quotation: 'to grasp the native's point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of the world'.
Paraphrase 1. Comprehending an Indian’s opinion of his life and surrounding world is the aim of life history interviews.
Paraphrase 2. The objective of life history interview is to understand a local person’s perspective; both global and personal.
(Correct answers are bolded.)
Task Four Define other useful vocabulary from the article
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Oral History Section 2
Task 1
Task 2
Task 3
Task One
Using the following color-coded scale apply them to the two paragraphs in Part TWO. Consider the function of the phrase or sentence. What is the author trying to state and for what purpose?
The function of the phrases and sentences are as follows:
(click the on color boxes to change highlight color)
Defined
Only mentioned without elaboration
Explained
Example
Compared
Criticized
Response to criticism
Established with further elaboration
(Eraser)
Part TWO (two paragraphs)
Your Answer
Answer
During the post-war period, oral history underwent a revival in Europe and the USA with the emergence of social history. The generation and preservation of oral sources was central to this history from below, with its concern to recover the experiences of those who had been marginalized from historical records. Oral history in this recovery mode remains a vitally important way of gathering evidence about non-elite social groups, who are often the subjects of legal, parliamentary or other official records, but for whom there is little evidence in their own words. Oral history of this kind has been undertaken on areas such as women and work (Davidoff and Westover 1986; Roberts 1984), local and occupational history (Samuel 1975; White 1980), rural history (Blythe 1977; Ewart-Evans 1975), childhood (Humphries 1981; T.Thompson 1981) and family history (Hareven 1982). A perceived strength of this kind of oral history is its capacity to elicit evidence both of past events and the individual’s feelings about them.
Critics and advocates of oral history have debated the merits of this recovery mode. Its chronological scope will always be limited, given that evidence is usually confined to living memory. Sceptics also argue that the method is teleological, as narrators inevitably represent the past in terms of present concerns. Document-led historians have above all expressed concern about its reliability; given that there can be as much as seventy years between the experience and narration of an event. Oral historians have responded by pointing out that long-term memory remains accurate, and that written sources such as court records or eyewitness accounts are in any case often transcribed oral accounts (P.Thompson 1988).
During the post-war period, oral history underwent a revival in Europe and the USA with the emergence of social history.The generation and preservation of oral sources was central to this history from below, with its concern to recover the experiences of those who had been marginalized from historical records.Oral history in this recovery mode remains a vitally important way of gathering evidence about non-elite social groups, who are often the subjects of legal, parliamentary or other official records, but for whom there is little evidence in their own words. Oral history of this kind has been undertaken on areas such as women and work (Davidoff and Westover 1986; Roberts 1984), local and occupational history (Samuel 1975; White 1980), rural history (Blythe 1977; Ewart-Evans 1975), childhood (Humphries 1981; T.Thompson 1981) and family history (Hareven 1982). A perceived strength of this kind of oral history is its capacity to elicit evidence both of past events and the individual’s feelings about them.
Critics andadvocates of oral history have debated the merits of this recovery mode. Its chronological scope will always be limited, given that evidence is usually confined to living memory.Sceptics also argue that the method is teleological, as narrators inevitably represent the past in terms of present concerns. Document-led historians have above all expressed concern about its reliability;given that there can be as much as seventy years between the experience and narration of an event.Oral historians have responded by pointing out that long-term memory remains accurate, and that written sources such as court records or eyewitness accounts are in any case often transcribed oral accounts (P.Thompson 1988).
Task Two
Which paraphrase of the sentence of the second paragraph is useful, understandable and accurate?
Original text: Oral historians have responded by pointing out that long-term memory remains accurate, and that written sources such as court records or eyewitness accounts are in any case often transcribed oral accounts
Paraphrase 1. Oral historians have accurately noted that long-term memory is still dependable and that eyewitness and court written sources are spoken accounts which have been transcribed.
Paraphrase 2. Oral historians have pointed out that skeptics disagreeing with the accuracy of oral accounts do not understand that courts use people’s worded statements and treat them as evidence.
(Correct answers are bolded.)
Paraphrase 1 is better and more directly related to the original.
Task Three Other useful vocabulary match to the definition in the right hand column
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Oral History Section 3
Task 1
Task 2
Task 3
Rating Form
Task One
Using the following color-coded scale apply them to the two paragraphs in Part TWO. Consider the function of the phrase or sentence. What is the author trying to state and for what purpose?
The function of the phrases and sentences are as follows:
(click the on color boxes to change highlight color)
Defined
Only mentioned without elaboration
Explained
Example
Compared
Criticized
Response to criticism
Established with further elaboration
(Eraser)
Part THREE (three paragraphs)
Your Answer
Answer
With the emergence of cultural history during the 1980s and 1990s, advocates of oral history have criticized the recovery mode on the opposite grounds. Rather than seeking equivalence across documentary and oral sources, they emphasize the distinctiveness of speech as a mode of representing the past (Tonkin 1992). Rather than suppressing the effects of memory, they highlight the ways in which people may mis-remember, elide dates or suppress memories. Psychological or affective truths—which may well contradict historical ones—become objects of analysis (Samuel and Thompson 1990). For example, Alessandro Portelli (1991) has compared written accounts of the death of an activist in Terni, an Italian steelworks town, with the oral accounts of ex-communists. Underscoring their need to keep radical traditions alive, Terni’s communists had revised the date and occasion of the death so that it coincided with a high-point in local labour militancy.
Portelli’s work reflects a broader shift towards exploring the symbolic and subjective dimensions of oral testimony. Collective memories may be analysed, as in Portelli’s study or Luisa Passerini’s (1987) work on interwar Italian fascism. Alternatively, individual or family myths may be interpreted in terms of the psychic functions they serve (Fraser 1983; Samuel and Thompson 1990). A stress on language and narrative forms is common to these approaches. Cadences and patterns of speech, pauses and silences, and the interactions between interviewer and interviewee are seen as objects of analysis rather than obstacles to recall. Testimonies are interpreted as present cultural artefacts rather than as unmediated reflections of past experience.
More recent oral history work thus stresses the particular qualities of spoken testimonies such as retrospection, memory and a symbiotic relationship between source and interpreter. The interpretative focus has shifted from the past as lived to the past as represented. This has resulted in a more interdisciplinary approach to oral history, which now includes not only social history and sociology, but also feminist studies (especially Gluck and Patai, 1991), psychoanalysis, literary studies, anthropology and cultural studies.
With the emergence of cultural history during the 1980s and 1990s, advocates of oral history have criticized the recovery mode on the opposite grounds.Rather than seeking equivalence across documentary and oral sources, they emphasize the distinctiveness of speech as a mode of representing the past (Tonkin 1992). Rather than suppressing the effects of memory, they highlight the ways in which people may mis-remember, elide dates or suppress memories.Psychological or affective truths—which may well contradict historical ones—become objects of analysis (Samuel and Thompson 1990). For example, Alessandro Portelli (1991) has compared written accounts of the death of an activist in Terni, an Italian steelworks town, with the oral accounts of ex-communists. Underscoring their need to keep radical traditions alive, Terni’s communists had revised the date and occasion of the death so that it coincided with a high-point in local labour militancy.
Portelli’s work reflects a broader shift towards exploring the symbolic and subjective dimensions of oral testimony.Collective memories may be analysed, as in Portelli’s study or Luisa Passerini’s (1987) work on interwar Italian fascism.Alternatively, individual or family myths may be interpreted in terms of the psychic functions they serve (Fraser 1983; Samuel and Thompson 1990). A stress on language and narrative forms is common to these approaches.Cadences and patterns of speech, pauses and silences, and the interactions between interviewer and interviewee are seen as objects of analysis rather than obstacles to recall.Testimonies are interpreted as present cultural artefacts rather than as unmediated reflections of past experience.
More recent oral history work thus stresses the particular qualities of spoken testimonies such as retrospection, memory and a symbiotic relationship between source and interpreter.The interpretative focus has shifted from the past as lived to the past as represented.This has resulted in a more interdisciplinary approach to oral history, which now includes not only social history and sociology, but also feminist studies (especially Gluck and Patai, 1991), psychoanalysis, literary studies, anthropology and cultural studies.
Task Two
Which paraphrase of the sentence of the second paragraph is useful, understandable and accurate?
Original text: Testimonies are interpreted as present cultural artefacts rather than as unmediated reflections of past experience.
Paraphrase 1: Oral histories can be observed to be cultural artefacts rather than past, memory experiences.
Paraphrase 2: Evidence presented orally can be looked at as culture rather than reflecting on past events.
(Correct answers are bolded.)
Paraphrase 1 is better.
Task Three Other useful vocabulary match to the definition in the column below
