Reading

These pages will deal with a few different areas of reading. Choosing relevant books, searching on the internet for appropriate information and actually understanding what is written.

Finding Relevant Books

After you have narrowed down your essay topic and know specifically what you are looking for, you need to visit the library. A quick search of the catalogue using key words will tell you which section to look in. Alternatively, if your lecturer has given you a list of suggested reading, then this is probably a good sign that it’s relevant. Now you need to use your reading skills to quickly establish what’s relevant and what’s not. The idea behind this is to start big and then focus.

• Look at the title of a book. Does it seem to be applicable? If not, move to the next book.
• Do the same thing with the contents page and the chapter. Do not get distracted by topics that are not relevant to your essay. Keep asking yourself if it is within the boundaries you have set for your topic.
• Look at the Publishing date to see if the information is up-to-date enough for your needs.
• Look through the index at the back for references to specific people or words that may be appropriate to your topic. Then look at the corresponding pages.
• When you’ve found a chapter or section of a book, have a quick look over the title, any subheadings, pictures, graphs and quotes. Are they relevant? Do they seem to be headed in the right direct for your studies?
• If so, then you need to read the section carefully and take notes.
• Note taking can be in the margins (if you own the book), in your note pad or on a laptop. The best idea is to put them all together so you can find them easily again when needed.
• Add the details of the book they came from – do this in whichever referencing style you are going to use for your essay. If you get into the habit of doing it for every book, it’s easier when it comes to compiling the reference list at the end of your paper, and there are no problems about finding the book again or having forgotten to write down one piece of information.
• Write down the page number.
• Note down any quotes that might be useful exactly as written. Changes can always be made later, but omitting some words now because of how you think you will use the quote, and then later deciding that you need them is a hassle.
• Take other notes about the key issues in short form. Use abbreviations, numbers and arrows.
• If a quote is extra long, photocopy the page, however there should never be much you need to copy – notes are better.
• Note taking will also help reduce the chance of plagiarism.

Doing Research on the Internet

When using the web to find materials it is very important to limit your search or there will be thousands of corresponding hits. Use key words in groups, use advance search options, use a relevant search engine to your needs. When you find a page that seems relevant – the same criteria as stated above applies. Check the date – is it recent enough for your needs? Also check the source – is it a reputable website? E.g. government site or news page, or could it be biased and selling a product or a single person’s opinion. Are there supporting facts? Are they referenced or do they look made up?

Click to view a power point presentation on Research and the Internet from the Purdue online writing lab. Click ok or cancel when the administrator box appears and then use Page Down to scroll through the slide show.

For more info on searching the web visit Purdue University OWL.

Click to read more about Evaluating Sources of Information

Understanding

When reading chapters, articles or papers there are always going to be words that are difficult to understand. Even English people, when they read, do not always understand every word. So don’t feel bad. We use a number of techniques to help us guess the meanings of words so the reading is not continuously being interrupted by having to look in a dictionary.

Reading to understand without a dictionary

When trying to understand a word, it is important to look at the whole context and know what the subject is, as well as looking at other words surrounding the problematic vocabulary item. Here are some of the ways we work out the meanings of words. Sometimes, it is just one of these techniques we use, and sometimes a combination. Click on each technique individually to find out how we use it, some examples and a great exercise to practise all the methods.

• Long sentences
• Conjunctions
• Common sense from meaning
• Added information in commas
• Roots
• Prefixes  
• News stories with vocabulary activities

Breaking a long sentence down into manageable parts

When reading a sentence that is extremely long, it is often difficult to understand what the basic meaning is. This is not a problem just for foreigners studying English but also for native speakers. The best way to overcome this dilemma is to look at all the parts of the sentence and decide which are the most relevant and which are just extra pieces of information. Look at anything in commas as this is often a clause of extra information. Does it tell you about the subject or the object, does it tell you when or where the event occurred. If you cross all this extra information out, as well as any extra unnecessary adjectives and adverbs, then, that which is remaining is the basis of the sentence. It’s often a good idea to reword the basic sentence, and any other information if it’s difficult to understand. Rewrite it above the relevant parts and the whole will be easier to comprehend. Take a look at this extremely long sentence:

Due to an increase in price per barrel costs of crude oil in Singapore, which is an important market in South-East Asia, not to mention the downward trend of the Australian dollar over the last two months, attributed to the trade deficit figures released over the corresponding period and a recovering U.S. economy, the pump price of unleaded fuel at many suburban retail stations has soared and finally broken through the $1 per litre barrier with prices expected to continue trending upwards; especially if unrest continues in many of the middle-east oil producing countries and OPEC remain unchanging in their views on barrel production quotas.

Let’s look again, and this time, cross out any extra information.

Due to an increase in price per barrel costs of crude oil in Singapore, which is an important market in South-East Asia, not to mention the downward trend of the Australian dollar over the last two months, attributed to the trade deficit figures released over the corresponding period and a recovering U.S. economy, the pump price of unleaded fuel at many suburban retail stations has soared and finally broken through the $1 per litre barrier with prices expected to continue trending upwards; especially if unrest continues in many of the middle-east oil producing countries and OPEC remain unchanging in their views on barrel production quotas.

So the main point of the sentence is: petrol prices have finally risen above $1 per litre. This is because of an increase in crude prices and the lower dollar. Prices will probably continue to rise.

Guessing and understanding vocabulary

No matter which technique you use to guess a meaning of a word, it’s also necessary to understand which part of speech it is, as this will help you to guess the meaning. So look at the form of the word – especially suffixes that might show that it’s an adjective, noun, verb or adverb, and also look at other words around it that might tell you what it is. This makes it easier to substitute other words to help guess the meaning.

Conjunctions

One important technique for guessing the meaning of a word, is looking at any linking devices that may connect the unknown word to a known word and therefore give away its meaning. Think of contrasting conjunctions like nonetheless, but, however, although, despite… which will precede a word or idea of the opposite meaning. Also think of cause and effect words – therefore, result in, thus, since, due to, because, in order to, so that, if - and what the results would actually be in the situation.

The land was hot and parched .

The ‘and’ tells us that parched is a word that is probably associated with hot and therefore we can surmise that it has something to do with hot weather. Any more than this we don’t know, but you need to ask yourself if it is important to know any more about it.

Common sense from meaning

If the next sentence continued:

There was not a skerrick of rain to be seen anywhere,

then we would see the negative not talking about rain and realise that parched then obviously means dry. To work out the meaning of skerrick, we need to look at the sentence structure again. It is definitely a negative sentence which could have just said; there was no rain, so skerrick is just going to be a word that qualifies how much rain. A loose translation would be, there was not any rain; or there was not a bit of rain.

Alternatively, if the rest of the writer’s style was exaggerated then it could be guessed that, there was not even the smallest bit of rain, would be closer in meaning. Again, whilst all three possible meanings vary slightly, is it important? Often just understanding the idea and not the exact meaning is enough to let you continue reading.

He expounded his ideas to anyone who would listen at every opportunity.

People are listening to his ideas so he must be speaking them. Therefore, expound means say or speak.

Comparisons are also sometimes made in a sentence, and these can give you the meaning of an unknown word.

He worked as ardently as a squirrel in autumn.

A squirrel in autumn is probably very busy collecting food for the long winter, so ardently then means busily, or hard.

Added information in commas

Sometimes when a difficult word is introduced in a sentence the writer wants people to understand, and so adds a meaning next to the word, often in commas, brackets or dashes. It can be preceded by a signal word – or, that is, in other words, especially, particularly, including, for example – or it can appear unintroduced. For example, if you didn’t understand what a signal word was, the meaning was given to you between the dashes. Therefore, a signal word, in this case, is ‘or’, ‘that is’…. The new word could also be the one in commas after a description of it.

How much is sold during the year, the turnover, is then calculated and added to the company’s information page.

His customer service skills, in other words how he deals with, or handles, the customers, are what set him apart from the other employees.

Roots

A large number of English words are based on Latin or Greek roots. Other languages that were derived from Latin or Greek also use the same roots and this is why many words in English, German, Spanish and Norwegian, for example, are very similar – they all have the same main part of the word, but different languages have changed the beginnings, endings or spelling of the word. There are lists you can learn, but the best way is to learn each new root as you meet it and try to think of other words that are derived from it. When you look a word up in a dictionary the end of the entry will say which root it comes from. Some examples:

Remember that even if you don’t know the root, a new word might look familiar. Can this new word have a similar meaning?

Please put the newspapers in sequential order.

Sequential looks like sequence, which means ‘in order’ or ‘succession’. So it would be obvious to put the newspaper in order of their dates. Even if you knew the word subsequent or consequent these would help with the meaning because these are steps in a development.

Prefixes

Many prefixes come also from the Greek and Latin languages and knowing what they mean can help your reading skills. Most students are aware of some basic ones – for example, prefixes that mean not, or change a word to its opposite: un-, il-, im-, in-, ir-, dis-, non-. Here is a brief list of some of the other most commonly used prefixes.

• For a more extensive list of Latin prefixes and roots, click here.
• For a more extensive list of Greek prefixes and roots, click here.