Welcome to this ELC self learning video. This video looks at a time-efficient way to
read academic articles. Many students find that the most stressful
part of university learning is having to read a huge number of academic articles in a very
limited time. Reading academic articles is not an easy task,
and sometimes you may find it quite time-consuming and energy-draining, but reading them is actually
beneficial. You will not only gain background information,
but also build up some useful vocabulary about the topic you are studying.
Academics generally give the latest updated research findings and ideas in scholarly publications.
They do their professional discussion in journals, which are mostly aimed at other experts in
the field. That's partly why academic articles are
sometimes hard to read and understand. Though it's not easy, you can get through
the process by following these tips. Let's look at the basic format of the academic
article first. Most of the time, you will find these sections:
and References. Not every report will contain all of these,
and sometimes the names may change, but those are the major headings.
Once you understand what each section does, you will be able to locate it easily when
you read academic articles. The Title and Abstract are usually the first
two things that appear in an academic article. You should always read the title and abstract,
They are incredibly useful. They'll give you an overview of the topic that
the article discusses. They will help you decide whether the article
is really related to what you are looking for.
Then, you need to find the Keywords, if they are given, and the Introduction.
Keywords are useful for searching journal articles with similar research topics.
This will speed up your journal searching process.
Look at the Introduction, which can often be found in the first two paragraphs.
Here you can see the definition of the article title and what makes this research interesting.
Therefore, the first 4 parts on the list are MUST READs.
The Literature Review usually comes after the Introduction.
Some academics call it Literature or Previous Work.
Some writers may even name the part with the theory they are going to mention in this part.
The Literature Review tells you the history of related research on the same topic.
It might be interesting to you, but it is not necessary to read it to understand the
article. Methodology is another part that you might
skip at this stage. Some writers may call it Method, Research
Process or Procedure. This part refers to how the research was carried
out. Advanced researchers often follow the steps
the author used to conduct their research and make comparisons between different research
methods. However, this is not necessarily useful to
you if you are looking for background information. Findings or Results show you what the researcher
got from the research process. You can skip this part too if you find it
too complex, especially if it only covers statistical data.
Discussion, Implications and Conclusion may appear in articles separately or in one
single part. I would highly recommend that you read through
these parts. Discussion explains the results, often with
everyday language, so you can easily read it and grasp the main idea.
Implications or Significance explains the relevance of the Results for society.
The Conclusion highlights the key findings and major argument again.
Some may also mention the limitation of the research and suggestions for further research
in this part. Let's sum up what we have just gone through.
In the MUST READ column:
In the column read it when you are interested:
are being put into
the column of no need to read. One more tip, you don't really need to understand
every word in the journal, you can chose to skip it when it's too hard to understand.
With the techniques that we mentioned today, I'm sure you'll find reading academic
articles a more enjoyable and worthwhile experience.