research topic about reading and writing

Reading and Writing for Understanding

• Posted July 21, 2005
• By Sarah O'Brien Mackey

Secondary school students can benefit enormously when teachers of all subjects integrate reading and writing strategies into their instruction, according to  Harvard Graduate School of Education Lecturer Vicki Jacobs . These strategies, typical of "reading and writing to learn" and "reading and writing across the curriculum," are problem-solving activities designed to help students move from simply knowing a fact to understanding a fact's significance. Helping students make that leap — from knowing to understanding — represents the very heart of the educational enterprise.

This summary is based on Jacobs' article, " Reading, Writing, and Understanding, " which appeared in the November 2002 edition of Educational Leadership .

Reading to Learn

Jacobs explains that students learn and practice beginning reading skills through about the third grade, building their knowledge about language and letter-sound relationships and developing fluency in their reading. Around fourth grade, students must begin to use these developing reading skills to learn — to make meaning, solve problems, and understanding something new. They need to comprehend what they read through a three-stage meaning-making process.

Stage One: Prereading

It's not uncommon for a struggling secondary reader to declare, "I read last night's homework, but I don't remember anything about it (let alone understand it)!" According to Jacobs, "How successfully students remember or understand the text depends, in part, on how explicitly teachers have prepared them to read it for clearly defined purposes."

During the prereading stage, teachers prepare students for their encounter with the text. They help students organize the background knowledge and experience they will use to solve the mystery of the text. To do so, they must understand the cultural and language-based contexts students bring to their reading, their previous successes or failures with the content, and general ability to read a particular kind of text. Based on this assessment, teachers can choose strategies that will serve as effective scaffolds between the students' "given" and the "new" of the text.

Asking such questions as, "What do I already know and what do I need to know before reading?" or "What do I think this passage will be about, given the headings, graphs, or pictures?" helps students anticipate the text, make personal connections with the text, and help to promote engagement and motivation. Brainstorming and graphic organizers also serve to strengthen students' vocabulary knowledge and study skills.

Stage Two: Guided Reading

Students move on to guided reading, during which they familiarize themselves with the surface meaning of the text and then probe it for deeper meaning. Effective guided-reading activities allow students to apply their background knowledge and experience to the "new." They provide students with means to revise predictions; search for tentative answers; gather, organize, analyze, and synthesize evidence; and begin to make assertions about their new understanding. Common guided-reading activities include response journals and collaborative work on open-ended problems. During guided reading, Jacobs recommends that teachers transform the factual questions that typically appear at the end of a chapter into questions that ask how or why the facts are important.

The ability to monitor one's own reading often distinguishes effective and struggling readers. Thus, guided-reading activities should provide students with the opportunity to reflect on the reading process itself — recording in a log how their background knowledge and experience influenced their understanding of text, identifying where they may have gotten lost during reading and why, and asking any questions they have about the text. As with prereading, guided-reading activities not only enhance comprehension but also promote vocabulary knowledge and study skills.

Stage Three: Postreading

During postreading, students test their understanding of the text by comparing it with that of their classmates. In doing so, they help one another revise and strengthen their arguments while reflecting and improving on their own.

Writing to Learn

Writing is often used as a means of evaluating students' understanding of a certain topic, but it is also a powerful tool for engaging students in the act of learning itself. Writing allows students to organize their thoughts and provides a means by which students can form and extend their thinking, thus deepening understanding. Like reading-to-learn, writing can be a meaning-making process.

Research suggests that the most effective way to improve students' writing is a process called inquiry. This process allows students to define and test what they would like to write before drafting. To help students prepare their arguments, teachers guide them through the three stages of writing-based inquiry:

• Stating specific, relevant details from personal experience;
• Proposing observations or interpretations of the text; and
• Testing these assertions by predicting and countering potential opposing arguments. Through inquiry, students discover and refine something worth writing about.

Writing-to-learn activities can include freewriting (writing, without editing, what comes to mind), narrative writing (drawing on personal experience), response writing (writing thoughts on a specific issue); loop writing (writing on one idea from different perspectives) and dialogue writing (for example, with an author or a character.) "Not surprisingly," writes Jacobs, "writing-to learn activities are also known as 'writing-to-read' strategies — means by which students can engage with text in order to understand it."

Reading, writing, and understanding

The relationship among reading, writing, and understanding is clear. Students engaged in reading-to-learn will also be prepared to write well. In turn, students who are engaged in writing-to-learn will become more effective readers. Through both approaches, students will gain a better understanding of material and a greater ability to demonstrate that understanding.

Staff Development

Jacobs recommends that teachers who are considering whether to implement reading-to-learn and writing-to-learn strategies into their classroom first define their own instructional goals. If teachers decide that their goals for students' learning include "understanding," then they might ask themselves such questions as, "What strategies do I use to prepare my students to read a text?" or "How explicitly do I share with students the purpose of an assignment?" As Jacobs sees it, "Only after teachers have examined whether teaching for understanding suits their instructional goals and after they have defined their role in facilitating understanding can they consider how the principles and practices of reading-to-learn and writing-to-learn might support their instruction."

For those teachers who decide that teaching for understanding does indeed suit their instructional goals, the framework offered in Jacobs' article can help them skillfully integrate reading-to-learn and writing-to-learn strategies across their instruction.

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Research and teaching writing

• Published: 12 July 2021
• Volume 34 , pages 1613–1621, ( 2021 )

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• Rui A. Alves 3  

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Writing is an essential but complex skill that students must master if they are to take full advantage of educational, occupational, and civic responsibilities. Schools, and the teachers who work in them, are tasked with teaching students how to write. Knowledge about how to teach writing can be obtained from many different sources, including one’s experience teaching or being taught to write, observing others teach writing, and advise offered by writing experts. It is difficult to determine if much of the lore teachers acquire through these methods are effective, generalizable, or reliable unless they are scientifically tested. This special issue of Reading & Writing includes 11 writing intervention studies conducted primarily with students in the elementary grades. It provides important new information on evidence-based writing practices.

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

There are many different ways that teachers can learn about how to teach writing. One way of acquiring such knowledge is by teaching this skill to others. As teachers apply different instructional procedures, they form judgments about the value and efficacy of these practices. In essence, they learn by doing (Graham, 2018 ).

A second way teachers learn about how to teach writing is by observing others and learning from them (Graham, 2018 ). Teachers likely remember some of the instructional methods used by those who taught them to write (e.g., teachers, mentors, parents, guardians, and peers). They may in turn adopt some of these practices when they teach their own students. This may be particularly true for instructional practices they considered effective.

Teachers can gain additional insight into teaching writing by observing and absorbing insights offered by others who have taught writing or studied how to teach it. This includes knowledge acquired from instructors teaching literacy and writing courses as well as experts offering advice on writing instruction at conferences, through workshops, podcasts, or other forms of information sharing. Teachers may also learn about teaching writing by discussing this topic with their peers or observing them as they teach writing.

A third source of knowledge that teachers can access are published materials about how to teach writing. This includes textbooks and articles on the subject, curriculum guides, commercial materials, and position statements from professional organizations to provide just a few examples. These resources can further involve digital sources such as videos demonstrating how to apply specific writing procedures, experts promoting specific teaching techniques, or web sites devoted to writing instruction.

The concern

Given all of the possible knowledge sources teachers can access or experience, there is an abundance of information, recommendations, and teaching materials on how to teach writing that is available to teachers. This blessing experiences at least one serious limitation. Too often, there is limited, circumscribed, or no evidence that the proffered advice, know-how, or wisdom works. There are many claims about what is effective, but too little proof. Unfortunately, this observation applies to much of the lore that teachers acquire about writing instruction.

Teaching lore mainly involves writing practices teachers experienced when they learned to write, instructional practices teachers develop and apply with their students, writing practices they see other teachers apply, and teaching practices promoted by experts (Graham & Harris, 2014 ). While we have no doubt that teachers and experts possess considerable knowledge and insight about how to teach writing, basing the teaching of this complex skill on such lore alone is risky.

Why is this the case? One reason is that it is difficult to determine which aspects of teaching lore are valid. For example, there are many things a teacher does while teaching writing. When their students’ writing improves, they may attribute this change to specific procedures they applied. While this evaluation may be correct, it is also possible that this judgment is incorrect or only applies to some students or to a procedure in a given context.

Teachers are not the only ones who can succumb to such selective bias. Specific teaching lore promoted by writing experts are also susceptible to misinterpretation in terms of their effectiveness. To illustrate, writing experts can overestimate the impact of favored instructional methods, forming judgments consistent with their philosophical views on writing development or instruction. For instance, proponents of the whole language approach to learning to read and write believed that writing and reading develop naturally just like oral language (Goodman, 1992 ). Consistent with these beliefs, they championed an approach to literacy instruction based on the use of informal teaching methods (e.g., reading and writing for real purposes), while at the same time deemphasizing explicitly and systematically teaching students foundational writing and reading skills and strategies (Graham & Harris, 1997 ). Instead, these skills are only taught when the need arises, mostly through short mini-lessons. Advocates for whole language frequently promoted the effectiveness of this two-pronged approach (Begeron, 1990 ), without providing much in the way of empirical evidence that it was effective, or perhaps even more importantly, that it was as effective as other alternatives such as reading and writing programs that emphasized reading and writing for real purposes, coupled with systematic and explicit skills and strategy instruction (Graham & Harris, 1994 ). Even for fundamental writing skills such as spelling, there is considerable evidence that both informal teaching and explicit instruction are effective (Graham, 2000 ; Graham & Santangelo, 2014 ), while whole language approaches are fundamentally misguided about what is written language (Liberman, 1999 ).

Whole language is not the only approach to teaching writing that has suffered from questionable claims about its effectiveness. Even the venerable Donald Graves was guilty of this to some degree with the process approach to writing that he supported and advocated (see Smagorinski, 1987 ). The evidence he offered in support of his favored approach to teaching writing relied in large part on testimonials and exemplar writing of selected students, presenting a potentially overly optimistic assessment of this approach. This is not to say that the process approach is ineffective, as there is now considerable empirical evidence supporting the opposite conclusion (Sandmel & Graham, 2011 ). Instead, this example illustrates that adopting whole cloth even highly popular and widely used teaching lore without careful consideration of its effectiveness and the evidence available to support it can be risky. The lack of evidence or the type of evidence provided can make it extremely difficult for teachers or other interested parties to determine if the testimonials or evidence used to support specific teaching lore in writing are representative or atypical.

A third issue that makes some teaching lore risky is that it may be based on the experience of a single or a very small number of teachers. As an example, this can occur for knowledge a teacher acquires as a result of his or her experience teaching writing. The teaching practice(s) may in fact be effective for the students in this teacher’s classroom, but they may not be effective when applied by another teacher or with different students. Until this proposition is tested, there is no way to determine if this teaching lore will produce reliable results when applied more broadly.

As these concerns demonstrate, the validity, generalizability, and replicability of instructional practices based on teaching lore are uncertain. This is not to devalue what teachers or experts know, but to demonstrate the limits of this knowledge.

Evidence-based writing practices

The concerns about the value of teaching lore raised above raises the question: How should the structure and details of writing instruction be determined? The solution that we recommend is to take an evidence-based practice approach to both enhance teachers’ knowledge and develop writing instruction. Starting with medicine in the 1990s, and spreading quickly to psychology, informational science, business, education, and a host of other disciplines, this movement promoted the idea that practitioners in a field should apply the best scientific evidence available to make informed and judicious decisions for their clients (Sackett et al., 1996 ). The basic assumption underlying this approach is that the findings from research can positively impact practice. The evidence-based practice movement was a reaction to practitioners basing what they did almost strictly on tradition and lore, without scientific evidence to validate it.

One reason why this represents a positive step forward in education and the teaching of writing is that instructional practices based on high quality intervention research addresses the three issues of concern we raised about teaching lore. First, high quality intervention studies address the issue of validity. They are designed specifically to isolate the effects of a specific instructional practice or set of instructional practices. They provide systematically gathered evidence on whether the instructional practices tested produced the desired impact. They further apply methodological procedures to rule out alternative explanations for observed effects. Second, high quality intervention studies address issues of generalizability by describing the participants and the context in which the practice was applied, and by using statistical procedures to determine the confidence that can be placed in specific findings. Three, they address the issue of replicability, as the replication of effects across multiple situations is the hall mark of scientific testing (Graham & Harris, 2014 ).

Another reason why the evidence-based approach represents a positive step forward in terms of teaching writing is that the evidence gathered from high quality intervention studies can provide a general set of guidelines for designing an effective writing program. Graham et al. ( 2016 ) created such a roadmap by drawing on three sources of scientific evidence: true-and quasi- experimental writing intervention studies, single-case design studies, and qualitative studies of how exceptional literacy teachers taught writing (see also Graham & Harris, 2018 ). They indicated that the scientific evidence from these three sources supports the development of writing programs that include the following. Students write frequently. They are supported by teachers and peers as they write. Essential writing skills, strategies, and knowledge are taught. Students use word processors and other twenty-first century tools to write. Writing occurs in a positive and motivating environment. Writing is used to support learning. Based on several recent meta-analyses of high quality intervention studies (Graham, et al., 2018a , b ; Graham, et al., 2018a , b ), Graham now recommends that the evidence also supports connecting writing and reading instruction (Graham, 2019 , 2020 ).

A third reason why the evidence-based approach is a positive development is that it provides teachers with a variety of techniques for teaching writing that have been shown to be effective in other teachers’ classes and in multiple situations. While this does not guarantee that a specific evidence-based practices is effective in all situations, a highly unlikely proposition for any writing practice, it does provide teachers with instructional procedures with a proven track record. This includes, but is not limited to (Graham & Harris, 2018 ; Graham et al., 2016 ):

Setting goals for writing.

Teaching general as well as genre-specific strategies for planning, revising, editing, and regulating the writing process. Engaging students in prewriting practices for gathering, organizing, and evaluation possible writing contents and plans.

Teaching sentence construction skills with sentence-combining procedures.

Providing students with feedback about their writing and their progress learning new writing skills.

Teaching handwriting, spelling, and typing.

Increasing how much students write; analyzing and emulating model texts.

Teaching vocabulary for writing.

Creating routines for students to help each other as they write.

Putting into place procedures for enhancing motivation.

Teaching paragraph writing skills.

Employing technology such as word processing that makes it easier to write.

It is also important to realize that an evidence-based approach to writing does not mean that teachers should abandon the hard-earned knowledge they have acquired through their experiences as teachers or learners. The evidence-based movement emphasizes that teachers contextualize knowledge about teaching writing acquired through research with their own knowledge about their students, the context in which they work, and what they know about writing and teaching it (Graham et al., 2016 ). When applying instructional practices acquired through research as well as teaching lore, we recommend that teachers weigh the benefits, limitations, and possible harm that might ensue as a consequence of applying any teaching procedure. Once a decision is made to apply a specific practice, it is advisable to monitor its effectiveness and make adjustments as needed.

Finally, while the scientific testing of writing practices has provided considerable insight into how writing can be taught effectively, it is not broad, deep, or rich enough to tell us all we need to know about teaching writing. It is highly unlikely that this will ever be the case. We operate on the principle that there is no single best method for teaching writing to all students, nor is it likely that science will provide us with formulas to prescribe exactly how writing should be taught to each student individually. Writing, learning, children, and the contexts in which they operate are just too complex to make this a likely consequence of the evidence-based movement. As a result, we believe that the best writing instruction will be provided by teachers who apply evidence-based practices in conjunction with the best knowledge they have acquired as teachers and learners, using each of these forms of knowledge in an intelligent, judicious, and critical manner.

Over time, we anticipate that evidence-based practices will play an ever increasing role in the process described above. This is inevitable as our knowledge about evidence-based writing practices expands. This brings us to the purpose of this special issue of Reading & Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal . This special issue presents 11 writing intervention studies focusing almost exclusively with students in the elementary grades. These studies were conducted in Europe and the United States, and they replicate and extend prior research conducted with young developing writers.

The special issue

Perhaps the most tested writing instructional practice of all time, and the one yielding the largest effects sizes (Graham et al., 2013 ), is the Self-regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) model developed by Karen Harris (see Harris et al., 2008 for a description of this approach). Several studies in the current special issue tested specific iterations of the use of the SRSD model as a means for teaching writing to elementary grade students. Collins and her colleagues examined the effectiveness of teaching third grade students in the United States task specific strategies for planning and drafting expository essays using information from social studies text using this model. This instruction enhanced the quality of students’ texts and resulted in improvement on a norm-referenced measure of writing where students identified their favorite game and provided reasons why this was the case.

In a second SRSD study conducted with second and third grade children in Spain, Salas and her colleagues examined if teaching planning and drafting strategies for writing an opinion essay was equally effective with children from more and less disadvantaged backgrounds. SRSD was equally effective in improving the opinion writing of children from both backgrounds, but carryover effects to reading comprehension (a skill not taught in this study) only occurred for students from less disadvantaged backgrounds.

A third study by Rosario and his colleagues involved a secondary analysis of data from an investigation in Portugal where third grade students were taught to write narratives using SRSD procedures and a story writing tool they developed. Their reanalysis focused on students experiencing difficulties learning to write showing that they differed in their approach and perceptions of teacher feedback. The majority of these children were able to use the feedback provided by their teacher and viewed it as helpful.

A fourth investigation by Hebert and his colleagues taught fourth grade students in the United States to write informational text using five text structures (description, compare/contrast, sequence of events, problem–solution, and cause effect). While the authors did not indicate they used SRSD to teach these strategies, the teaching methods mirrored this approach. In any event, the instruction provided to these children enhanced how well they wrote all five of these different kinds of text. These effects, however, did not generalize to better reading performance.

Lopez and her colleagues in Spain examined three approaches to improving sixth grade students’ writing. Students in all three conditions were taught how to set communicative goals for their writing. Students in one treatment condition were taught a strategy for revising. Students in a second treatment condition observed a reader trying to comprehend a text and suggesting ways it might be improved. Control students continued with the goal setting procedures. Students in both treatment conditions improved their writing and revising skills more than control students, but there were no differences between these two treatments.

In another Spanish study conducted by Rodriguez-Malaga and colleagues, the impact of two different treatments on the writing of fourth grade students was examined. One treatment group learned how to set product goals for their writing, whereas the other writing treatment group learned how to set product goals and strategies for planning compare/contrast texts. Only the students in the product goal and planning strategy treatment evidenced improved writing when compared to control students.

Philippakos and Voggt examined the effectiveness of on-line practice-based professional development (PBPD) for teaching genre-based writing strategies. Eighty-four second grade teachers were randomly assigned to PBPD or a no-treatment control condition. Treatment teachers taught the genre-based writing strategies with high fidelity and rated PBPD positively. Even more importantly, their students writing evidenced greater improvement than the writing of students in control teachers’ classes.

Walter and her colleagues in England examined the effectiveness of two writing interventions, sentence combining and spelling instruction, with 7 to 10 year old children experiencing difficulties learning to write. As expected, sentence combining instruction improved sentence construction skills, but even more importantly, these researchers found that the degree of improvements in sentence writing was related to students’ initial sentence, spelling, and reading skills.

In another study focused on improving students’ sentence construction skills, Arfé and her colleagues in Italy examined the effectiveness of an oral language intervention to improve the sentence construction skills of fifth and tenth grade students. This oral treatment did enhance the sentence writing skills of the younger fifth grade students. This study provides needed evidence that interventions aimed at improving oral language skills transfer to writing.

Chung and his colleagues in the United States examined if sixth grade students’ writing can be improved through self-assessment, planning and goal setting, and self-reflection when they revised a timed, on-demand essay. These students as well as students in the control condition were also taught how to revise such an essay. Treatment students evidenced greater writing gains, and were more confident about their revising capabilities than control students.

Lastly, Graham and his colleagues in the United States examined if the revising behavior of fourth grade students experiencing difficulties with writing can be enhanced through the use of revising goals that focused attention on making substantive when revising stories (e.g., change the setting of the story). Applying such goals across four stories had a positive effect on the revising behavior of these students when these goals were not in effect, resulting in more text-level revisions, more revisions that changed the meaning of text, and more revisions rated as improving text.

The 11 intervention studies in this special issue of Reading & Writing are particularly noteworthy for several reasons. One, some of these studies ( n  = 4) concentrated on improving students’ skills in writing informational and expository text. This is an area that has not received enough attention in existing writing literature. Two, enhancing students’ revising was the goal of multiple studies ( n  = 4). Again, too little attention has been given to this topic with either younger or older students. Three, it was especially gratifying to see that a pair of studies examined how to enhance sentence writing skills. This has been a neglected area of writing research since the 1980s. Four, multiple studies focused on improving the writing of students who experienced difficulties learning to write ( n  = 3). This is an area where we need much more research if we are to maximize these students’ writing success. Finally, more than half of the studies in this special issue ( n  = 6) were conducted in Europe, with the other half conducted in the United States. It is important to examine if specific writing treatments are effective in different social, cultural, political, institutional, and historical context (Graham, 2018 ), as was done with the four studies that applied SRSD to teach students strategies for writing.

We hope you enjoy the studies presented here. We further hope they serve as a catalyst to improve your own research if you are a writing scholar or your teaching if you are a practitioner.

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Research and Critical Reading

Pavel Zemilansky

Learning Objectives

• Read critically to discover the meaning, purpose, and content of a piece
• Respond critically to written works using reading strategy

INTRODUCTION

Good researchers and writers examine their sources critically and actively. They do not just compile and summarize these research sources in their writing, but use them to create their own ideas, theories, and, ultimately, their own, new understanding of the topic they are researching. Such an approach means not taking the information and opinions that the sources contain at face value and for granted, but to investigate, test, and even doubt every claim, every example, every story, and every conclusion. It means not to sit back and let your sources control you, but to engage in active conversation with them and their authors. In order to be a good researcher and writer, one needs to be a critical and active reader.

This chapter is about the importance of critical and active reading. It is also about the connection between critical reading and active, strong writing. Much of the discussion you will find in this chapter in fundamental to research and writing, no matter what writing genre, medium, or academic discipline you read and write in. Every other approach to research writing, every other research method and assignment offered elsewhere in this book is, in some way, based upon the principles discussed in this chapter.

Reading is at the heart of the research process. No matter what kinds of research sources and, methods you use, you are always reading and interpreting text. Most of us are used to hearing the word “reading” in relation to secondary sources, such as books, journals, magazines, websites, and so on. But even if you are using other research methods and sources, such as interviewing someone or surveying a group of people, you are reading. You are reading their subjects’ ideas and views on the topic you are investigating. Even if you are studying photographs, cultural artifacts, and other non-verbal research sources, you are reading them, too by trying to connect them to their cultural and social contexts and to understand their meaning. Principles of critical reading which we are about to discuss in this chapter apply to those research situations as well.

I like to think about reading and writing as not two separate activities but as two tightly connected parts of the same whole. That whole is the process of learning and making of new meaning. It may seem that reading and writing are complete opposite of one another. According to the popular view, when we read, we “consume” texts, and when we write, we “produce” texts. But this view of reading and writing is true only if you see reading as a passive process of taking in information from the text and not as an active and energetic process of making new meaning and new knowledge. Similarly, good writing does not come from nowhere but is usually based upon, or at least influenced by ideas, theories, and stories that come from reading. So, if, as a college student, you have ever wondered why your writing teachers have asked you to read books and articles and write responses to them, it is because writers who do not read and do not actively engage with their reading, have little to say to others.

We will begin this chapter with the definition of the term “critical reading.” We will consider its main characteristics and briefly touch upon ways to become an active and critical reader. Next, we will discuss the importance of critical reading for research and how reading critically can help you become a better researcher and make the research process more enjoyable. Also in this chapter, a student-writer offers us an insight into his critical reading and writing processes. This chapter also shows how critical reading can and should be used for critical and strong writing. And, as all other chapters, this one offers you activities and projects designed to help you implement the advice presented here into practice.

WHAT KIND OF READER ARE YOU?

You read a lot, probably more that you think. You read school textbooks, lecture notes, your classmates’ papers, and class websites. When school ends, you probably read some fiction, magazines. But you also read other texts. These may include CD liner notes, product reviews, grocery lists, maps, driving directions, road signs, and the list can go on and on. And you don’t read all these texts in the same way. You read them with different purposes and using different reading strategies and techniques. The first step towards becoming a critical and active reader is examining your reading process and your reading preferences. Therefore, you are invited to complete the following exploration activity.

Writing Activity: Analyzing Your Reading Habits

List all the reading you have done in the last week. Include both “school” and “out-of school” reading. Try to list as many texts as you can think of, no matter how short and unimportant they might seem. Now, answer the following questions.

• What was your purpose in reading each of those texts? Did you read for information, to pass a test, for enjoyment, to decide on a product you wanted to buy, and so on? Or, did you read to figure out some complex problem that keeps you awake at night?

• You have probably come up with a list of different purposes. How did each of those purposes influence your reading strategies? Did you take notes or try to memorize what you read? How long did it take you to read different texts? Did you begin at the beginning and read till you reached the end, or did you browse some texts? Consider the time of day you were reading. Consider even whether some texts tired you out or whether you thought they were “boring.” Why?

• What did you do with the results of your reading? Did you use them for some practical purpose, such as buying a new product or finding directions, or did you use them for a less practical purpose, such as understanding some topic better r learning something about yourself and others?

When you finish, share your results with the rest of the class and with your instructor.

Having answered the questions above, you have probably noticed that your reading strategies differed depending on the reading task you were facing and on what you planned to do with the results of the reading. If, for example, you read lecture notes in order to pass a test, chances are you “read for information,” or “for the main” point, trying to remember as much material as possible and anticipating possible test questions. If, on the other hand, you read a good novel, you probably just focused on following the story. Finally, if you were reading something that you hoped would help you answer some personal question or solve some personal problem, it is likely that you kept comparing and contrasting the information that you read your own life and your own experiences.

You may have spent more time on some reading tasks than others. For example, when we are interested in one particular piece of information or fact from a text, we usually put that text aside once we have located the information we were looking for. In other cases, you may have been reading for hours on end taking careful notes and asking questions.

If you share the results of your investigation into your reading habits with your classmates, you may also notice that some of their reading habits and strategies were different from yours. Like writing strategies, approaches to reading may vary from person to person depending on our previous experiences with different topics and types of reading materials, expectations we have of different texts, and, of course, the purpose with which we are reading.

Life presents us with a variety of reading situations which demand different reading strategies and techniques. Sometimes, it is important to be as efficient as possible and read purely for information or “the main point.” At other times, it is important to just “let go” and turn the pages following a good story, although this means not thinking about the story you are reading. At the heart of writing and research, however, lies the kind of reading known as critical reading. Critical examination of sources is what makes their use in research possible and what allows writers to create rhetorically effective and engaging texts.

KEY FEATURES OF CRITICAL READING

Critical readers are able to interact with the texts they read through carefully listening, writing, conversation, and questioning. They do not sit back and wait for the meaning of a text to come to them, but work hard in order to create such meaning. Critical readers are not made overnight. Becoming a critical reader will take a lot of practice and patience. Depending on your current reading philosophy and experiences with reading, becoming a critical reader may require a significant change in your whole understanding of the reading process. The trade-off is worth it, however. By becoming a more critical and active reader, you will also become a better researcher and a better writer. Last but not least, you will enjoy reading and writing a whole lot more because you will become actively engaged in both.

One of my favorite passages describing the substance of critical and active reading comes from the introduction to their book Ways of Reading , whose authors David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky write:

Reading involves a fair measure of push and shove. You make your mark on the book and it makes its mark on you. Reading is not simply a matter of hanging back and waiting for a piece, or its author, to tell you what the writing has to say. In fact, one of the difficult things about reading is that the pages before you will begin to speak only when the authors are silent and you begin to speak in their place, sometimes for them—doing their work, continuing their projects—and sometimes for yourself, following your own agenda (1).

Notice that Bartholomae and Petrosky describe reading process in pro-active terms. Meaning of every text is “made,” not received. Readers need to “push and shove” in order to create their own, unique content of every text they read. It is up the you as a reader to make the pages in front of you “speak” by talking with and against the text, by questioning and expanding it.

Critical reading, then, is a two-way process. As reader, you are not a consumer of words, waiting patiently for ideas from the printed page or a web-site to fill your head and make you smarter. Instead, as a critical reader, you need to interact with what you read, asking questions of the author, testing every assertion, fact, or idea, and extending the text by adding your own understanding of the subject and your own personal experiences to your reading.

The following are key features of the critical approach to reading:

• No text, however well written and authoritative, contains its own, pre-determined meaning.
• Readers must work hard to create meaning from every text.
• Critical readers interact with the texts they read by questioning them, responding to them, and expanding them, usually in writing.
• To create meaning, critical readers use a variety of approaches, strategies, and techniques which include applying their personal experiences and existing knowledge to the reading process.
• Critical readers seek actively out other texts, related to the topic of their investigation.

The following section is an examination of these claims about critical reading in more detail.

TEXTS PRESENT IDEAS, NOT ABSOLUTE TRUTHS

In order to understand the mechanisms and intellectual challenges of critical reading, we need to examine some of our deepest and long-lasting assumptions about reading. Perhaps the two most significant challenges facing anyone who wants to become a more active and analytical reader is understanding that printed texts doe not contain inarguable truths and learning to questions and talk back to those texts. Students in my writing classes often tell me that the biggest challenge they face in trying to become critical readers is getting away from the idea that they have to believe everything they read on a printed page. Years of schooling have taught many of us to believe that published texts present inarguable, almost absolute truths. The printed page has authority because, before publishing his or her work, every writer goes through a lengthy process of approval, review, revision, fact-checking, and so on. Consequently, this theory goes, what gets published must be true. And if it is true, it must be taken at face value, not questioned, challenged, or extended in any way.

Perhaps, the ultimate authority among the readings materials encountered by college belongs to the textbook. As students, we all have had to read and almost memorize textbook chapters in order to pass an exam. We read textbooks “for information,” summarizing their chapters, trying to find “the main points” and then reproducing these main points during exams. I have nothing against textbook as such, in fact, I am writing one right now. And it is certainly possible to read textbooks critically and actively. But, as I think about the challenges which many college students face trying to become active and critical readers, I come to the conclusion that the habit to read every text as if they were preparing for an exam on it, as if it was a source of unquestionable truth and knowledge prevents many from becoming active readers.

Treating texts as if they were sources of ultimate and unquestionable knowledge and truth represents the view of reading as consumption. According to this view, writers produce ideas and knowledge, and we, readers, consume them. Of course, sometimes we have to assume this stance and read for information or the “main point” of a text. But it is critical reading that allows us to create new ideas from what we read and to become independent and creative learners.

Critical reading is a collaboration between the reader and the writer. It offers readers the ability to be active participants in the construction of meaning of every text they read and to use that meaning for their own learning and self-fulfillment. Not even the best researched and written text is absolutely complete and finished. Granted, most fields of knowledge have texts which are called “definitive.” Such texts usually represent our best current knowledge on their subjects. However, even the definitive works get revised over time and they are always open to questioning and different interpretations.

READING IS A RHETORICAL TOOL

To understand how the claim that every reader makes his or her meaning from texts works, it is necessary to examine what is know as the rhetorical theory of reading. The work that best describes and justifies the rhetorical reading theory is Douglas Brent’s 1992 book Reading as Rhetorical Invention: Knowledge, Persuasion, and the Teaching of Research-Based Writing . I like to apply Brent’s ideas to my discussions of critical reading because I think that they do a good job demystifying critical reading’s main claims. Brent’s theory of reading is a rhetorical device puts significant substance behind the somewhat abstract ideas of active and critical reading, explaining how the mechanisms of active interaction between readers and texts actually work.

Briefly explained, Brent treats reading not only as a vehicle for transmitting information and knowledge, but also as a means of persuasion. In fact, according to Brent, knowledge equals persuasion because, in his words, “Knowledge is not simply what one has been told. Knowledge is what one believes, what one accepts as being at least provisionally true.” (xi). This short passage contains two assertions which are key to the understanding of mechanisms of critical reading. Firstly, notice that simply reading “for the main point” will not necessarily make you “believe” what you read. Surely, such reading can fill our heads with information, but will that information become our knowledge in a true sense, will we be persuaded by it, or will we simply memorize it to pass the test and forget it as soon as we pass it? Of course not! All of us can probably recall many instances in which we read a lot to pass a test only to forget, with relief, what we read as soon as we left the classroom where that test was held. The purpose of reading and research, then, is not to get as much as information out of a text as possible but to change and update one’s system of beliefs on a given subject (Brent 55-57).

Brent further states:

The way we believe or disbelieve certain texts clearly varies from one individual to the next. If you present a text that is remotely controversial to a group of people, some will be convinced by it and some not, and those who are convinced will be convinced in different degrees. The task of a rhetoric of reading is to explain systematically how these differences arise— how people are persuaded differently by texts (18).

Critical and active readers not only accept the possibility that the same texts will have different meanings for different people, but welcome this possibility as an inherent and indispensable feature of strong, engaged, and enjoyable reading process. To answer his own questions about what factors contribute to different readers’ different interpretations of the same texts, Brent offers us the following principles that I have summarized from his book:

• Readers are guided by personal beliefs, assumptions, and pre-existing knowledge when interpreting texts. You can read more on the role of the reader’s pre-existing knowledge in the construction of meaning later on in this chapter.

• Readers react differently to the logical proofs presented by the writers of texts.

• Readers react differently to emotional and ethical proofs presented by writers. For example, an emotional story told by a writer may resonate with one person more than with another because the first person lived through a similar experience and the second one did not, and so on.

The idea behind the rhetorical theory of reading is that when we read, we not only take in ideas, information, and facts, but instead we “update our view of the world.” You cannot force someone to update their worldview, and therefore, the purpose of writing is persuasion and the purpose of reading is being persuaded. Persuasion is possible only when the reader is actively engaged with the text and understands that much more than simple retrieval of information is at stake when reading.

One of the primary factors that influence our decision to accept or not to accept an argument is what Douglas Brent calls our “repertoire of experience, much of [which] is gained through prior interaction with texts” (56). What this means is that when we read a new text, we do not begin with a clean slate, an empty mind. However unfamiliar the topic of this new reading may seem to us, we approach it with a large baggage of previous knowledge, experiences, points of view, and so on. When an argument “comes in” into our minds from a text, this text, by itself, cannot change our view on the subject. Our prior opinions and knowledge about the topic of the text we are reading will necessarily “filter out” what is incompatible with those views (Brent 56-57). This, of course, does not mean that, as readers, we should persist in keeping our old ideas about everything and actively resist learning new things. Rather, it suggests that the reading process is an interaction between the ideas in the text in front of us and our own ideas and pre-conceptions about the subject of our reading. We do not always consciously measure what we read according to our existing systems of knowledge and beliefs, but we measure it nevertheless. Reading, according to Brent, is judgment, and, like in life where we do not always consciously examine and analyze the reasons for which we make various decisions, evaluating a text often happens automatically or subconsciously (59).

Applied to research writing, Brent’s theory or reading means the following:

• The purpose of research is not simply to retrieve data, but to participate in a conversation about it. Simple summaries of sources is not research, and writers should be aiming for active interpretation of sources instead
• There is no such thing as an unbiased source. Writers make claims for personal reasons that critical readers need to learn to understand and evaluate.
• Feelings can be a source of shareable good reason for belief. Readers and writers need to use, judiciously, ethical and pathetic proofs in interpreting texts and in creating their own.
• Research is recursive. Critical readers and researchers never stop asking questions about their topic and never consider their research finished.

ACTIVE READERS LOOK FOR CONNECTIONS BETWEEN TEXTS

Earlier on, I mentioned that one of the traits of active readers is their willingness to seek out other texts and people who may be able to help them in their research and learning. I find that for many beginning researchers and writers, the inability to seek out such connections often turns into a roadblock on their research route. Here is what I am talking about.

Recently, I asked my writing students to investigate some problem on campus and to propose a solution to it. I asked them to use both primary (interviews, surveys, etc.) and secondary (library, Internet, etc.) research. Conducting secondary research allows a writer to connect a local problem he or she is investigating and a local solution he or she is proposing with a national and even global context, and to see whether the local situation is typical or a-typical.

One group of students decided to investigate the issue of racial and ethnic diversity on our campus. The lack of diversity is a “hot” issue on our campus, and recently an institutional task force was created to investigate possible ways of making our university more diverse.

The students had no trouble designing research questions and finding people to interview and survey. Their subjects included students and faculty as well as the university vice-president who was changed with overseeing the work of the diversity task force. Overall, these authors have little trouble conducting and interpreting primary research that led them to conclude that, indeed, our campus is not diverse enough and that most students would like to see the situation change.

The next step these writers took was to look at the websites of some other schools similar in size and nature to ours, to see how our university compared on the issue of campus diversity with others. They were able to find some statistics on the numbers of minorities at other colleges and universities that allowed them to create a certain backdrop for their primary research that they had conducted earlier.

But good writing goes beyond the local situation. Good writing tries to connect the local and the national and the global. It tries to look beyond the surface of the problem, beyond simply comparing numbers and other statistics. It seeks to understand the roots of a problem and propose a solution based on a local and well as a global situation and research. The primary and secondary research conducted by these students was not allowing them to make that step from analyzing local data to understanding their problem in context. They needed some other type of research sources.

At that point, however, those writers hit an obstacle. How and where, they reasoned, would we find other secondary sources, such as books, journals, and websites, about the lack of diversity on our campus? The answer to that question was that, at this stage in their research and writing, they did not need to look for more sources about our local problem with the lack of diversity. They needed to look at diversity and ways to increase it as a national and global issue. They needed to generalize the problem and, instead of looking at a local example, to consider its implications for the issue they were studying overall. Such research would not only have allowed these writers to examine the problem as a whole but also to see how it was being solved in other places. This, in turn, might have helped them to propose a local solution.

Critical readers and researchers understand that it is not enough to look at the research question locally or narrowly. After conducting research and understanding their problem locally, or as it applies specifically to them, active researchers contextualize their investigation by seeking out texts and other sources which would allow them to see the big picture.

Sometimes, it is hard to understand how external texts which do not seem to talk directly about you can help you research and write about questions, problems, and issues in your own life. In her 2004 essay, “Developing ‘Interesting Thoughts’: Reading for Research,” writing teacher and my former colleague Janette Martin tells a story of a student who was writing a paper about what it is like to be a collegiate athlete. The emerging theme in that paper was that of discipline and sacrifice required of student athletes. Simultaneously, that student was reading a chapter from the book by the French philosopher Michel Foucault called Discipline and Punish. Foucault’s work is a study of the western penitentiary system, which, of course cannot be directly compared to experiences of a student athlete. At the same time, one of the leading themes in Foucault’s work is discipline. Martin states that the student was able to see some connection between Foucault and her own life and use the reading for her research and writing (6). In addition to showing how related texts can be used to explore various aspects of the writer’s own life, this example highlights the need to read texts critically and interpret them creatively. Such reading and research goes beyond simply comparing of facts and numbers and towards relating ideas and concepts with one another.

FROM READING TO WRITING

Reading and writing are the two essential tools of learning. Critical reading is not a process of passive consumption, but one of interaction and engagement between the reader and the text. Therefore, when reading critically and actively, it is important not only to take in the words on the page, but also to interpret and to reflect upon what you read through writing and discussing it with others.

CRITICAL READERS UNDERSTAND THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN REACTING AND RESPONDING TO A TEXT

As stated earlier in this chapter, actively responding to difficult texts, posing questions, and analyzing ideas presented in them is the key to successful reading. The goal of an active reader is to engage in a conversation with the text he or she is reading. In order to fulfill this goal, it is important to understand the difference between reacting to the text and responding to it.

Reacting to a text is often done on an emotional, rather than on an intellectual level. It is quick and shallow. For example, if we encounter a text that advances arguments with which we strongly disagree, it is natural to dismiss those ideas out of hand as not wrong and not worthy of our attention. Doing so would be reacting to the text based only on emotions and on our pre-set opinions about its arguments. It is easy to see that reacting in this way does not take the reader any closer to understanding the text. A wall of disagreement that existed between the reader and the text before the reading continues to exist after the reading.

Responding to a text, on the other hand, requires a careful study of the ideas presented and arguments advanced in it. Critical readers who possess this skill are not willing to simply reject or accept the arguments presented in the text after the first reading right away. To continue with our example from the preceding paragraph, a reader who responds to a controversial text rather than reacting to it might apply several of the following strategies before forming and expressing an opinion about that text.

• Read the text several times, taking notes, asking questions, and underlining key places.
• Study why the author of the text advances ideas, arguments, and convictions, so different from the reader’s own. For example, is the text’s author advancing an agenda of some social, political, religious, or economic group of which he or she is a member?
• Study the purpose and the intended audience of the text.
• Study the history of the argument presented in the text as much as possible. For example, modern texts on highly controversial issues such as the death penalty, abortion, or euthanasia often use past events, court cases, and other evidence to advance their claims. Knowing the history of the problem will help you to construct meaning of a difficult text.
• Study the social, political, and intellectual context in which the text was written. Good writers use social conditions to advance controversial ideas. Compare the context in which the text was written to the one in which it is read. For example, have social conditions changed, thus invalidating the argument or making it stronger?
• Consider the author’s (and your own) previous knowledge of the issue at the center of the text and your experiences with it. How might such knowledge or experience have influenced your reception of the argument?

Taking all these steps will help you to move away from simply reacting to a text and towards constructing informed and critical response to it.

CRITICAL READERS RESIST OVERSIMPLIFIED BINARY RESPONSES

Critical readers learn to avoid simple “agree-disagree” responses to complex texts. Such way of thinking and arguing is often called “binary” because is allows only two answers to every statement and every questions. But the world of ideas is complex and, a much more nuanced approach is needed when dealing with complex arguments.

When you are asked to “critique” a text, which readers are often asked to do, it does not mean that you have to “criticize” it and reject its argument out of hand. What you are being asked to do instead is to carefully evaluate and analyze the text’s ideas, to understand how and why they are constructed and presented, and only then develop a response to that text. Not every text asks for an outright agreement or disagreement. Sometimes, we as readers are not in a position to either simply support an argument or reject it. What we can do in such cases, though, is to learn more about the text’s arguments by carefully considering all of their aspects and to construct a nuanced, sophisticated response to them. After you have done all that, it will still be possible to disagree with the arguments presented in the reading, but your opinion about the text will be much more informed and nuanced than if you have taken the binary approach from the start.

TWO SAMPLE STUDENT RESPONSES

To illustrate the principles laid out in this section, consider the following two reading responses. Both texts respond to a very well known piece, “A Letter from Birmingham Jail,” by Martin Luther King, Jr. In the letter, King responds to criticism from other clergymen who had called his methods of civil rights struggle “unwise and untimely.” Both student writers were given the same response prompt:

Example: Student A

Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is a very powerful text. At the time when minorities in America were silenced and persecuted, King had the courage to lead his people in the struggle for equality. After being jailed in Birmingham, Alabama, King wrote a letter to his “fellow clergymen” describing his struggle for civil rights. In the letter, King recounts a brief history of that struggle and rejects the accusation that it is “unwise and untimely.” Overall, I think that King’s letter is a very rhetorically effective text, one that greatly helped Americans to understand the civil rights movement.

Example: Student B

King begins his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by addressing it to his “fellow clergymen.” Thus, he immediately sets the tone of inclusion rather than exclusion. By using the word “fellow” in the address, I think he is trying to do two things. First of all, he presents himself as a colleague and a spiritual brother of his audience. That, in effect, says “you can trust me,” “I am one of your kind.” Secondly, by addressing his readers in that way, King suggests that everyone, even those Americans who are not directly involved in the struggle for civil rights, should be concerned with it. Hence the word “fellow.” King’s opening almost invokes the phrase “My fellow Americans” or “My fellow citizens” used so often by American Presidents when they address the nation.

King then proceeds to give a brief background of his actions as a civil rights leader. As I read this part of the letter, I was wondering whether his readers would really have not known what he had accomplished as a civil rights leader. Then I realized that perhaps he gives all that background information as a rhetorical move. His immediate goal is to keep reminding his readers about his activities. His ultimate goal is to show to his audience that his actions were non-violent but peaceful. In reading this passage by King, I remembered once again that it is important not to assume that your audience knows anything about the subject of the writing. I will try to use this strategy more in my own papers.

In the middle of the letter, King states: “The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.” This sentence looks like a thesis statement and I wonder why he did not place it towards the beginning of the text, to get his point across right away. After thinking about this for a few minutes and re- reading several pages from our class textbook, I think he leaves his “thesis” till later in his piece because he is facing a not- so-friendly (if not hostile) audience. Delaying the thesis and laying out some background information and evidence first helps a writer to prepare his or her audience for the coming argument. That is another strategy I should probably use more often in my own writing, depending on the audience I am facing.

REFLECTING ON THE RESPONSES

To be sure, much more can be said about King’s letter than either of these writers have said. However, these two responses allow us to see two dramatically different approaches to reading. After studying both responses, consider the questions below.

• Which response fulfills the goals set in the prompt better and why?
• Which responses shows a deeper understanding of the texts by the reader and why?
• Which writer does a better job at avoiding binary thinking and creating a sophisticated reading of King’s text and why?
• Which writer is more likely to use the results of the reading in his or her own writing in the future and why?
• Which writer leaves room for response to his text by others and why?

CRITICAL READERS DO NOT READ ALONE AND IN SILENCE

One of the key principles of critical reading is that active readers do not read silently and by themselves. By this I mean that they take notes and write about what they read. They also discuss the texts they are working with, with others and compare their own interpretations of those texts with the interpretations constructed by their colleagues.

As a college student, you are probably used to taking notes of what you read. When I was in college, my favorite way of preparing for a test was reading a chapter or two from my textbook, then closing the book, then trying to summarize what I have read on a piece of paper. I tried to get the main points of the chapters down and the explanations and proofs that the textbooks’ authors used. Sometimes, I wrote a summary of every chapter in the textbook and then studied for the test from those summaries rather than from the textbook itself. I am sure you have favorite methods of note taking and studying from your notes, too.

But now it strikes me that what I did with those notes was not critical reading. I simply summarized my textbooks in a more concise, manageable form and then tried to memorize those summaries before the test. I did not take my reading of the textbooks any further than what was already on their pages. Reading for information and trying to extract the main points, I did not talk back to the texts, did not question them, and did not try to extend the knowledge which they offered in any way. I also did not try to connect my reading with my personal experiences or pre-existing knowledge in any way. I also read in silence, without exchanging ideas with other readers of the same texts. Of course, my reading strategies and techniques were dictated by my goal, which was to pass the test.

Critical reading has other goals, one of which is entering an on-going intellectual exchange. Therefore it demands different reading strategies, approaches, and techniques. One of these new approaches is not reading in silence and alone. Instead, critical readers read with a pen or pencil in hand. They also discuss what they read with others.

STRATEGIES FOR CONNECTING READING AND WRITING

If you want to become a critical reader, you need to get into a habit of writing as you read. You also need to understand that complex texts cannot be read just once. Instead, they require multiple readings, the first of which may be a more general one during which you get acquainted with the ideas presented in the text, its structure and style. During the second and any subsequent readings, however, you will need to write, and write a lot. The following are some critical reading and writing techniques which active readers employ as they work to create meanings from texts they read.

UNDERLINE INTERESTING AND IMPORTANT PLACES IN THE TEXT

Underline words, sentences, and passages that stand out, for whatever reason. Underline the key arguments that you believe the author of the text is making as well as any evidence, examples, and stories that seem interesting or important. Don’t be afraid to “get it wrong.” There is no right or wrong here. The places in the text that you underline may be the same or different from those noticed by your classmates, and this difference of interpretation is the essence of critical reading.

Take notes on the margins. If you do not want to write on your book or journal, attach post-it notes with your comments to the text. Do not be afraid to write too much. This is the stage of the reading process during which you are actively making meaning. Writing about what you read is the best way to make sense of it, especially, if the text is difficult.

Do not be afraid to write too much. This is the stage of the reading process during which you are actively making meaning. Writing about what you read will help you not only to remember the argument which the author of the text is trying to advance (less important for critical reading), but to create your own interpretations of the text you are reading (more important).

Here are some things you can do in your comments

• Ask questions.
• Agree or disagree with the author.
• Question the evidence presented in the text
• Offer counter-evidence
• Offer additional evidence, examples, stories, and so on that support the author’s argument
• Mention other texts which advance the same or similar arguments
• Mention personal experiences that enhance your reading of the text

WRITE EXPLORATORY RESPONSES

Write extended responses to readings. Writing students are often asked to write one or two page exploratory responses to readings, but they are not always clear on the purpose of these responses and on how to approach writing them. By writing reading responses, you are continuing the important work of critical reading which you began when you underlined interesting passages and took notes on the margins. You are extending the meaning of the text by creating your own commentary to it and perhaps even branching off into creating your own argument inspired by your reading. Your teacher may give you a writing prompt, or ask you to come up with your own topic for a response. In either case, realize that reading responses are supposed to be exploratory, designed to help you delve deeper into the text you are reading than note-taking or underlining will allow.

When writing extended responses to the readings, it is important to keep one thing in mind, and that is their purpose. The purpose of these exploratory responses, which are often rather informal, is not to produce a complete argument, with an introduction, thesis, body, and conclusion. It is not to impress your classmates and your teacher with “big” words and complex sentences. On the contrary, it is to help you understand the text you are working with at a deeper level. The verb “explore” means to investigate something by looking at it more closely. Investigators get leads, some of which are fruitful and useful and some of which are dead-ends. As you investigate and create the meaning of the text you are working with, do not be afraid to take different directions with your reading response. In fact, it is important resist the urge to make conclusions or think that you have found out everything about your reading. When it comes to exploratory reading responses, lack of closure and presence of more leads at the end of the piece is usually a good thing. Of course, you should always check with your teacher for standards and format of reading responses.

Try the following guidelines to write a successful response to a reading:

Remember your goal—exploration. The purpose of writing a response is to construct the meaning of a difficult text. It is not to get the job done as quickly as possible and in as few words as possible.

As you write, “talk back to the text.” Make comments, ask questions, and elaborate on complex thoughts. This part of the writing becomes much easier if, prior to writing your response, you had read the assignment with a pen in hand and marked important places in the reading.

If your teacher provides a response prompt, make sure you understand it. Then try to answer the questions in the prompt to the best of your ability. While you are doing that, do not be afraid of bringing in related texts, examples, or experiences. Active reading is about making connections, and your readers will appreciate your work because it will help them understand the text better.

While your primary goal is exploration and questioning, make sure that others can understand your response. While it is OK to be informal in your response, make every effort to write in a clear, error-free language.

Involve your audience in the discussion of the reading by asking questions, expressing opinions, and connecting to responses made by others.

USE READING FOR INVENTION

Use reading and your responses to start your own formal writing projects. Reading is a powerful invention tool. While preparing to start a new writing project, go back to the readings you have completed and your responses to those readings in search for possible topics and ideas. Also look through responses your classmates gave to your ideas about the text. Another excellent way to start your own writing projects and to begin research for them is to look through the list of references and sources at the end of the reading that you are working with. They can provide excellent topic-generating and research leads.

KEEP A DOUBLE-ENTRY JOURNAL

Many writers like double-entry journals because they allow us to make that leap from summary of a source to interpretation and persuasion. To start a double-entry journal, divide a page into two columns. As you read, in the left column write down interesting and important words, sentences, quotations, and passages from the text. In the right column, right your reaction and responses to them. Be as formal or informal as you want. Record words, passages, and ideas from the text that you find useful for your paper, interesting, or, in any, way striking or unusual. Quote or summarize in full, accurately, and fairly. In the right-hand side column, ask the kinds of questions and provide the kinds of responses that will later enable you to create an original reading of the text you are working with and use that reading to create your own paper.

DON’T GIVE UP

If the text you are reading seems too complicated or “boring,” that might mean that you have not attacked it aggressively and critically enough. Complex texts are the ones worth pursuing and investigating because they present the most interesting ideas. Critical reading is a liberating practice because you do not have to worry about “getting it right.” As long as you make an effort to engage with the text and as long as you are willing to work hard on creating a meaning out of what you read, the interpretation of the text you are working with will be valid.

IMPORTANT: So far, we have established that no pre-existing meaning is possible in written texts and that critical and active readers work hard to create such meaning. We have also established that interpretations differ from reader to reader and that there is no “right” or “wrong” during the critical reading process. So, you may ask, does this mean that any reading of a text that I create will be a valid and persuasive one? With the exception of the most outlandish and purposely-irrelevant readings that have nothing to do with the sources text, the answer is “yes.” However, remember that reading and interpreting texts, as well as sharing your interpretations with others are rhetorical acts. First of all, in order to learn something from your critical reading experience, you, the reader, need to be persuaded by your own reading of the text. Secondly, for your reading to be accepted by others, they need to be persuaded by it, too. It does not mean, however, that in order to make your reading of a text persuasive, you simply have to find “proof” in the text for your point of view. Doing that would mean reverting to reading “for the main point,” reading as consumption. Critical reading, on the other hand, requires a different approach. One of the components of this approach is the use of personal experiences, examples, stories, and knowledge for interpretive and persuasive purposes. This is the subject of the next section of this chapter.

ONE CRITICAL READER’S PATH TO CREATING A MEANING: A CASE STUDY

Earlier on in this chapter, we discussed the importance of using your existing knowledge and prior experience to create new meaning out of unfamiliar and difficult texts. In this section, I’d like to offer you one student writer’s account of his meaning- making process. Before I do that, however, it is important for me to tell you a little about the class and the kinds of reading and writing assignments that its members worked on.

All the writing projects offered to the members of the class were promoted by readings, and students were expected to actively develop their own ideas and provide their own readings of assigned texts in their essays. The main text for the class was the anthology Ways of Reading edited by David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky that contains challenging and complex texts. Like for most of his classmates, this approach to reading and writing was new to Alex who had told me earlier that he was used to reading “for information” or “for the main point”.

In preparation for the first writing project, the class read Adrienne Rich’s essay “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Revision.” In her essay, Rich offers a moving account of her journey to becoming a writer. She makes the case for constantly “revising” one’s life in the light of all new events and experiences. Rich blends voices and genres throughout the essay, using personal narrative, academic argument, and even poetry. As a result, Rich creates the kind of personal-public argument which, on the one hand, highlights her own life, and on the other, illustrates that Rich’s life is typical for her time and her environment and that her readers can also learn from her experiences.

To many beginning readers and writers, who are used to a neat separation of “personal” and “academic” argument, such a blend of genres and styles may seem odd. In fact, on of the challenges that many of the students in the class faced was understanding why Rich chooses to blend personal writing with academic and what rhetorical effects she achieves by doing so. After writing informal responses to the essay and discussing it in class, the students were offered the following writing assignment:

Although Rich tells a story of her own, she does so to provide an illustration of an even larger story—one about what it means to be a woman and a writer. Tell a story of your own about the ways you might be said to have been named or shaped or positioned by an established or powerful culture. Like Rich (and perhaps with similar hesitation), use your own experience as an illustration of both your own situation and the situation of people like you. You should imagine that the assignment is a way for you to use (and put to the test) some of Rich’s terms, words like “re-vision,” “renaming,” and “structure.” (Bartholomae and Petrosky 648).

Notice that this assignment does not ask students to simply analyze Rich’s essay, to dissect its argument or “main points.” Instead, writers are asked to work with their own experiences and events of their own lives in order to provide a reading of Rich which is affected and informed by the writers’ own lives and own knowledge of life. This is critical reading in action when a reader creates his or her one’s own meaning of a complex text by reflecting on the relationship between the content of that text and one’s own life.

In response to the assignment, one of the class members, Alex Cimino-Hurt, wrote a paper that re-examined and re- evaluated his upbringing and how those factors have influenced his political and social views. In particular, Alex was trying to reconcile his own and his parents’ anti-war views with the fact than a close relative of his was fighting in the war in Iraq as he worked on the paper. Alex used such terms as “revision” and “hesitation” to develop his piece.

Like most other writers in the class, initially Alex seemed a little puzzled, even confused by the requirement to read someone else’s text through the prism of his own life and his own experiences. However, as he drafted, revised, and discussed his writing with his classmates and his instructor, the new approach to reading and writing became clearer to him. After finishing the paper, Alex commented on his reading strategies and techniques and on what he learned about critical reading during the project:

ON PREVIOUS READING HABITS AND TECHNIQUES

Previously when working on any project whether it be for a History, English, or any other class that involved reading and research, there was a certain amount of minimalism. As a student I tried to balance the least amount of effort with the best grade. I distinctly remember that before, being taught to skim over writing and reading so that I found “main” points and highlighted them. The value of thoroughly reading a piece was not taught because all that was needed was a shallow interpretation of whatever information that was provided followed by a regurgitation. [Critical reading] provided a dramatic difference in perspective and helped me learn to not only dissect the meaning of a piece, but also to see why the writer is using certain techniques or how the reading applies to my life.

ON DEVELOPING CRITICAL READING STRATEGIES

When reading critically I found that the most important thing for me was to set aside a block of time in which I would’t have to hurry my reading or skip parts to “Get the gist of it.” Developing an eye for…detail came in two ways. The first method is to read the text several times, and the second is to discuss it with my classmates and my teacher. It quickly became clear to me that the more I read a certain piece, the more I got from it as I became more comfortable with the prose and writing style. With respect to the second way, there is always something that you can miss and there is always a different perspective that can be brought to the table by either the teacher or a classmate.

ON READING RICH’S ESSAY

In reading Adrienne Rich’s essay, the problem for me was’t necessarily relating to her work but instead just finding the right perspective from which to read it. I was raised in a very open family so being able to relate to others was learned early in my life. Once I was able to parallel my perspective to hers, it was just a matter of composing my own story. Mine was my liberalism in conservative environments—the fact that frustrates me sometimes. I felt that her struggle frustrated her, too. By using quotations from her work, I was able to show my own situation to my readers.

ON WRITING THE PAPER

The process that I went through to write an essay consisted of three stages. During the first stage, I wrote down every coherent idea I had for the essay as well as a few incoherent ones. This helped me create a lot of material to work with. While this initial material doesn’t always have direction it provides a foundation for writing. The second stage involved rereading Rich’s essay and deciding which parts of it might be relevant to my own story. Looking at my own life and at Rich’s work together helped me consolidate my paper. The third and final stage involved taking what is left and refining the style of the paper and taking care of the mechanics.

ADVICE FOR CRITICAL READERS

The first key to being a critical and active reader is to find something in the piece that interests, bothers, encourages, or just confuses you. Use this to drive your analysis. Remember there is no such thing as a boring essay, only a boring reader.

• Reading something once is never enough so reading it quickly before class just won’t cut it. Read it once to get your brain comfortable with the work, then read it again and actually try to understand what’s going on in it. You can’t read it too many times.
• Ask questions. It seems like a simple suggestion but if you never ask questions you’ll never get any answers. So, while you’re reading, think of questions and just write them down on a piece of paper lest you forget them after about a line and a half of reading.

Reading and writing are rhetorical processes, and one does not exist without the other. The goal of a good writer is to engage his or her readers into a dialog presented in the piece of writing. Similarly, the goal of a critical and active reader is to participate in that dialog and to have something to say back to the writer and to others. Writing leads to reading and reading leads to writing. We write because we have something to say and we read because we are interested in ideas of others.

Reading what others have to say and responding to them help us make that all-important transition from simply having opinions about something to having ideas. Opinions are often over-simplified and fixed. They are not very useful because, if different people have different opinions that they are not willing to change or adjust, such people cannot work or think together. Ideas, on the other hand, are ever evolving, fluid, and flexible. Our ideas are informed and shaped by our interactions with others, both in person and through written texts. In a world where thought and action count, it is not enough to simply “agree to disagree.” Reading and writing, used together, allow us to discuss complex and difficult issues with others, to persuade and be persuaded, and, most importantly, to act.

Reading and writing are inextricably connected, and I hope that this chapter has shown you ways to use reading to inform and enrich you writing and your learning in general. The key to becoming an active, critical, and interested reader is the development of varied and effective reading techniques and strategies. I’d like to close this chapter with the words from the writer Alex Cimino-Hurt: “Being able to read critically is important no matter what you plan on doing with your career or life because it allows you to understand the world around you.”

Bartholomae, David and Anthony Petrosky, Eds. Introduction. Ways of Reading . 8th Ed. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008.

Brent, Douglas. 1992. Reading as Rhetorical Invention. NCTE , Urbana, Illinois. Cimino-Hurt, Alex. Personal Interview. 2003.

Martin, Janette. 2004. “Developing ‘Interesting Thoughts:’ Reading for Research.” In Research Writing Revisited: A Sourcebook for Teachers , eds. Pavel Zemliansky and Wendy Bishop, Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH. (3-13).

Rich, Adrienne. 2002. “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-vision.” In Ways of Reading , 6th ed. Eds. Bartholomae, David and Anthony Petrosky. Bedford/St. Martin’s Boston, (627-645).

Research and Critical Reading Copyright © 2016 by Pavel Zemilansky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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• USC Libraries
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Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper

• Reading Research Effectively
• Purpose of Guide
• Design Flaws to Avoid
• Independent and Dependent Variables
• Glossary of Research Terms
• Narrowing a Topic Idea
• Broadening a Topic Idea
• Extending the Timeliness of a Topic Idea
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• Theoretical Framework
• Citation Tracking
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• Tiertiary Sources
• Scholarly vs. Popular Publications
• Qualitative Methods
• Quantitative Methods
• Insiderness
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• Common Grammar Mistakes
• Writing Concisely
• Avoiding Plagiarism
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• Further Readings
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• Bibliography

Reading a Scholarly Article or Research Paper

Identifying a research problem to investigate requires a preliminary search for and critical review of the literature in order to gain an understanding about how scholars have examined a topic. Scholars rarely structure research studies in a way that can be followed like a story; they are complex and detail-intensive and often written in a descriptive and conclusive narrative form. However, in the social and behavioral sciences, journal articles and stand-alone research reports are generally organized in a consistent format that makes it easier to compare and contrast studies and to interpret their contents.

General Reading Strategies

W hen you first read an article or research paper, focus on asking specific questions about each section. This strategy can help with overall comprehension and with understanding how the content relates [or does not relate] to the problem you want to investigate. As you review more and more studies, the process of understanding and critically evaluating the research will become easier because the content of what you review will begin to coalescence around common themes and patterns of analysis. Below are recommendations on how to read each section of a research paper effectively. Note that the sections to read are out of order from how you will find them organized in a journal article or research paper.

1.  Abstract

The abstract summarizes the background, methods, results, discussion, and conclusions of a scholarly article or research paper. Use the abstract to filter out sources that may have appeared useful when you began searching for information but, in reality, are not relevant. Questions to consider when reading the abstract are:

• Is this study related to my question or area of research?
• What is this study about and why is it being done ?
• What is the working hypothesis or underlying thesis?
• What is the primary finding of the study?
• Are there words or terminology that I can use to either narrow or broaden the parameters of my search for more information?

2.  Introduction

If, after reading the abstract, you believe the paper may be useful, focus on examining the research problem and identifying the questions the author is trying to address. This information is usually located within the first few paragraphs of the introduction or in the concluding paragraph. Look for information about how and in what way this relates to what you are investigating. In addition to the research problem, the introduction should provide the main argument and theoretical framework of the study and, in the last paragraphs of the introduction, describe what the author(s) intend to accomplish. Questions to consider when reading the introduction include:

• What is this study trying to prove or disprove?
• What is the author(s) trying to test or demonstrate?
• What do we already know about this topic and what gaps does this study try to fill or contribute a new understanding to the research problem?
• Why should I care about what is being investigated?
• Will this study tell me anything new related to the research problem I am investigating?

3.  Literature Review

The literature review describes and critically evaluates what is already known about a topic. Read the literature review to obtain a big picture perspective about how the topic has been studied and to begin the process of seeing where your potential study fits within the domain of prior research. Questions to consider when reading the literature review include:

• W hat other research has been conducted about this topic and what are the main themes that have emerged?
• What does prior research reveal about what is already known about the topic and what remains to be discovered?
• What have been the most important past findings about the research problem?
• How has prior research led the author(s) to conduct this particular study?
• Is there any prior research that is unique or groundbreaking?
• Are there any studies I could use as a model for designing and organizing my own study?

4.  Discussion/Conclusion

The discussion and conclusion are usually the last two sections of text in a scholarly article or research report. They reveal how the author(s) interpreted the findings of their research and presented recommendations or courses of action based on those findings. Often in the conclusion, the author(s) highlight recommendations for further research that can be used to develop your own study. Questions to consider when reading the discussion and conclusion sections include:

• What is the overall meaning of the study and why is this important? [i.e., how have the author(s) addressed the " So What? " question].
• What do you find to be the most important ways that the findings have been interpreted?
• What are the weaknesses in their argument?
• Do you believe conclusions about the significance of the study and its findings are valid?
• What limitations of the study do the author(s) describe and how might this help formulate my own research?
• Does the conclusion contain any recommendations for future research?

5.  Methods/Methodology

The methods section describes the materials, techniques, and procedures for gathering information used to examine the research problem. If what you have read so far closely supports your understanding of the topic, then move on to examining how the author(s) gathered information during the research process. Questions to consider when reading the methods section include:

• Did the study use qualitative [based on interviews, observations, content analysis], quantitative [based on statistical analysis], or a mixed-methods approach to examining the research problem?
• What was the type of information or data used?
• Could this method of analysis be repeated and can I adopt the same approach?
• Is enough information available to repeat the study or should new data be found to expand or improve understanding of the research problem?

6.  Results

After reading the above sections, you should have a clear understanding of the general findings of the study. Therefore, read the results section to identify how key findings were discussed in relation to the research problem. If any non-textual elements [e.g., graphs, charts, tables, etc.] are confusing, focus on the explanations about them in the text. Questions to consider when reading the results section include:

• W hat did the author(s) find and how did they find it?
• Does the author(s) highlight any findings as most significant?
• Are the results presented in a factual and unbiased way?
• Does the analysis of results in the discussion section agree with how the results are presented?
• Is all the data present and did the author(s) adequately address gaps?
• What conclusions do you formulate from this data and does it match with the author's conclusions?

7.  References

The references list the sources used by the author(s) to document what prior research and information was used when conducting the study. After reviewing the article or research paper, use the references to identify additional sources of information on the topic and to examine critically how these sources supported the overall research agenda. Questions to consider when reading the references include:

• Do the sources cited by the author(s) reflect a diversity of disciplinary viewpoints, i.e., are the sources all from a particular field of study or do the sources reflect multiple areas of study?
• Are there any unique or interesting sources that could be incorporated into my study?
• What other authors are respected in this field, i.e., who has multiple works cited or is cited most often by others?
• What other research should I review to clarify any remaining issues or that I need more information about?

NOTE :  A final strategy in reviewing research is to copy and paste the title of the source [journal article, book, research report] into Google Scholar . If it appears, look for a "cited by" followed by a hyperlinked number [e.g., Cited by 45]. This number indicates how many times the study has been subsequently cited in other, more recently published works. This strategy, known as citation tracking, can be an effective means of expanding your review of pertinent literature based on a study you have found useful and how scholars have cited it. The same strategies described above can be applied to reading articles you find in the list of cited by references.

Reading Tip

Specific Reading Strategies

Effectively reading scholarly research is an acquired skill that involves attention to detail and an ability to comprehend complex ideas, data, and theoretical concepts in a way that applies logically to the research problem you are investigating. Here are some specific reading strategies to consider.

As You are Reading

• Focus on information that is most relevant to the research problem; skim over the other parts.
• As noted above, read content out of order! This isn't a novel; you want to start with the spoiler to quickly assess the relevance of the study.
• Think critically about what you read and seek to build your own arguments; not everything may be entirely valid, examined effectively, or thoroughly investigated.
• Look up the definitions of unfamiliar words, concepts, or terminology. A good scholarly source is Credo Reference .

Taking notes as you read will save time when you go back to examine your sources. Here are some suggestions:

• Mark or highlight important text as you read [e.g., you can use the highlight text  feature in a PDF document]
• Take notes in the margins [e.g., Adobe Reader offers pop-up sticky notes].
• Highlight important quotations; consider using different colors to differentiate between quotes and other types of important text.
• Summarize key points about the study at the end of the paper. To save time, these can be in the form of a concise bulleted list of statements [e.g., intro has provides historical background; lit review has important sources; good conclusions].

Write down thoughts that come to mind that may help clarify your understanding of the research problem. Here are some examples of questions to ask yourself:

• Do I understand all of the terminology and key concepts?
• Do I understand the parts of this study most relevant to my topic?
• What specific problem does the research address and why is it important?
• Are there any issues or perspectives the author(s) did not consider?
• Do I have any reason to question the validity or reliability of this research?
• How do the findings relate to my research interests and to other works which I have read?

Adapted from text originally created by Holly Burt, Behavioral Sciences Librarian, USC Libraries, April 2018.

Another Reading Tip

When is it Important to Read the Entire Article or Research Paper

Laubepin argues, "Very few articles in a field are so important that every word needs to be read carefully." However, this implies that some studies are worth reading carefully. As painful and time-consuming as it may seem, there are valid reasons for reading a study from beginning to end. Here are some examples:

• Studies Published Very Recently .  The author(s) of a recent, well written study will provide a survey of the most important or impactful prior research in the literature review section. This can establish an understanding of how scholars in the past addressed the research problem. In addition, the most recently published sources will highlight what is currently known and what gaps in understanding currently exist about a topic, usually in the form of the need for further research in the conclusion .
• Surveys of the Research Problem .  Some papers provide a comprehensive analytical overview of the research problem. Reading this type of study can help you understand underlying issues and discover why scholars have chosen to investigate the topic. This is particularly important if the study was published very recently because the author(s) should cite all or most of the key prior research on the topic. Note that, if it is a long-standing problem, there may be studies that specifically review the literature to identify gaps that remain. These studies often include the word "review" in their title [e.g., Hügel, Stephan, and Anna R. Davies. "Public Participation, Engagement, and Climate Change Adaptation: A Review of the Research Literature." Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 11 (July-August 2020): https://doi.org/10.1002/ wcc.645].
• Highly Cited .  If you keep coming across the same citation to a study while you are reviewing the literature, this implies it was foundational in establishing an understanding of the research problem or the study had a significant impact within the literature [either positive or negative]. Carefully reading a highly cited source can help you understand how the topic emerged and how it motivated scholars to further investigate the problem. It also could be a study you need to cite as foundational in your own paper to demonstrate to the reader that you understand the roots of the problem.
• Historical Overview .  Knowing the historical background of a research problem may not be the focus of your analysis. Nevertheless, carefully reading a study that provides a thorough description and analysis of the history behind an event, issue, or phenomenon can add important context to understanding the topic and what aspect of the problem you may want to examine further.
• Innovative Methodological Design .  Some studies are significant and should be read in their entirety because the author(s) designed a unique or innovative approach to researching the problem. This may justify reading the entire study because it can motivate you to think creatively about pursuing an alternative or non-traditional approach to examining your topic of interest. These types of studies are generally easy to identify because they are often cited in others works because of their unique approach to investigating the research problem.
• Cross-disciplinary Approach .  R eviewing studies produced outside of your discipline is an essential component of investigating research problems in the social and behavioral sciences. Consider reading a study that was conducted by author(s) based in a different discipline [e.g., an anthropologist studying political cultures; a study of hiring practices in companies published in a sociology journal]. This approach can generate a new understanding or a unique perspective about the topic . If you are not sure how to search for studies published in a discipline outside of your major or of the course you are taking, contact a librarian for assistance.

Laubepin, Frederique. How to Read (and Understand) a Social Science Journal Article . Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ISPSR), 2013; Shon, Phillip Chong Ho. How to Read Journal Articles in the Social Sciences: A Very Practical Guide for Students . 2nd edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2015; Lockhart, Tara, and Mary Soliday. "The Critical Place of Reading in Writing Transfer (and Beyond): A Report of Student Experiences." Pedagogy 16 (2016): 23-37; Maguire, Moira, Ann Everitt Reynolds, and Brid Delahunt. "Reading to Be: The Role of Academic Reading in Emergent Academic and Professional Student Identities." Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice 17 (2020): 5-12.

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Systematic review article, research competencies to develop academic reading and writing: a systematic literature review.

• Tecnologico de Monterrey, Escuela de Humanidades y Educación, Monterrey, Mexico

Rationale: The development of research skills in the higher education environment is a necessity because universities must be concerned about training professionals who use the methods of science to transform reality. Furthermore, within research competencies, consideration must be given to those that allow for the development of academic reading and writing in university students since this is a field that requires considerable attention from the educational field at the higher level.

Objective: This study aims to conduct a systematic review of the literature that allows the analysis of studies related to the topics of research competencies and the development of academic reading and writing.

Method: The search was performed by considering the following quality criteria: (1) Is the context in which the research is conducted at higher education institutions? (2) Is the development of academic reading and writing considered? (3) Are innovation processes related to the development of academic reading and writing considered? The articles analyzed were published between 2015 and 2019.

Results: Forty-two papers were considered for analysis after following the quality criterion questions. Finally, the topics addressed in the analysis were as follows: theoretical–conceptual trends in educational innovation studies, dominant trends and methodological tools, findings in research competencies for innovation in academic literacy development, types of innovations related to the development of academic reading and writing, recommendations for future studies on research competencies and for the processes of academic reading and writing and research challenges for the research competencies and academic reading and writing processes.

Conclusion: It was possible to identify the absence of studies about research skills to develop academic literacy through innovative models that effectively integrate the analysis of these three elements.

Introduction

Research skills today must be developed in such a way that students in higher education will be enabled to make them their own for good. This type of competencies is given fundamentally in the aspects of methodological domain, information gathering and the management of document-writing norms and technological tools. Furthermore, the usefulness of the existence of mediating didactics is recognized ( Aguirre, 2016 ). The competencies considered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in its skills strategy are the following: the development of relevant competencies, the activation of those competencies in the labor market and the use of those competencies effectively for the economy and society ( OECD, 2017 ). The research competences established by Mogonea and Remus Mogonea (2019) from the implementation of a pedagogical research project are as follows: the acquisition of new knowledge, the identification of educational problems, synthesis and argumentation, metacognition, knowledge of new research methods, the possibility of developing research tools and the interpretation and dissemination of results. Research skills work for various disciplines and can even link them. Some studies have affirmed the value of facilitating interactions between researchers from different research fields within a discipline ( Hills and Richards, 2013 ). Therefore, research competencies are approached from distinct perspectives. In this study, the focus is on those that allow for the development of academic reading and writing, because it is an area that requires a boost because it is basic for undergraduate students to be able to understand texts of different kinds and to be able to write with academic rigor.

Academic writing is one aspect that has been focussed on in the educational context. It is a multiple construction that unites such essential elements as the understanding of the scientific field and the understanding of scientific research methodology, statistical knowledge and the understanding of the culture of native and foreign languages ( Lamanauskas, 2019 ). Currently, a change in expectations has emerged around academic writing, and it has become increasingly evident that a much longer and gradual orientation in the process of research and information gathering is desirable to better meet the needs of contemporary students ( Hamilton, 2018 ). On the basis of historical emphasis on writing instruction, five approaches are illustrated, namely, skills, creative writing, process, social practice, and socio-cultural perspective ( Kwak, 2017 ). Academic writing is thus conceived as a way in which young people can construct their own according to elements that provide academic rigor through an efficient interaction with texts.

Academic reading and writing are a fundamental part of the context of higher education. Academic reading and writing also includes the learning of foreign languages as the gender-based approach to the teaching of writing has been found to be useful in promoting the development of literacy through the explicit teaching of characteristics, functions, and options of grammar and vocabulary that are available to interpret and produce various specific genres ( Trojan, 2016 ). Young university students come from a system of basic and upper secondary education in which the fundamental thing was to learn through the repetition of texts, but now their ideas, knowledge, capacity for analysis and critical thinking are a central aspect ( Bazerman, 2014 ). Understanding reading practices and needs in the context of information seeking can refine our understanding of the choices and preferences of users for information sources (such as textbooks, articles, and multimedia content) and media (such as printed and digital tools used for reading) ( Carlino, 2013 ; Lopatovska and Sessions, 2016 ). In this sense, it is useful to consider academic literacy, a name that Carlino (2013) has given to teaching process that may (or may not) be put in place to facilitate students' access to the different written cultures of the disciplines (p. 370). Currently, the many ways in which students perform the process of academic reading and writing must be addressed so that an improvement in the process can be attained.

Within the study of research competencies for the development of academic reading and writing, theoretical–conceptual trends and methodological designs play an important role. Ramírez-Montoya and Valenzuela (2019) considered psychopedagogical, socio-cultural, use and development of technology, disciplinary and educational management studies as theoretical–conceptual trends. According to Harwell (2014) , for methodological analysis, the categories of experimental design, quasi-experimental design, pre-experimental design, and within quantitative methods are used, and for qualitative methods, phenomenological, narrative and case studies, grounded theory and ethnography are contemplated. Documentary research is also added because there are studies on this type related to the subject, which are considered to be excluded.

In the research field, the findings and innovation that are increasingly present are a fundamental part. For the area of findings, the classification contemplated by Ramírez-Montoya and Lugo-Ocando (2020) must be considered. The author commented that innovation can create a new process (organization, method, strategy, development, procedure, training, and technique), a new product (technology, article, instrument, material, device, application, manufacture, result, object, and prototype), a new service (attention, provision, assistance, action, function, dependence, and benefit) or new knowledge (transformation, impact, evolution, cognition, discernment, knowledge, talent, patent, model, and system). Various types of innovation are available, such as those addressed by Valenzuela and Valencia (2017) which consider the following: (a) continuous innovation: when small deviations in educational practices accumulate, they translate into profound changes; (b) systematic: it is methodical and ordered like the innovation of continuous improvement, but the scope and novelty of its changes may vary and even lead to substantial changes; and (c) disruptive: they are new contributions to the world and generate fundamental changes in the activities, structure and functioning of organizations. Another type of innovation is open innovation, which is defined by Chesbrough (2006) as the deliberate use of knowledge inputs and outputs to accelerate internal innovation and expand it for the external use of innovation in markets. Educational purposes and divergent contexts can determine the type of innovation applied.

Many factors converge in the development of academic reading and writing. Digital skills are essential elements in enriching academic reading and writing. In the framework for the development and understanding of digital competences in Europe, five areas of digital competences exist, namely, (a) information: judging its relevance and purpose through identifying, locating, retrieving, storing, organizing, and analyzing digital information; (b) communication: taking place in digital environments or using digital tools to link to others and interacting in networked communities; (c) content creation: some elements include creating and editing new content and enforcing intellectual property rights and licenses; (d) security: personal protection, protection of digital identity, and safe and sustainable use and (e) problem solving: some aspects include making informed decisions about which digital tools are best suited for which purpose or need, creatively using technologies and updating the skills of individuals ( Ferrari, 2013 ). The changing environment of higher education offers an uncertain information ecosystem that requires greater responsibility on the part of students to create new knowledge and to select and use information appropriately ( Association of College Research Libraries, 2000 ). The Association of College and Research Libraries 2016 includes some key information literacy (IL) concepts: information creation as a process, information as value, research as inquiry and search as strategic exploration. Academic literacy can be better developed if IL and digital competencies are considered.

Research studies have presented challenges that must be considered for future research. Within the research gaps addressed in the classification of Kroll et al. (2018) for the study of research competencies, some of the categories are appropriate: Research Topic (RT) 1: Collaboration, RT2: Feasibility, RT3: Knowledge Sharing, RT4: Research Opportunities and RT6: Skill Differences. Critical thinking and academic literacy are considered amongst the challenges for developing academic writing from research skills. The first is considered as the process that involves conceptualization, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of the information collected from observation and experience as a guide for belief and action ( Sellars et al., 2018 ). Academic literacy according to Solimine and Garcia-Quismondo (2020) grows within a competency-based educational model, in which competencies are recognized as the developments in the learners of informational behaviors and attitudes that make them expert evaluators of digital and virtual web contents to obtain knowledge and know-how. Reflection and critical thinking are basic elements for an adequate interaction in digital media.

Several items were identified from mapping and systematic literature reviews related to the topics of research skills and academic literacy development. Abu and Alheet (2019) conducted a study to identify those competencies that an individual must possess to be a good researcher. A competency-based assessment throughout the research training process to more objectively evaluate the development of doctoral students and early career scientists is proposed by Verderame et al. (2018) . Moreover, Zetina et al. (2017) concluded that designing strategies for the adequate development of research competencies with the purpose of training sufficiently qualified young researchers is crucial. Walton and Cleland (2017) also presented qualitative research with the purpose of establishing whether students as part of a degree module can demonstrate through their online textual publications their IL skills as a discursive competence and social practice. Lopatovska and Sessions (2016) conducted a study examining reading strategies in relation to information-seeking stages, tasks and reading media in an academic setting.

This study aims to determine how the three elements present in the quality criteria (research skills, academic reading and writing and innovation processes) of this systematic review of the literature can be linked so that they can serve as a basis for identifying which research skills can be used to develop academic reading and writing in higher education contexts through innovative models. IL is presented as a fundamental competence because for the adequate development of academic reading and writing, university students must be able to perform efficiently in the search, selection and treatment of information.

The method followed for the present research was the systematic review of literature [based on Kitchenham and Charters (2007) ], which considers within the phases to follow the review of a protocol to specify the research question. The search started with the articles that emerged from a systematic mapping of literature that was previously carried out; subsequently, quality criteria were defined that allowed refining the selection of articles for the systematic literature review, inclusion and exclusion criteria were also determined, and six research questions were also established for the analysis of the articles.

Research Questions

The starting point was to locate themes that were of interest for investigating writing processes within the framework of research skills and educational innovation to establish research questions. Six questions were located, and possible systems for classifying answers were studied on the basis of the literature. Table 1 lists the questions that guided the study.

Table 1 . Research questions and kind of answers in the systematic literature review.

Search Strategy

In a systematic mapping of literature (SML) that was previously conducted, the search strings shown in Table 2 were used. The search criteria are explained below.

Table 2 . Search strings in Scopus and WOS.

On the basis of the 345 articles that emerged from the search process that was conducted for the previous SML, the following quality criteria were considered for the selection of the articles to be included in this SLR: (a) Is the context in which the study is conducted in higher education institutions, (b) Is the development of academic reading and writing considered?, and (c) Are innovation processes related to the development of academic reading and writing considered? It was contemplated that they would cover at least two of three points to define the articles that would remain for the analysis. In the first instance, 52 articles were left, but those whose language was different from English and Spanish were later excluded, given the poor representativeness of articles written in other languages. Therefore, only 42 papers were finally analyzed.

Inclusion, Exclusion, and Quality Criteria

The inclusion and exclusion criteria must capture and incorporate the questions that the SLR seeks to answer, and the criteria must also be practical to apply. If they are too detailed, then the selection may be excessively complicated and lengthy. For the systematic mapping, the disciplinary areas that had the highest number of articles were Education (40%) and Medicine (36%). For the systematic review of the literature, it was considered that the context for the selection of articles should be limited to higher education institutions. Table 3 shows the inclusion and exclusion criteria for the SML and the quality criteria for article selection.

Table 3 . Inclusion, exclusion, and quality criteria.

Finally, after applying the quality criteria, there were 42 articles left to be analyzed in the SLR, which are shown in Table 4 below.

Table 4 . Articles that were analyzed.

RQ1 What are the theoretical–conceptual trends in educational innovation studies observed in the research skill articles?

The 42 articles analyzed the disciplinary approaches according to the Library of Congress Classification, which made it possible to place them in the six disciplines referred to in this study and allowed their correspondence with the theoretical–conceptual trends of educational innovation (psychopedagogical, socio-cultural, disciplinary, use and development of technology and educational management), where a greater preponderance was found in articles under the heading of Psychopedagogical Studies (1, 2, 7, 8, 16–18, 20, 22, 24, 29, 30, 32, 34–36, 38), as shown in Figure 2 .

The disciplinary approach allows for the consideration of which areas the research topic has the greatest influence on and is generating the most interest for study. In carrying out systematic literature mappings, identifying the disciplinary areas that have a greater presence is highly useful because it serves as a basis for determining which area or areas can be focussed on for future systematic literature reviews.

RQ2 What are the dominant trends and methodological tools observed in the research skill articles?

The study addressed the different research methods: quantitative, qualitative and mixed method. The classification used is shown in Figure 3 and allows identifying that in the experimental design the quantitative method predominated (4, 5, 10, 14, 21, 27, 30, 31), on the other hand in the documentary research there was a predominance of the qualitative method (6–8, 18, 26, 36–38, 41, 42).

To have a more detailed idea of the trend of the methods used in the articles that deal with the analysis of research skills for academic literacy development, starting only from the three main methods is insufficient. Having a sub-classification that allows us to know the types of research designs that are performed in each method is a must. Presenting the specific research design allows for more detailed information, especially if the entire process followed in the research method is clearly explained.

RQ3 What are the findings in research skills for innovation in academic literacy development?

The findings focussed on four categories: (1) new knowledge (1, 3, 7, 9, 15, 20, 21, 24, 27, 29, 30, 32, 34–36) which were stated in this category when referring to transformation, impact, evolution, cognition, dissent, knowledge, talent, patent, model or system. For instance, Article 1 was considered because it talks about how students acquired knowledge about the choice of an appropriate research instrument and learned to articulate their identity as researchers, and Article 20 was considered in this category because the study investigated whether the teaching of communicative languages helps develop the critical thinking of students; (2) new process (2, 4–6, 8, 12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 22, 23, 25, 28, 37–42), the findings in this category considered an organization, a method, a strategy, a development, a procedure, a training or a technique, e.g., Article 2, were considered as the students who participated in the process of becoming good scholars by using appropriate online publications to create valid arguments by evaluating the work of others and Article 22, as this study analyses the strategies activated by a group of 36 Portuguese university students when faced with an academic writing practice in Spanish as a foreign language; (3) new product (10), findings were considered in this category when considering a technology, an article, a tool, a material, a device, an application, a manufacture, a result, an object or a prototype, e.g., Article 10 was integrated because the document illustrates the development of an online portal and a mobile application aimed at promoting student motivation and engagement; (4) new service (11, 13, 17, 26, 31, 33), the findings were stated in this category when considering elements, such as attention, provision, assistance, action, function, dependence or benefit, e.g., Article 17 that presents the Summer Science Program in México, which aims to provide university students with research competence and Article 33, as it states that online academic networks have been established as spaces for academics from all countries and as outlets for their insight and literacy. Below are the key words that appeared most often in each category in Figure 4 .

Innovation is present in the findings found in the articles through the idea that it starts from something existing to generate something new, gives a new meaning and a new idea through elements, such as those considered in the classification used in this systematic review of literature. Innovative elements do not necessarily have to contemplate technology, innovating can consist of providing new solutions that respond to specific needs, which can be useful not only in economic and social scenarios but also in the educational context.

RQ4 What types of innovations related to the development of academic reading and writing emerge from the studies consulted?

The categories on which the classification of the types of innovation focussed were the following: continuous, systematic, disruptive and open. In continuous innovation, the keywords change, competency, improve, solution and training were placed. In systematic innovation, the keywords were competency, development, explore, needs, self-perception, skills, and solution. In disruptive innovation, the keywords were online courses and organizational support. In open innovation, the keywords global, links and ICTS were located. In the systematic category, more articles were about development (2, 5–7, 11, 13, 14, 16, 21–23, 27, 28, 32, 35, 42), as shown in Figure 5 .

The distinct types of innovation allow us to know at what level an innovation is being conducted to know how much emphasis is given to the part of generating innovation within research if it is considered something that occurs gradually or if, on the contrary, it is considered that it requires drastic changes that can be generated even immediately. Moreover, nowadays, open innovation has become increasingly important, especially in the field of higher education where knowledge repositories are now considered open spaces.

RQ5 What are the recommendations that the authors give for future studies on research skills and for the processes of academic reading and writing?

The study first identified the recommendations that the authors made for future studies in the framework of research skills and academic literacy processes. Subsequently, the categories presented in Figure 6 were established. The item that had the most presence around the category of Information was the digital element because it was considered in some studies that learning had a positive effect through the use of digital resources (6, 11, 13, 15, 29, 31, 41, 42).

Today, in the digital economy, the role of knowledge production in information systems is increasing dramatically. The same is true in the field of education; therefore, making appropriate use of these digital resources in accordance with the stated research purposes is necessary. The digital era is complex and requires flexible education that enhances new skills, and higher education students must be trained to efficiently use the wide diversity of digital resources now available to them and to perform well in virtual environments.

RQ6 What are the research challenges for the research skills and academic reading and writing processes?

The challenges were analyzed, and the following were located: collaboration (support), feasibility (contexts, technological, training, and support), knowledge sharing (literacy, thinking, creativity and adapted), research opportunities (reflection, scientific, method, sample, formative process, and skills) and differences (literacy and linguistic). Amongst the challenges shown in the studies that were addressed in this study, those related to research opportunities (1, 4–6, 9, 11–14, 16, 17, 19, 30, 33, 34, 36, 39) stand out, followed by learning sharing (2, 8, 18, 20, 26, 27, 31, 42) and viability (7, 10, 15, 25, 29, 32, 38, 40, 41), as can be seen in Figure 7 .

The challenges in research allow us to identify on which topics the researcher should concentrate to be able to give solutions to problems posed around a research topic because knowing which obstacles have been presented in a specific research process is interesting so that they can serve as a basis for further studies. The challenges presented in research can be of various kinds, from questions such as the financial support required according to the type and time of research to the viability related to aspects such as the necessary skills or the mastery of the use of technology to make research feasible.

Amongst the theoretical–conceptual trends, the one corresponding to Psychopedagogical Studies has turned out to be the one that has focussed more on the analysis of research skills for the development of academic writing. Figure 1 depicts that there was a greater trend of articles in psychopedagogical matters and that they were distributed in various disciplinary areas. Psychopedagogical studies focus on cognitive elements and on social–emotional elements and improvements in academic achievement ( Ramírez-Montoya and Valenzuela, 2019 ). In this review, the psychopedagogical approach is framed mainly in the application of didactic techniques, educational programmes, forms of evaluation and training and capacity building.

Figure 1 . Quality criteria for papers selection for SLR.

Experimental studies are a frequently used method in the topic of research skills. Figure 2 shows that the most commonly used research design in the articles consulted is the experimental design. However, methodological designs are available in the studies analyzed. The older categorisations of experimental designs tend to use the language of the analysis of variance to describe these arrangements ( Harwell, 2014 ). In this study, the approach of that type of design was considered because randomization was sought for the selection of the sample to be investigated. Nonetheless, various methodological designs were used in the review, and it was even decided to consider research of a documentary nature to guide the present study.

Figure 2 . Theoretical–conceptual trends in educational innovation studies.

New processes are identified with greater emphasis on the analysis of research toward the development of academic reading and writing within the framework of research competencies. Figure 3 illustrates that according to the classification addressed, the category of new processes is the one that received the most mention in the analysis. Ramírez-Montoya and Lugo-Ocando (2020) validated that a new process is characterized amongst its elements by an organization, a method, a technique, and a procedure. In this analysis, it was possible to observe that to a great extent, the findings are based on processes that imply a follow-up to determine how the evolution to reach the proposed objectives occurs.

Figure 3 . Trends and methodological tools.

Systematic and continuous innovations have a strong presence in the area of innovation in research skill studies. Figure 4 shows the trend in these types of innovation. In terms of systematic innovation, there was a greater presence of the development aspect, whilst continuous innovation had a greater presence of the competence aspect. Continuous innovation is something that has to do with small changes that can make a difference, and systematic innovation is methodical and orderly like continuous improvement innovation. However, the scope and novelty of its changes can vary and even lead to substantial changes ( Valenzuela and Valencia, 2017 ). The innovations must be based on the objectives to be achieved and always with a view to achieving substantial improvement.

Figure 4 . Findings in research skills for academic literacy development.

Digital resources and skills present a valuable opportunity to enhance academic literacy development through research skills. Figure 5 shows that the digital aspect had a greater presence in the area of Information that was presented for the categorization of Recommendations for Future Studies. The digital competencies according to Ferrari (2013) are focussed on Information, Communication, Content Creation, Problem Solving and Security, but the latter was not present in the studies analyzed. Interacting through digital tools or in digital environments is a reality we are currently facing; therefore, students must be prepared to have digital competences, which allow them to have a better performance in general and enrich the framework in which they develop their academic reading and writing.

Figure 5 . Types of innovations related to the development of academic reading and writing.

Challenges in research skill studies show various themes, such as collaboration, sharing of learning, difference in skills or feasibility, and no single line is to be addressed. The categories corresponding to the challenges that have the greatest presence according to Figure 6 are the following: research opportunities and knowledge sharing. However, there is variety in the keywords that are derived from these. However, critical thinking and literacy (academic and information) are considered relevant by the subject matter. IL has important advantages for the proper selection and use of information ( Association of College Research Libraries, 2016 ), and academic literacy is now closely linked to the competencies for evaluating digital content and producing knowledge ( Solimine and Garcia-Quismondo, 2020 ). What is important is the acquisition of skills so that students in higher education can be effective in research and can adequately develop the process of academic reading and writing.

Figure 6 . Recommendations for future studies on research skills and processes of academic reading and writing.

Figure 7 . Research challenges for the research skills and academic reading and writing processes.

Limitations

Only the Web of Science and Scopus databases were used for the selection of articles for analysis in this systematic literature review. Although they are amongst the most important, other articles that could be relevant to the topic addressed in this study were left out. By including only studies that had higher education institutions as their context, we excluded studies conducted in extra-school contexts that could be significant. The three quality criteria that were used reduced the selection to 42 articles, which may be a small number, but they are the articles that are related to the specific objective of the research, which is to identify research skills that allow for the development of academic reading and writing.

Conclusions

Research competencies can work for several disciplines. In this systematic review of literature, the articles analyzed correspond to the disciplinary areas of Education; Language and Literature; Medicine; Library Science; Philosophy, Psychology and religion and Science, which implies that there is a multidisciplinary character to address the issues of research competencies and the development of academic literacy. Nevertheless, the discipline with the greatest presence is education, which allows us to identify that there is an increasing concern to promote the culture of research in this area, as well as to seek that students acquire the skills necessary for the better development of academic literacy.

Academic literacy is indeed a fundamental part of the higher education environment. The types of innovation to develop academic literacy that have the greatest presence are systematic and continuous innovation, the aspect that stands out from the first is development, and from the second are competition and change. Competencies are thus identified as a key element to be considered to achieve the development of academic literacy.

Research competencies for the development of academic reading and writing imply not only taking care of methodological aspects. It is not enough to take care of elements such as the formulation of the research question, the selection of the research method and design, the selection of instruments and the evaluation system. Crucial competencies, such as academic and information literacy (IL), must be considered because in this information society, which is not necessarily a knowledge society, one must be literate to be able to use information for the proposed purposes and to develop quality academic texts that can subsequently disseminate and support the expansion of knowledge in the various areas of higher education.

The aim of this research is to identify studies that address research competencies and those that address academic literacy through innovative elements, so that it can be determined how these three elements can be linked to each other to benefit university students in the sense of serving as a basis for generating initiatives to promote research competencies that can be used to develop academic literacy in higher education contexts through innovative models. It is intended that with the development of these competencies, university students can develop research skills, search for information efficiently in different environments and platforms, understand specialized texts in their area of study, and finally generate quality writing that can be published.

Data Availability Statement

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Author Contributions

IC-M carried out the systematic review of literature, carried out the analysis of the articles considered to be integrated in the present study, investigated and integrated the theoretical part, made the graphs and tables, wrote the article, and took care of form and content. MR-M reviewed in detail the form and content of the article, suggested authors for theoretical support, checked that the paragraphs had an adequate structure, and that the references were current, consistent, and correctly cited. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

The study was conducted within the framework of the doctoral studies corresponding to the Ph.D. programme in Educational Innovation. Special thanks are due to the scholarships granted by CONACYT and Tecnologico de Monterrey. The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support of Writing Lab, TecLabs, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico, in the production of this work.

Supplementary Material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2020.576961/full#supplementary-material

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Keywords: educational innovation, higher education, research competencies, academic reading and writing, systematic literature review, research skills

Citation: Castillo-Martínez IM and Ramírez-Montoya MS (2021) Research Competencies to Develop Academic Reading and Writing: A Systematic Literature Review. Front. Educ. 5:576961. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2020.576961

Received: 27 June 2020; Accepted: 14 December 2020; Published: 18 January 2021.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2021 Castillo-Martínez and Ramírez-Montoya. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Isolda Margarita Castillo-Martínez, isoldamcm@hotmail.com

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Explaining the Symbiotic Relationship Between Reading and Writing

Students who understand how reading relates to writing and vice versa can develop into better writers.

For elementary school teachers, the saying is, students learn to read and then read to learn. At the middle and high school levels, teachers may experience the relationship of first writing to read, and then reading to write. Although this expression is not so common, there are resources that point to such a relationship, including ” Writing to Read: Evidence for How Writing Can Improve Reading ” or books such as The Write to Read .

While the relationship of “writing to read” and “reading to write” represents a symbiotic one, there is a distinct difference that may help us better understand what we are teaching students.

Writing to Read

When a student is writing to read, they are using writing as a tool to truly understand the reading. Writing to read is driven by the text the student is studying.

Examples of writing to read

• Write a high-level summary to remember and consolidate the content of the reading.
• Write a claim about the reading, and use three pieces of evidence to support it.
• Respond to open-ended questions about the reading as a way to connect to or analyze the text.
• Write an essay on a book to illuminate a particular theme or provide evidence to trace tonal shifts in the piece.
• Write about the content of a particular text or texts to understand, analyze, or evaluate the text(s) at a deeper level.
• Annotate during reading to capture important terms, ideas, or content.
• Fill in graphic organizers or take notes to track the reading.
• Write in response to a prompt.
• Write an essay about a particular literary device or critical feature of the text(s).

Reading to Write

When a student is reading to write, they are using reading as a tool to improve their writing. Reading to write occurs when students first learn how to imitate their favorite authors, historians, scientists, or researchers. This is the deliberate use of mentor texts to mold a student’s writing ability.

Examples of reading to write

• Read memoirs or personal essays to prepare to write a college essay.
• Read several articles from a particular journal or newspaper to increase knowledge of stylistic expectations in preparation to write a piece for publication.
• To help relieve writer’s block, use reading to think about different ways to write.
• Read widely on a topic to consider one’s own writing approach and background knowledge.
• Review multiple texts to write for a particular purpose or on a specific topic.
• Read a lot to write more by picking out the ideas that spark thinking.
• Maintain an annotated bibliography of mentor texts that serve as a writing coach.

Moving Toward Reading to Write

The developmental progression from reader to writer is specific to each student’s experience; however, we do know that in order to strengthen their ability to write, students must continue to read more.

Reading feeds writing. When writing dries up or stalls, the best way to revitalize it is to feed your brain with more reading. Reading may be compared to eating the nutrients we need for the energy to write. Reading feeds the writer with ideas for structure, rich language, literary moves, and compelling ways to illuminate a writer’s purpose.

After filling our brain with reading, turning back to writing typically gives one the energy needed to continue. This is one reason why writing to read is so important early on, then gradually becomes just as important as reading to write. As students develop confidence and competence as readers as the content and vocabulary become much more sophisticated, they build capacity to see the text as both a reader and a writer.

There are potential benefits of looking at the writing-to-read and reading-to-write relationship as teachers continue to challenge themselves with the best way to teach students how to write. Many times at the middle and high school levels, experience with writing to read is the dominant one. If this is the case, it might be a good time to rethink instructional goals and associated assessments.

Here are some practical suggestions for how to weave the two more seamlessly so that students grow into stronger writers.

Assignments that Weave in Reading to Write

After students complete a writing-to-read activity, have them complete a second activity that asks them to use the same text as a reading-to-write activity. (Models and research on how to use mentor texts can be found in books by Allison Marchetti and Rebekah O’Dell .) The second activity may be practice captured in the writer’s notebook for the student to use as a resource to support their writing throughout the year. Some examples of such activities may include the following:

• Write a high-level summary of the text, then pick sentences from the text that use punctuation or sentence structure in a way that is powerful.
• Write a claim along with supporting evidence, then look at the text to pick out the best use of transitions.
• Annotate a book to trace character development, then pull out parts of the book that were written with vivid, descriptive language.
• Write an essay on the theme of a book, then write a reflection on the author’s craft.
• Write a response to reading to analyze the author’s line of reasoning, then break down the formal structure of the argument.

After high school, students contribute even more to society, so they need to know how to cogently express their thinking to others. Empowering students as writers requires practice, and it’s important that students understand how writing to read and reading to write serve them in markedly different ways.

How Does Writing Fit Into the ‘Science of Reading’?

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In one sense, the national conversation about what it will take to make sure all children become strong readers has been wildly successful: States are passing legislation supporting evidence-based teaching approaches , and school districts are rushing to supply training. Publishers are under pressure to drop older materials . And for the first time in years, an instructional issue—reading—is headlining education media coverage.

In the middle of all that, though, the focus on the “science of reading” has elided its twin component in literacy instruction: writing.

Writing is intrinsically important for all students to learn—after all, it is the primary way beyond speech that humans communicate. But more than that, research suggests that teaching students to write in an integrated fashion with reading is not only efficient, it’s effective.

Yet writing is often underplayed in the elementary grades. Too often, it is separated from schools’ reading block. Writing is not assessed as frequently as reading, and principals, worried about reading-exam scores, direct teachers to focus on one often at the expense of the other. Finally, beyond the English/language arts block, kids often aren’t asked to do much writing in early grades.

“Sometimes, in an early-literacy classroom, you’ll hear a teacher say, ‘It’s time to pick up your pencils,’” said Wiley Blevins, an author and literacy consultant who provides training in schools. “But your pencils should be in your hand almost the entire morning.”

Strikingly, many of the critiques that reading researchers have made against the “balanced literacy” approach that has held sway in schools for decades could equally apply to writing instruction: Foundational writing skills—like phonics and language structure—have not generally been taught systematically or explicitly.

And like the “find the main idea” strategies commonly taught in reading comprehension, writing instruction has tended to focus on content-neutral tasks, rather than deepening students’ connections to the content they learn.

Education Week wants to bring more attention to these connections in the stories that make up this special collection . But first, we want to delve deeper into the case for including writing in every step of the elementary curriculum.

Why has writing been missing from the reading conversation?

Much like the body of knowledge on how children learn to read words, it is also settled science that reading and writing draw on shared knowledge, even though they have traditionally been segmented in instruction.

“The body of research is substantial in both number of studies and quality of studies. There’s no question that reading and writing share a lot of real estate, they depend on a lot of the same knowledge and skills,” said Timothy Shanahan, an emeritus professor of education at the University of Illinois Chicago. “Pick your spot: text structure, vocabulary, sound-symbol relationships, ‘world knowledge.’”

The reasons for the bifurcation in reading and writing are legion. One is that the two fields have typically been studied separately. (Researchers studying writing usually didn’t examine whether a writing intervention, for instance, also aided students’ reading abilities—and vice versa.)

Some scholars also finger the dominance of the federally commissioned National Reading Panel report, which in 2000 outlined key instructional components of learning to read. The review didn’t examine the connection of writing to reading.

Looking even further back yields insights, too. Penmanship and spelling were historically the only parts of writing that were taught, and when writing reappeared in the latter half of the 20th century, it tended to focus on “process writing,” emphasizing personal experience and story generation over other genres. Only when the Common Core State Standards appeared in 2010 did the emphasis shift to writing about nonfiction texts and across subjects—the idea that students should be writing about what they’ve learned.

And finally, teaching writing is hard. Few studies document what preparation teachers receive to teach writing, but in surveys, many teachers say they received little training in their college education courses. That’s probably why only a little over half of teachers, in one 2016 survey, said that they enjoyed teaching writing.

Writing should begin in the early grades

These factors all work against what is probably the most important conclusion from the research over the last few decades: Students in the early-elementary grades need lots of varied opportunities to write.

“Students need support in their writing,” said Dana Robertson, an associate professor of reading and literacy education at the school of education at Virginia Tech who also studies how instructional change takes root in schools. “They need to be taught explicitly the skills and strategies of writing and they need to see the connections of reading, writing, and knowledge development.”

While research supports some fundamental tenets of writing instruction—that it should be structured, for instance, and involve drafting and revising—it hasn’t yet pointed to a specific teaching recipe that works best.

One of the challenges, the researchers note, is that while reading curricula have improved over the years, they still don’t typically provide many supports for students—or teachers, for that matter—for writing. Teachers often have to supplement with additions that don’t always mesh well with their core, grade-level content instruction.

“We have a lot of activities in writing we know are good,” Shanahan said. “We don’t really have a yearlong elementary-school-level curriculum in writing. That just doesn’t exist the way it does in reading.”

Nevertheless, practitioners like Blevins work writing into every reading lesson, even in the earliest grades. And all the components that make up a solid reading program can be enhanced through writing activities.

4 Key Things to Know About How Reading and Writing Interlock

Want a quick summary of what research tells us about the instructional connections between reading and writing?

1. Reading and writing are intimately connected.

Research on the connections began in the early 1980s and has grown more robust with time.

Among the newest and most important additions are three research syntheses conducted by Steve Graham, a professor at the University of Arizona, and his research partners. One of them examined whether writing instruction also led to improvements in students’ reading ability; a second examined the inverse question. Both found significant positive effects for reading and writing.

A third meta-analysis gets one step closer to classroom instruction. Graham and partners examined 47 studies of instructional programs that balanced both reading and writing—no program could feature more than 60 percent of one or the other. The results showed generally positive effects on both reading and writing measures.

2. Writing matters even at the earliest grades, when students are learning to read.

Studies show that the prewriting students do in early education carries meaningful signals about their decoding, spelling, and reading comprehension later on. Reading experts say that students should be supported in writing almost as soon as they begin reading, and evidence suggests that both spelling and handwriting are connected to the ability to connect speech to print and to oral language development.

3. Like reading, writing must be taught explicitly.

Writing is a complex task that demands much of students’ cognitive resources. Researchers generally agree that writing must be explicitly taught—rather than left up to students to “figure out” the rules on their own.

There isn’t as much research about how precisely to do this. One 2019 review, in fact, found significant overlap among the dozen writing programs studied, and concluded that all showed signs of boosting learning. Debates abound about the amount of structure students need and in what sequence, such as whether they need to master sentence construction before moving onto paragraphs and lengthier texts.

But in general, students should be guided on how to construct sentences and paragraphs, and they should have access to models and exemplars, the research suggests. They also need to understand the iterative nature of writing, including how to draft and revise.

A number of different writing frameworks incorporating various degrees of structure and modeling are available, though most of them have not been studied empirically.

4. Writing can help students learn content—and make sense of it.

Much of reading comprehension depends on helping students absorb “world knowledge”—think arts, ancient cultures, literature, and science—so that they can make sense of increasingly sophisticated texts and ideas as their reading improves. Writing can enhance students’ content learning, too, and should be emphasized rather than taking a back seat to the more commonly taught stories and personal reflections.

Graham and colleagues conducted another meta-analysis of nearly 60 studies looking at this idea of “writing to learn” in mathematics, science, and social studies. The studies included a mix of higher-order assignments, like analyses and argumentative writing, and lower-level ones, like summarizing and explaining. The study found that across all three disciplines, writing about the content improved student learning.

If students are doing work on phonemic awareness—the ability to recognize sounds—they shouldn’t merely manipulate sounds orally; they can put them on the page using letters. If students are learning how to decode, they can also encode—record written letters and words while they say the sounds out loud.

And students can write as they begin learning about language structure. When Blevins’ students are mainly working with decodable texts with controlled vocabularies, writing can support their knowledge about how texts and narratives work: how sentences are put together and how they can be pulled apart and reconstructed. Teachers can prompt them in these tasks, asking them to rephrase a sentence as a question, split up two sentences, or combine them.

“Young kids are writing these mile-long sentences that become second nature. We set a higher bar, and they are fully capable of doing it. We can demystify a bit some of that complex text if we develop early on how to talk about sentences—how they’re created, how they’re joined,” Blevins said. “There are all these things you can do that are helpful to develop an understanding of how sentences work and to get lots of practice.”

As students progress through the elementary grades, this structured work grows more sophisticated. They need to be taught both sentence and paragraph structure , and they need to learn how different writing purposes and genres—narrative, persuasive, analytical—demand different approaches. Most of all, the research indicates, students need opportunities to write at length often.

Using writing to support students’ exploration of content

Reading is far more than foundational skills, of course. It means introducing students to rich content and the specialized vocabulary in each discipline and then ensuring that they read, discuss, analyze, and write about those ideas. The work to systematically build students’ knowledge begins in the early grades and progresses throughout their K-12 experience.

Here again, available evidence suggests that writing can be a useful tool to help students explore, deepen, and draw connections in this content. With the proper supports, writing can be a method for students to retell and analyze what they’ve learned in discussions of content and literature throughout the school day —in addition to their creative writing.

This “writing to learn” approach need not wait for students to master foundational skills. In the K-2 grades especially, much content is learned through teacher read-alouds and conversation that include more complex vocabulary and ideas than the texts students are capable of reading. But that should not preclude students from writing about this content, experts say.

“We do a read-aloud or a media piece and we write about what we learned. It’s just a part of how you’re responding, or sharing, what you’ve learned across texts; it’s not a separate thing from reading,” Blevins said. “If I am doing read-alouds on a concept—on animal habitats, for example—my decodable texts will be on animals. And students are able to include some of these more sophisticated ideas and language in their writing, because we’ve elevated the conversations around these texts.”

In this set of stories , Education Week examines the connections between elementary-level reading and writing in three areas— encoding , language and text structure , and content-area learning . But there are so many more examples.

Please write us to share yours when you’ve finished.

Want to read more about the research that informed this story? Here’s a bibliography to start you off.

Berninger V. W., Abbott, R. D., Abbott, S. P., Graham S., & Richards T. (2002). Writing and reading: Connections between language by hand and language by eye. J ournal of Learning Disabilities. Special Issue: The Language of Written Language, 35(1), 39–56 Berninger, Virginia, Robert D. Abbott, Janine Jones, Beverly J. Wolf, Laura Gould, Marci Anderson-Younstrom, Shirley Shimada, Kenn Apel. (2006) “Early development of language by hand: composing, reading, listening, and speaking connections; three letter-writing modes; and fast mapping in spelling.” Developmental Neuropsychology, 29(1), pp. 61-92 Cabell, Sonia Q, Laura S. Tortorelli, and Hope K. Gerde (2013). “How Do I Write…? Scaffolding Preschoolers’ Early Writing Skills.” The Reading Teacher, 66(8), pp. 650-659. Gerde, H.K., Bingham, G.E. & Wasik, B.A. (2012). “Writing in Early Childhood Classrooms: Guidance for Best Practices.” Early Childhood Education Journal 40, 351–359 (2012) Gilbert, Jennifer, and Steve Graham. (2010). “Teaching Writing to Elementary Students in Grades 4–6: A National Survey.” The Elementary School Journal 110(44) Graham, Steve, et al. (2017). “Effectiveness of Literacy Programs Balancing Reading and Writing Instruction: A Meta-Analysis.” Reading Research Quarterly, 53(3) pp. 279–304 Graham, Steve, and Michael Hebert. (2011). “Writing to Read: A Meta-Analysis of the Impact of Writing and Writing Instruction on Reading.” Harvard Educational Review (2011) 81(4): 710–744. Graham, Steve. (2020). “The Sciences of Reading and Writing Must Become More Fully Integrated.” Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1) pp. S35–S44 Graham, Steve, Sharlene A. Kiuhara, and Meade MacKay. (2020).”The Effects of Writing on Learning in Science, Social Studies, and Mathematics: A Meta-Analysis.” Review of Educational Research April 2020, Vol 90, No. 2, pp. 179–226 Shanahan, Timothy. “History of Writing and Reading Connections.” in Shanahan, Timothy. (2016). “Relationships between reading and writing development.” In C. MacArthur, S. Graham, & J. Fitzgerald (Eds.), Handbook of writing research (2nd ed., pp. 194–207). New York, NY: Guilford. Slavin, Robert, Lake, C., Inns, A., Baye, A., Dachet, D., & Haslam, J. (2019). “A quantitative synthesis of research on writing approaches in grades 2 to 12.” London: Education Endowment Foundation. Troia, Gary. (2014). Evidence-based practices for writing instruction (Document No. IC-5). Retrieved from University of Florida, Collaboration for Effective Educator, Development, Accountability, and Reform Center website: http://ceedar.education.ufl.edu/tools/innovation-configuration/ Troia, Gary, and Steve Graham. (2016).“Common Core Writing and Language Standards and Aligned State Assessments: A National Survey of Teacher Beliefs and Attitudes.” Reading and Writing 29(9).

A version of this article appeared in the January 25, 2023 edition of Education Week as How Does Writing Fit Into the ‘Science of Reading’?

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11.1 The Purpose of Research Writing

Learning objectives.

• Identify reasons to research writing projects.
• Outline the steps of the research writing process.

Why was the Great Wall of China built? What have scientists learned about the possibility of life on Mars? What roles did women play in the American Revolution? How does the human brain create, store, and retrieve memories? Who invented the game of football, and how has it changed over the years?

You may know the answers to these questions off the top of your head. If you are like most people, however, you find answers to tough questions like these by searching the Internet, visiting the library, or asking others for information. To put it simply, you perform research.

Whether you are a scientist, an artist, a paralegal, or a parent, you probably perform research in your everyday life. When your boss, your instructor, or a family member asks you a question that you do not know the answer to, you locate relevant information, analyze your findings, and share your results. Locating, analyzing, and sharing information are key steps in the research process, and in this chapter, you will learn more about each step. By developing your research writing skills, you will prepare yourself to answer any question no matter how challenging.

Reasons for Research

When you perform research, you are essentially trying to solve a mystery—you want to know how something works or why something happened. In other words, you want to answer a question that you (and other people) have about the world. This is one of the most basic reasons for performing research.

But the research process does not end when you have solved your mystery. Imagine what would happen if a detective collected enough evidence to solve a criminal case, but she never shared her solution with the authorities. Presenting what you have learned from research can be just as important as performing the research. Research results can be presented in a variety of ways, but one of the most popular—and effective—presentation forms is the research paper . A research paper presents an original thesis, or purpose statement, about a topic and develops that thesis with information gathered from a variety of sources.

If you are curious about the possibility of life on Mars, for example, you might choose to research the topic. What will you do, though, when your research is complete? You will need a way to put your thoughts together in a logical, coherent manner. You may want to use the facts you have learned to create a narrative or to support an argument. And you may want to show the results of your research to your friends, your teachers, or even the editors of magazines and journals. Writing a research paper is an ideal way to organize thoughts, craft narratives or make arguments based on research, and share your newfound knowledge with the world.

Write a paragraph about a time when you used research in your everyday life. Did you look for the cheapest way to travel from Houston to Denver? Did you search for a way to remove gum from the bottom of your shoe? In your paragraph, explain what you wanted to research, how you performed the research, and what you learned as a result.

Research Writing and the Academic Paper

No matter what field of study you are interested in, you will most likely be asked to write a research paper during your academic career. For example, a student in an art history course might write a research paper about an artist’s work. Similarly, a student in a psychology course might write a research paper about current findings in childhood development.

Having to write a research paper may feel intimidating at first. After all, researching and writing a long paper requires a lot of time, effort, and organization. However, writing a research paper can also be a great opportunity to explore a topic that is particularly interesting to you. The research process allows you to gain expertise on a topic of your choice, and the writing process helps you remember what you have learned and understand it on a deeper level.

Research Writing at Work

Knowing how to write a good research paper is a valuable skill that will serve you well throughout your career. Whether you are developing a new product, studying the best way to perform a procedure, or learning about challenges and opportunities in your field of employment, you will use research techniques to guide your exploration. You may even need to create a written report of your findings. And because effective communication is essential to any company, employers seek to hire people who can write clearly and professionally.

Writing at Work

Take a few minutes to think about each of the following careers. How might each of these professionals use researching and research writing skills on the job?

• Medical laboratory technician
• Small business owner
• Information technology professional
• Freelance magazine writer

A medical laboratory technician or information technology professional might do research to learn about the latest technological developments in either of these fields. A small business owner might conduct research to learn about the latest trends in his or her industry. A freelance magazine writer may need to research a given topic to write an informed, up-to-date article.

Think about the job of your dreams. How might you use research writing skills to perform that job? Create a list of ways in which strong researching, organizing, writing, and critical thinking skills could help you succeed at your dream job. How might these skills help you obtain that job?

Steps of the Research Writing Process

How does a research paper grow from a folder of brainstormed notes to a polished final draft? No two projects are identical, but most projects follow a series of six basic steps.

These are the steps in the research writing process:

• Choose a topic.
• Plan and schedule time to research and write.
• Conduct research.
• Organize research and ideas.
• Draft your paper.
• Revise and edit your paper.

Each of these steps will be discussed in more detail later in this chapter. For now, though, we will take a brief look at what each step involves.

Step 1: Choosing a Topic

As you may recall from Chapter 8 “The Writing Process: How Do I Begin?” , to narrow the focus of your topic, you may try freewriting exercises, such as brainstorming. You may also need to ask a specific research question —a broad, open-ended question that will guide your research—as well as propose a possible answer, or a working thesis . You may use your research question and your working thesis to create a research proposal . In a research proposal, you present your main research question, any related subquestions you plan to explore, and your working thesis.

Step 2: Planning and Scheduling

Before you start researching your topic, take time to plan your researching and writing schedule. Research projects can take days, weeks, or even months to complete. Creating a schedule is a good way to ensure that you do not end up being overwhelmed by all the work you have to do as the deadline approaches.

During this step of the process, it is also a good idea to plan the resources and organizational tools you will use to keep yourself on track throughout the project. Flowcharts, calendars, and checklists can all help you stick to your schedule. See Chapter 11 “Writing from Research: What Will I Learn?” , Section 11.2 “Steps in Developing a Research Proposal” for an example of a research schedule.

Step 3: Conducting Research

When going about your research, you will likely use a variety of sources—anything from books and periodicals to video presentations and in-person interviews.

Your sources will include both primary sources and secondary sources . Primary sources provide firsthand information or raw data. For example, surveys, in-person interviews, and historical documents are primary sources. Secondary sources, such as biographies, literary reviews, or magazine articles, include some analysis or interpretation of the information presented. As you conduct research, you will take detailed, careful notes about your discoveries. You will also evaluate the reliability of each source you find.

Step 4: Organizing Research and the Writer’s Ideas

When your research is complete, you will organize your findings and decide which sources to cite in your paper. You will also have an opportunity to evaluate the evidence you have collected and determine whether it supports your thesis, or the focus of your paper. You may decide to adjust your thesis or conduct additional research to ensure that your thesis is well supported.

Remember, your working thesis is not set in stone. You can and should change your working thesis throughout the research writing process if the evidence you find does not support your original thesis. Never try to force evidence to fit your argument. For example, your working thesis is “Mars cannot support life-forms.” Yet, a week into researching your topic, you find an article in the New York Times detailing new findings of bacteria under the Martian surface. Instead of trying to argue that bacteria are not life forms, you might instead alter your thesis to “Mars cannot support complex life-forms.”

Step 5: Drafting Your Paper

Now you are ready to combine your research findings with your critical analysis of the results in a rough draft. You will incorporate source materials into your paper and discuss each source thoughtfully in relation to your thesis or purpose statement.

When you cite your reference sources, it is important to pay close attention to standard conventions for citing sources in order to avoid plagiarism , or the practice of using someone else’s words without acknowledging the source. Later in this chapter, you will learn how to incorporate sources in your paper and avoid some of the most common pitfalls of attributing information.

Step 6: Revising and Editing Your Paper

In the final step of the research writing process, you will revise and polish your paper. You might reorganize your paper’s structure or revise for unity and cohesion, ensuring that each element in your paper flows into the next logically and naturally. You will also make sure that your paper uses an appropriate and consistent tone.

Once you feel confident in the strength of your writing, you will edit your paper for proper spelling, grammar, punctuation, mechanics, and formatting. When you complete this final step, you will have transformed a simple idea or question into a thoroughly researched and well-written paper you can be proud of!

Review the steps of the research writing process. Then answer the questions on your own sheet of paper.

• In which steps of the research writing process are you allowed to change your thesis?
• In step 2, which types of information should you include in your project schedule?
• What might happen if you eliminated step 4 from the research writing process?

Key Takeaways

• People undertake research projects throughout their academic and professional careers in order to answer specific questions, share their findings with others, increase their understanding of challenging topics, and strengthen their researching, writing, and analytical skills.
• The research writing process generally comprises six steps: choosing a topic, scheduling and planning time for research and writing, conducting research, organizing research and ideas, drafting a paper, and revising and editing the paper.

Writing for Success Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

201 Literacy Essay Topics & Examples

If you’ve found this article, you probably need good literacy topics to choose from. We’ve got a whole collection of them for high school and college students.

🏆 Best Literacy Topic Ideas & Essay Examples

👍 good literacy essay topics, 📃 interesting literacy research topics, 🔍 good research topics about literacy, ⭐ simple & easy literacy essay titles, ❓ research questions about literacy.

Our IvyPanda team has gathered this list of literacy topics for research papers and essays. Look through them to pick the best one to write about.

• The Importance of Literacy Essay (Critical Writing) Literacy is a skill that is never late to acquire because it is essential for education, employment, belonging to the community, and ability to help one’s children.
• Literacy Definition and Importance Literacy is the process of learning whereby an individual gains the ability to understand and convey written information, gain new skills from the information, teach those skills and apply the acquired knowledge and skills for […]
• The Concept and Importance of Information Literacy In fact, Information Literacy is far much better than these concepts because it stands ahead, gives the ability to think outside the box and not only gives the access to the knowledge but also the […]
• Multi-Literacy, Its Types and Characteristics Thus, students are to be taught not only literacy skills but also the identification of alterations in the patterns of meaning depending on the context. For instance, they are to be aware of the main […]
• Thematic Cross-Curricular Approach Toward Literacy Learning It has been recommended for schools to pay closer attention to the needs of teachers in planning a thematic curriculum and facilitate the establishment of policies that will help support teachers and their students in […]
• Hypodermic Syringe Model and Media Literacy A person’s media competence can be developed starting from an early age, and it is the responsibility of parents and teachers to control media influence on children and teach them to use mass media to […]
• Children’s Literature in Literacy Education The primary aim of the paper is to provide the in-depth analysis regarding the role of the children’s literature in the literacy education.
• Visual Literacy: Definition and Impact Both Dondis and Kennedy agree that visual literacy enhances meaning and understanding of what one sees and the way one lives.
• Defining Literacy Concept The final type of literacy is health literacy that evaluates how well one can comprehend and use health-related information to make health-related decisions.
• Retelling as a Literacy Assessment Retelling is the effective tool to assess the students’ comprehension of the text while reading with references to understanding the order of events and key points of the story.
• The Connection between Literacy, Education and New media This relationship is viewed to continue growing stronger as more educational institutions incorporate the use of new media in the literacy development and educational practices.
• The NP Core Competency of Technology and Information Literacy I advised him to consult a physician, and my use of EHRs appeared to be helpful because it allowed the physician to access patient data easily and confirm the diagnosis of hypertension.
• How Information Literacy Affects Nursing Informatics in the 21st Century With the discovery of technology and the availability of applications that supports healthcare, there has been a positive shift in information literacy. In conclusion, nursing informatics has been one of the best ways of supporting […]
• Literacy Skills Development in Children In this essay, the focus will be to discuss the most appropriate approach for a teacher to facilitate the learning of literacy skills among children.
• Education Theories: Why Literacy Matters? By definition, literacy is “the ability and the willingness to use reading and writing to construct meaning from the printed text”. Literacy makes a positive contribution to the economic prosperity of an individual and promotes […]
• Children’s Literature for Literacy Children literature deserves lots of attention; it provides the reader with an opportunity to investigate the worlds of different people, analyze oneself, and comprehend each piece of information because of such features as a friendly […]
• Literacy Development in Personal Experience The author encouraged me to use writing as a medium to express ideas and knowledge in a way that I would want it to be presented to me. A significant step towards the improvement of […]
• Literacy Through iPads in Early Education In the article, Beschorner and Hutchison, note that in the 21st century, children gain access to written language very early due to the use of digital devices.
• Promoting Literacy to Students: The Challenges and the Solutions Thus, basing the research on the theory of phonetic awareness, one can presume that the roots of low literacy rates are going to be found and that the most efficient means of improving literacy rates […]
• Financial Literacy: The Importance in the Modern World Hence, it is necessary to learn the fundamentals of financial literacy from a young age in order to have a carefree retirement, emergency funds, and protection against inflation.
• The What’s Hot in Literacy Survey Results As a future teacher, I would like to express solidarity with the report’s authors and the topics they covered, especially considering that not all children have at least a primary education to develop literacy. This […]
• Shared Reading as a Literacy Strategy Reading strategy involves determining mental actions that learners take when they are reading to assist them to build and maintain the meaning of what they would be reading.
• Informal Reading Inventory as Literacy Assessment To assess the student’s ability to recognize words and determine the reading level, it is necessary to use graded word lists and graded text passages to conduct the informal reading inventory.
• Literacy and Numeracy in the Geography Subject Area In the given sample, the student, Pat, demonstrates the basic understanding of the topic, and her skills seem to be poor. The presented sequence of lessons is designed to improve students’ numeracy and literacy skills […]
• Role of Teachers in Literacy Education The current essay shows why a qualified teacher is critical in literacy programs and examines three factors that can improve student outcomes. There is a large variety of approaches, techniques, and strategies that can improve […]
• The Literacy Night Activity Observation It is important to note that literacy is not limited only to reading and writing because there are key elements of being able to share ideas as well.
• Health Literacy in Hemodialysis Patients Namely, the guide written by the US Department of Health and Human Services focuses on the online aspect of distributing valuable information to the population groups.
• Media Literacy and Critical Thinking Skills Media literacy implies an understanding by the audience of the basic principles of the work of the media, including the search for the necessary information, understanding the principles of the formation of messages by different […]
• Media Literacy Amongst Children To equip children and the young generation with relevant knowledge and provide them with the necessary tools to understand the present media landscape and be critical informers.
• Important Moment in Literacy Development Journey My inability to understand became sore when my parents and teachers determined that I needed to remain in the second grade to improve my comprehension skills.
• Health Literacy in the Modern Digital Age Although the dynamic of doctor-patient interaction changed due to the abundance of online resources, its downside may be the spread of false and scientifically unsupported information, resulting in damage to people’s health.
• Health Literacy: Using Patient Portals Aside from needs assessments, I would create teaching materials to provide the staff with ideas on how to offer accommodations for low- and medium-literacy portal users.
• Importance of Health Literacy for Human Health Thus, the paper addresses the lack of attention to the public sector and the absence of innovative approaches in the administration of the policies.
• Development of Emergent Literacy in Young ESL Learners In the context of the present-day settings, when communication with strangers is reduced to a minimum due to the threat of the COVID-19, the introduction of digital tools needs to be tested as the method […]
• Culturally Sensitive Nurses Teaching Health Literacy When patients from different cultures have a problem understanding healthcare practices, nurses have a role in explaining to them the diagnosis and treatment in a way that acknowledges their cultural needs.
• Technological Literacy and Technical Fluency Tyler argues that technological literacy is the ability to use technology, while fluency in technology is a deep understanding of it and the future it brings to society.
• Media Literacy Research: Analysis of the Issue In the process of research, I have significantly expanded my ability to access and analyze media messages as well as to use the power of information to communicate and make a difference in the world.
• Implementation of the Health Literacy Programs Health Literacy Online Resource is especially vital because it offers detailed instructions on how to perform the client-oriented digital design of health-related websites. Some of the health literacy terms seem to be obvious, and because […]
• Low Health Literacy in Edison Township The prevalence of these outcomes is based on the level of health literacy within a community attributed to the existing social interventions.
• Project Proposal on Budgeting: An Individual’s Economic Literacy Purchasing this device is a long-time dream of mine, as it will allow me to pursue creativity, view media content, and feel more confident in my daily life; in addition, I expect that the iPad […]
• Aspects of Literacy Establishment Alphabet awareness is the ability to identify letters from the alphabet, which is related to writing and understanding letter sounds. Lack of alphabet awareness may prevent the development of writing skills and interfere with understanding […]
• Corporate Media Consolidation: Everyday Media Literacy The third significant issue that arises with media consolidation is the intensification of censorship and the threat to broad media choice.
• “Clive Thompson on the New Literacy” by Clive Thompson Reasoning in the framework of the text, the readers notice a subsequent transition of the argument from “kids today cannot write” and “age of illiteracy” to “literacy revolution” and “write for an audience”.
• Clinical Field Experience: Integrating Creative Arts and Literacy Formative assessment is critical for the identification of the gaps students may have and the material they may have failed to cover properly.
• Health Literacy and Patient Education The Internet’s accessibility made various types of health information available for any person, and many consumers developed a habit to check the online sources for symptoms or primarily help before reaching out to a healthcare […]
• Literacy Bags as a Useful Pedagogical Tool The use of literacy bags addresses family involvement, instilling a love of learning, and controlling homeschooling. The contents of the bag depending on the topic being taught and the teacher’s intentions.
• Family Literacy Night Parents ensure that children develop positive, nurturing relationships with adults and have better opportunities to initiate and engage in conversations.
• Health Literacy: Strategies to Minimize Barriers In the training of a medical worker, the role of studying natural science and clinical disciplines is undeniable, but the ability of employees to master their speech well, their ability to listen and hear, and […]
• Media Violence and Importance of Media Literacy Media literacy is the public’s ability to access, decode, evaluate and transmit a message from media. Improved media literacy and education will enable the responsible consumption of information.
• Strategies for Teaching Literacy in a Secondary Classroom: Annotated Bibliography Beforehand, the authors discuss potential obstacles, including disabilities, a cycle of failure, and the absence of motivation, and provide a socio-linguistic background to the literacy acquisition process.
• Meeting Small Group’s Literacy Needs One peculiarity of this approach to lesson organization is that it offers minimal opportunities for the differentiation of instruction, and it is reasonable to give preference to this approach when introducing concepts that are totally […]
• Emergent Literacy: How to Make Your Child’s Life Easier? While in the womb, the fetus remembers the rhythm of language, hears the first sounds, and tries to interpret them. The key to this approach is the recognition that the language is not discrete, which […]
• Phonological and Phonemic Awareness and Literacy Development Simultaneously, phonemic awareness is a more advanced understanding of language, the next level of phonological awareness, when a person can identify and manage the smallest units of speech, the phoneme.
• Information Literacy and Power in Business The information is complete when all the data and associated context relevant for the problem is available. Information is crucial in determining business/organization success, success factors are determined from the data and context.
• Models of Information Literacy for Business Report Finally by the end of the lesson the learner should be able to obtain new knowledge in the use of literacy information.
• Enhancing Health Literacy for People With Type 2 Diabetes Two professionals, Andrew Long, a professor in the school of heath care in the University of Leeds, and Tina Gambling, senior lecturer in the school of health care studies from the University of Cardiff, conducted […]
• The Importance of Health Literacy In essence, health literacy is very important to all stakeholders in health care settings. Health literacy is one of the most common issues in healthcare settings.
• Assessing Health Literacy in Patients Health literacy is critical since, at any time in the patient’s life, they must discover, comprehend, and use health services and information.
• Health Literacy: Does It Make a Difference? The article investigates how health literacy contributes to the general development of the nursing practice. The article continues by outlining how health literacy is of benefit to healthcare.
• Literacy Demands in the Australian English Syllabus The curriculum also requires learners to “explore the difference in the use of English both at home and school, depending on the relationship between the speakers”.
• Story of Media Literacy Overview Consequently, it is imperative for students and people, in general, to consume media content objectively and to analyze the message portrayed in the news.
• Thinking, Learning, and Literacy in the Internet Age However, one can present a counterargument to the given statement by claiming that it is not reading that is negatively affected by the web, but rather the style or format of the activity.
• Archetypes in Lyrics: Finding Literacy in Song This turn of the story is unexpected because the text of the first two verses is cheerful, and the motive and melody of the composition have a fast and joyful mood.
• Health Literacy and Access to Healthcare Services: Problems, Interventions, and Suggestions for Improvements Unfortunately, due to the emergence of new health threats and the lack of accessibility to healthcare, as well as the absence of basic health literacy in an upsettingly large number of the U.S.population, changes have […]
• Effects of Information Literacy on Scholarship, Practice and Leadership in Teaching Profession The first and the most obvious negative aspect of the introduction of information literacy into the field of SPL in the sphere of teaching profession is the abundance of sources and the search for the […]
• Emergent Literacy Skills in Children With Hearing Loss The research is stated to “learn more about the early development of literacy skills by examining changes over a typical school year for small children with hearing losses” specifically within the group of young children, […]
• Beginning Literacy Learner Study It does not amount to too much trouble for now, as he is able to perform the majority of the tasks and pass the majority of the tests with relative success.
• Philosophy of Literacy Instruction And, of course, the literacy educator needs to be critical of his work and seek opportunities for personal improvement Literacy educator needs to understand that reading and writing are social activities and that students should […]
• Literacy Studies: Teaching Writing In the context of second language writing several theories have been established; which are commonly the process theories and the genre theories.
• “Visual Literacy Theory” by Paul Messaris In its turn, this points out at the fallacious essence of Messaris’ idea that spatial intelligence is an objective category: “One of the clearest examples of spatial intelligence is the ability of movies to conjure […]
• Information Literacy in Public Safety Sector Professionals are supposed to be prepared by providing theories inform of public safety scholars and research did to understand them before availing the information to the public.
• Developing Children’s Language and Literacy Skills The culture of the society his family belongs to greatly influences how he imbibes the culture and how he expresses his developing personality.
• American Education System and Cultural Literacy In the recant past, he has become critical of the cognitive revolution and has explored for the construction of cultural psychology that weighs very much the factors like historical and social settings of the contributors.
• Literacy Theories in Action Emergent literacy is the term used to refer to the earliest period of a child’s literacy development, specifically the time between birth and when the child can read and write.
• Reading and Literacy of the Students In order to motivate the students so that they may be engaged for the rest of the day, I begin the class with a general discussion of the latest issue that is making headlines either […]
• “Literacy in Three Metaphors” by Sylvia Scribner The fundamental proposal presented by the author revolves around the thought that the main problem of literacy is the conceptualization and formulation of a proper education plan.
• Early Years Literacy: Analysis and Development The paper consists of three major parts: a description of a literacy event in which I participated, a detailed analysis of all the aspects of the event, implications for teaching, and a conclusion.
• Literacy Learning Across Diverse Contexts: Digestive System All of the four activities described in curriculum planning can be justified on the basis of their connection to the children’s age and experience.
• Literacy and Numeracy Demands Genre is used to describe the elemnts of communication channels or types, usually the types of texts and specific language, which emerged within a specific community.
• Disciplinary Literacy in a Content-Area Classroom The purpose of this paper is to give a detailed overview of the concept of disciplinary literacy and the most appropriate approaches for a content-area classroom.
• “What Is Literacy? The Power of a Definition” by Keefe & Copeland In the first section of the article, the researchers describe some of the conflicting beliefs about the definition of literacy. The article is significant to education and literacy instruction as it shows the need for […]
• Pandemic Flu: Health Literacy The higher the readability score, the easier it is to percept the ideas reflected in the text. The higher this score, the better the understanding of a document by the reader is.
• Literacy Development in Five Stages The question that children tend to ask during the stage of awareness and exploration are the main signifiers of the literacy development process being launched.
• Emerging Literacy and Assessment in Education Finally, the application of assessments in early education will inform a teacher about the gaps in a student’s knowledge system and the strategies that can be used to fill these gaps.
• Emerging Literacy Class: Expectations and Objectives Therefore, learning how to locate emerging literacy and use it to prompt the evolution of one’s language skills is central to the successful development of an individual.
• Digital Literacy: Gender and Socio-Economic Aspects Thereby, digital literacy is defined by the opportunity to access information technology and Internet resources, based on the culture, economic, and social development of a country.
• Political Media Literacy Program The focus on social media is especially crucial as these platforms do not have many rules and tools to check the authenticity of the posted information.
• Reading Literacy Development and Instruction In the overviewed classroom, the evaluation of the literacy skills of the students was sustained by offering the learners to complete a multi-discipline test, which matches the Common Core State Literacy Standard. The outcomes of […]
• The Literacy Principal: Leading, Supporting and Assessing One of the ways is to pay attention to the rhyming, as the students will be able to find similarities in words and sounds.
• Literacy Environment for Young Learners This paper examines the arrangement of objects in the classroom and the required teaching skills that enhance literacy in young learners.
• Emergent Literacy and Reading Lesson Plans Topic or Unit of Study: Derivations Subject: Word recognition Grade/Level: 3 Grade: 3rd Subject: Language Arts Time: 30 minutes Amount: 10 students C1.
• Digital Literacy Promotion at a Community Event In the course of the event, the attendees will be explained the basics of how the new technology will help learners from Pre-Kindergarten through 12th-grade students in school districts and adult learners at the community […]
• Rebecca’s Literacy Development: Non-Cognitive Aspects As to the non-cognitive aspects of the student’s literacy, the girl loves to read and uses every opportunity for it though is embarrassed to read aloud to the others.
• Digital Literacy and Higher Education in Knowledge Economy Altbach, Reisberg, and Rumbley argue that the “phenomenon of massification ” is what has led to a major revolution in university education.
• Literacy Theory and Practice in Teaching Reading Due to the fact that the English language prevails in the sphere of international business and technology, it is important for students to have a sufficient command of language.
• Literacy for the 21st Century: A Balanced Approach The authors describe the lesson developed by Mrs Firpo, who illustrates a set of techniques that can help children see the connection between graphemes and sounds. I think that the methods and ideas of Mrs […]
• Literacy Challenges at the Postsecondary Level In this view, the article asserts that student learning is less effective when classes are large and the material taught is new to the learners. The feelings of anonymity and lack of self-directed learning on […]
• Literacy Standards and Reading Instruction Theory Besides the development of efficient teaching strategies, the recent programs are also oriented on the supporting students and ensuring them with effective reading activities.
• Active Literacy Across the Curriculum In addition, the author also expressed the idea about the importance of the literacy mapping a process that would help educational authorities to keep track of the consistency with which literacy is taught in schools, […]
• Individual Literacy Narrative The purpose of this narrative is to describe how I have managed to develop this kind of literacy. The most outstanding observation is that various events and experiences have made it easier for me to […]
• Records of Literacy in Qin and Early Han Dynasties The main aim of the text is, according to the author, to review the records of literacy among the lower orders during the Qin and early Han dynasties.
• Computer Literacy: Parents and Guardians Role Filtering and monitoring content on the internet is one of the most important roles that parents in the contemporary world should play, and it reveals that parents care about their children.
• Instructional Practices for Emergent Literacy Learners On the level of listening and speaking, the emergent literacy learner should be able to use language to express opinions related to the discussed topic, follow the directions given by the teacher when it comes […]
• School Literacy Environment for Younger Students For Birth to Pre-K group, the classroom environment will be organized to engage students in physical, emotional, and cognitive activities. In K to Grade 3, the students will be driven towards reading fluency and reading […]
• “Charlotte’s Web” by White for Literacy Development The task of a teacher is to keep the learners interested and motivated. On the whole, literacy and language development is a complicated process.
• Literacy Strategies in a Social Studies Classroom It may help to put the text in a broader context and help relate the students’ knowledge about the author to the ideas given in the text.
• Effective Literacy Teaching in Multicultural Class The purpose of the proposed research is to explore, examine and analyze the issues and challenges that embed teacher education in the US, paying attention to the obstacles that limit the implementation of effective literacy […]
• Indian Women’s Technology Access and Literacy Nevertheless, the gender divide in technological access is substantially lower in the developed countries. Leggon stated, “the divide is more than as issue of access to technology; it is also an issue of use and […]
• “See World” Thematic Unit: Literacy, Math, Science The thematic unit, which targets the development of reading literacy, focuses on repetition as the prerequisite for the development of correct pronunciation.
• Literacy and Numeracy Across the Curriculum Overall, it is clear that both literacy and numeracy can help societies all over the world to achieve a better future in the 21st century.
• Critical Literacy in Lambert’s Bellies Bear a Burden The text is accompanied by several images, most of which are included to illustrate the dynamics of change in women’s body measurements over the years, as well as a photograph of an obese woman to […]
• Literacy Education and the Workforce This has made organizations set aside a good fraction of their revenue to improve the literacy level of their employees to make them more productive.
• Literacy Coaching Cycle in Learning In an effective literacy coaching, literacy coach should make strategic class visits to access the level of delivery that teachers are attaining.
• Multicultural Literacy: Patricia Polacco and Roald Dahl As the authors explain, it was during her life in this farm that she heard amazing stories about her roots and the time line of her peoples.
• Reading and Literacy: Teacher Education Program It is vital to understand that a teacher’s role is not only sharing knowledge with his or her students but also shaping their worldview and making them ready for life in an economically, culturally, and […]
• Population Literacy Skills in Arab Countries For the tables and the analysis, I chose the two years that were closer together, 2005 and 2009. First of all, after 2005 the internet actively started to win its popularity all around the world […]
• Literacy of Population in Arab Countries That is why this phenomenon can be taken as the main evidence of the problem of poverty peculiar for the majority of these states.
• Early Cochlear Implantation’s Impact on Literacy That way, the design suitable for this research is qualitative and narrative since the focus is the impressions of the quality of life and learning after the implantation.
• IT and Its Effect on Workplace Literacy In the last three decades, information technology in the form of information systems has revolutionized the business approach across the globe.
• Environmental Education and Literacy Program Although scholars and environmental experts are in agreement that environmental education plays a key role in assisting young people in comprehending the nature and complexity of environmental challenges and in developing their capacity to take […]
• Young Child’s Language and Literacy Development In addition, a work of literature on any social issue may influence how children respond to the demands of their learning environments. Taken together, the growing importance of literature in learning and children’s linguistic development […]
• Classroom Literacy: Interactions and Learning Approaches Vocabulary skills are important for improving literacy as well as the overall growth of the student in the classroom and outside classroom environment.
• Visual Literacy and Its Significance The definition of visual literacy provided in the book, in its turn, can be viewed as less restricting in terms of the perception of images by the representatives of different cultures. The use of visual […]
• Instruction and Literacy Development Methods To enhance the students’ learning activities and development of their literacy skills, it is possible to use such computer technologies as the computer software and electronic books at all the stages of learning because different […]
• Ocean Literacy and Exploration From the onset of “human-ocean interaction and exploration in the fifteenth century” and despite ocean being the largest feature of the earth, only 5% of the ocean is known.
• Balanced Literacy Institute and Teacher Cadre Another important and beneficial point of the training is that the material is selected with a unique understanding of the needs of students and teachers.
• Diverse Classrooms and Literacy The recruitment of a significant proportion of literacy teachers from various ethnic backgrounds is necessary to effectively address issues on language understanding and fluency in reading.
• Technological Literacy Unit Plan Housing is a social issue that is always contained in the economic blueprints of different countries, however, the cost of buying a house is high and people who get locked out of the financing avenues […]
• English Literacy Lessons for Australian Students. When Theory Meets Practice Once a teacher introduces the concept of metacognition to the students, it will be easier to help the students link reading and writing: “Adding components of metacognition supports students in learning how to summarize and […]
• How Effective Teachers Support the Youngest Children’s Literacy Development? The effective teachers should be aware of the most common issues the youngest learners may face and understand the methods to address the issues.
• Balanced Literacy Program Introduction is as important, perhaps, even more to the flow of the class and positive atmosphere between the teacher and students.
• Factors that Influence Literacy Acquisition and Reading Achievement Finally, the paper will highlight some contrary arguments that tend to downplay the role of parents in children’s learning at home and at school.
• Expert Literacy Teachers: What Has Been Learned One of the key insights that I have gained in the process of learning about the role of the RTI in shaping the responsibilities and strategies of an expert literacy teacher concerns the fact that […]
• Conducting an Assessment: Students’ Progress in Mastering Literacy: What Needs to Be Improved Helping students acquire the basic literacy skills is one of the key tasks of a teacher, and the reading skills are at the top of the teacher’s priority list.
• Strategies to Support Balanced Literacy After the learners finish reading the story, the teacher should ask them to narrate their feelings and thoughts about the experience.
• Literacy Instruction for African American Students The research results state that the process of literacy instruction is hindered to an impressive degree by the misunderstandings between teachers and students due to the language issues.
• Problems of Reading and Literacy The article covers the how, what and when of the visual essays, experiences and how to teach them to improve reading and literacy. It is with no doubt that problems of reading and literacy are […]
• Early Literacy Development The literacy development is a concept related to acquisition of reading and writing skills. The problem of literacy development in preschool-aged children requires a specific approach to be taken and applied.
• Literacy Linguistic Usage Finally, it is vital to apply the findings on the relationships between language and identity in the practical sphere of learning and teaching languages.
• Issues of Children Literacy The best way to make parents and guardians aware of the importance of child literacy is to communicate to them the results of researches that have studied the relationship between early childhood literacy levels and […]
• Balanced Literacy Overview The book written by Margaret Haddix and entitled Dexter the Tough is concerned with quite a difficult period in the life of Dexter, the protagonist of the book.
• An Early Literacy Intervention The major implication of the study was that effective intervention programs have the capacity to close the gaps in early educational literacy.
• How Are Literacy, Fluency and Reading Comprehension Affected by Using Oral Reading Methods in the Classroom? Rasinski states that one of the most effective ways to assess a learner’s reading ability is for the instructor to listen to the learner reading.
• NELP Report: Impact of Shared-Reading Interventions on Young Children’s Literacy Skills In particular, the authors focus on the analysis of randomized control trial and quasiexperimental design with reference to the evaluation of the efficiency of the interventions with the results.
• Comprehensive Literacy Model The attention of students should be focused on the common roots of the vocabulary in use such as the suffixes and the prefixes.
• Literacy of women in Europe and Middle East Women’s leadership and women in the telecommunication businesses are some of the points that need to be put into consideration and women’s contribution to the economic opportunities that may affect each and every one of […]
• Financial Literacy: How Do Ordinary People Cope with Their Financial Tasks? The goal of the project was to examine the levels of financial literacy in ordinary citizens and their implications for financial literacy education.
• Literacy Development in Adults Barton and Hamilton and Purcell-Gates et al judge literacy, based on the ways in which literacy is used in real-life situations; the role of education in the development of literacy; and the importance of real-life […]
• Perspectives of Adult Literacy They argue that literacy is not an outcome of local practices since there are social structures and technology in the global society that affect the acquisition of literacy skills.
• Internet Effect on Education and Students’ Literacy Lots of people prefer real life communication in order to observe the emotions, to follow the reactions, to provide with some support, and, finally, to know for sure whom you are talking to.
• From the First Language Literacy to the Second Language Proficiency The above observation was also apparent in the study by Benseman, Sutton and Lander who explained that, the involvement of the learner in the teaching allows students to increase their use of first language literacy […]
• Literacy: Diagnosing Reading Skills, Reporting Progress & Outcome Data Assessment Tools Progress Diagnostic Outcome Individual or Group Assessment Additional Explanation of Use IRI X X I IRI are used with individual students to assess the progress and diagnose the development of definite reading […]
• New Service to Be Offered: Information Literacy Seminars for New Students In this view, the information literacy targets both librarians and students, as their relationships have a significant impact on the development of information literacy in a learning institution.
• SMS Technology and Its Effect on Literacy The use of SMS behind the screens of the cell phones and computers become a shield against engaging in conversations and this affects one’s ability to verbally communicate with others.
• Technological Access, Literacy and Fluency However, not all members of the community surrounding the University are technologically literate. To improve access to digital technology in Michigan Technological University and the surrounding areas, various measures should be put in place.
• Article Reflection about Literacy Reflecting on these four articles; ‘There is reading…and then there’s reading,’ ‘Taking literacy skills home,’ ‘The importance of the act of reading,’ and ‘the new literacy studies’ I cannot help but appreciate and celebrate the […]
• Violence and Adult Literacy Opportunities Literacy has significant implications for reducing violence against women, and this paper explores the reasons behind and solutions to continued illiteracy in adult women. The reasons behind the failure of literacy to reduce violence and […]
• Literacy Poses in Paulo Freire’s Philosophy The golden middle in adult literacy education is in being able to transform the theories and rules of language into the forms and meanings that are understandable to learners.
• Reading Commentary About Literacy Articles: What Does Literacy Mean? This paper tries to explain the reasons of low literacy in Canada and offers recommendations to improve the quality of workplace performance in the country.
• Literacy Coaching in Modern Education The standard is also utilized by these individuals in assessment of the candidates and effectiveness’s of the program. The NCATE utilizes a criterion which is based on this standard in making decisions related to accreditation […]
• Modern theories about literacy The articles of Darville, Atwood and Hamilton provide the practical and theoretical evidence to support the efficiency of these new approaches to literacy; due to the accounts given by authors, one can estimate the true […]
• My Struggle for Literacy in America The main purpose of this presentation is to convince the audience that literacy is one of the skills that a person can and should develop.
• The Cornerstones to Early Literacy Displacement is the idea that language can be used to communicate on things not in the immediate environment. One unique feature of language is that children, growing up, can easily learn how to communicate in […]
• Marketing of New Services – Set up Information Literacy Talks for Mature An effort is made to discuss the potential customer base for these services and to evaluate strategies to create and manage relationships with all potential customers for the proposed services and communicating the service to […]
• Literacy Practices Inventory and With the advent of technology and the Internet, the concept of a community becomes effective irrespective of the members’ physical locations because they are not limited by the mode of communication or transportation.
• Culture, Literacy, and Learning: Taking Bloom in the Midst of the Whirlwind by Carol D. Lee She describes the way students respond to improved scheme and the way teachers modify the cultural background of the language or English arts program.
• Creating a Theory of Cultural Literacy It is uniformly, if not more, essential to be capable of communicating using the general idioms and references of the culture which people of that culture practice. It is thus essential that culture literacy is […]
• Literacy in Young Children In this context, literacy is considered the possession of the ability to read and write. Lastly, the social angle shows that in most societies where there’s a modicum of literacy, young children embrace the education […]
• “Perspectives on Language and Literacy in Latino Families and Communities” by Ana Celia Zentella The review focuses on the socialization involved in the acquisition of the two languages. Parents are actively involved in the development of language and education.
• Reading and Literacy Statistics In order to examine the historical development of reading, it is necessary to refer to the analysis and definition of spoken language and human communication and consider reading a necessity to sharing and retaining information.
• Why Can Financial Advice Not Substitute for Financial Literacy?
• Does Financial Literacy Improve Financial Inclusion?
• How Does Economic Education Impact Economic Literacy?
• Why Do English Learners Struggle With Content Literacy?
• Why Has the Literacy Level in the United States Fallen in the Last Century?
• What Are the Politics of Literacy?
• Can Autocracy Promote Literacy?
• Does Education After Essential Literacy Matter in Terms of Our Jobs?
• Can Basic Maternal Literacy Skills Improve Infant Health Outcomes?
• How Would You Contribute to the Planning of Literacy Skills?
• Does Technology Affect Our Society Literacy Levels?
• Why Is the Need for Financial Literacy Comprehension Still Not Being Add?
• Can Financial Literacy Reduce Anxiety About Life in Old Age?
• What Determines Financial Literacy in Japan?
• Does Financial Education Impact Financial Literacy and Financial Behavior?
• Are Literacy Skills Associated With Young Adults’ Health in Africa?
• Is Social Media Helping Students Write Better?
• Are Temporal and Tonal Musical Skills Related to Phonological Awareness and Literacy Skills?
• How Does Health Literacy Affect Today’s World?
• Literacy, Children, and Community: What Are the Solutions?
• How Teachers Use Content Literacy?
• What Are Adolescents’ Perceptions of Health Literacy?
• What Explains the Gender Gap in Financial Literacy?
• How Does Texting Affect Literacy in Teenagers?
• Can Academic Standards Boost Literacy?
• Does Accelerated Reader Affect the Literacy of Students?
• How Literacy Shapes Technology?
• How Ordinary Consumers Make Complex Economic Decisions?
• What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy?
• How Does Social Background Affect the Acquisition of Language and Literacy?
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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Research & the Writing Process

Ch1 what is research

Stephanie Ojeda Ponce

What is Research Writing?

Research writing is a form of writing that provides information about a subject.  Research is searching, gathering, and considering information about something. This broad term can include Googling something or reading and evaluating specialized information and data.  The goals of research writing vary on the situation and the type of writing.

In the “Writing Cases” section of their website, Evergreen College’s Native Cases project explains the type of case studies they publish:

“The term “case studies” varies widely. Legal cases, for example, differ considerably from our definition of teaching cases. We define a teaching case as a “significant story of a real, often unresolved, issue that can trigger curiosity, debate and further research. “Effective cases involve controversy, conflicts or puzzling situations with enough tension to invite discussion and problem solving. Some of the different types of teaching cases in our collection are summarized below.”

In many student research writing situations, contributing to an unresolved issue or something about which there is ongoing discussion is seen as valuable.

Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) describes Argument and Analytic research paper’s in their digital writing lab. The word paper is used to mean the same thing as essay (since they used to have to be physically done on paper!).

Some Common Types of Research:

• Academic Research: Research created by and for universities and colleges.
• Lab Research: Investigation or experimentation conducted in a laboratory. For example, chemists could research the interaction of different chemical compounds for medical use.
• Field Research: Investigation or experimentation conducted out in the world. For example, Noble Prize Winner Wangari Maathai did field research about planting trees to improve soil and water quality. The project grew and came to be known the Pan African Greenbelt movement.
• Secondary Research: This basically means reading and looking into what other people say about a topic. It involves searching through digital, print, audio, and visual sources online or in person. Much of the secondary research process will be done through college library databases.
• Primary Research: This is doing research on your own using an experiment, study, survey, or other type of research method.
• Archival Research: Searching through print or digital databases for archived documents about events or dialogue. This could involve research such as analyzing digitized newspapers about the 1918 flu pandemic or reviewing first editions of books.

Why is Research Conducted and by Whom?

Some people develop research ideas because they want to solve a problem. Others have ideas and find ways to research them. There are multiple approaches to sensemaking and research can be one of them.

• A company may ask an employee to research a new technology that might be implemented in the workplace.
• An advanced scholar may need to develop and publish research projects to continue to be a competitive applicant for grants or job opportunities.
• A consumer might want to research the algorithm and storage practices of the websites they use to understand the risks they expose themselves to online.
• A student may conduct secondary research to better understand a concept learned in class.

What Research Will I do in this Class?

Research writing classes for college students build on existing reading and writing skills, developing more specialized approaches for people to find and develop information on their own. This type of writing class provides opportunities for more independent development of topic and research methods. For this level of class (first 90 credits/units of college classes), most of the research will be secondary research. This means many of the activities are using the library (in person or online) and other resources to look up and read existing research. This is an important skill because the “higher up” in a field a person goes, the more they are expected to know and have opinions within the subject. You will also have opportunities to do some primary research, think critically about what the “rules” of research are at schools, and come up with meaningful ways of sharing your research. This text will provide a survey, or information about research in a broad way, of research writing with a focus on skills useful for writing in other college classes at various levels. Within the coursework, there will also be opportunities for students to do conduct and practice a variety of research methods for their own individualized goals.

Research writing involves multiple steps, and requires becoming conversant in a topic. This is not a skill that can be demonstrated with one finished piece or writing or a test. Research writing involves multiple steps that are collaborative – the steps involve other people and resources. For example, at many universities, the entire research writing class is taught by a writing teacher and a library teacher together because library research methods are such a large part of the writing process. Even when the class is not co-taught, library research and support are still important components. Another way research is collaborative is peer review. Published articles have to be read, evaluated, critiqued, edited and approved in order to be published. In academia, there is a lot of hidden and open judgment of writing style, content, and even formatting. Publishing writing is a competitive process with very few people getting paid, and a lot of jobs dependent on quantity, amount, and perception of the published writing. I share this as context so you know a little about what shapes this subject matter, influences what ends up published and available for you to read. Having some awareness of this can be helpful to keep in mind.

Succeeding in Writing

Some students are very excited to dig in to research and writing. Some students are scared of the research part, and others are scared by the writing part.

• There are many different  genres (types) of writing with different patterns and rules common depending on the type. Instead of following general writing rules, notice the features of each specific type of writing.
• Writing classes build the steps into the assignments with short writing assignments, bibliography requirements, drafts, peer review and much more.
• Collaboration with the instructor, research librarians, classmates/other writers, and writing tutors are essential to success.
• A lot of work goes into producing a little bit of writing. The work involves a lot of reading, note taking, and thinking. Don’t forget to do a lot of thinking about the information and ideas as part of the writing class.
• Writing, including research writing, is a long-term multi-step process. Small steps will lead us to the big steps and the whole finished product. Sometimes, steps need to be revisited.

The Writing Process

The most common way people approach writing is – just do it. Some people have a lot of anxiety and fear they move through on their way to just doing the writing, but few people actually go through the steps of the writing process. This works okay for short everyday writing needs like a text message. When the writing task is longer, more-complex, or related to some important evaluation, following the steps of the writing process is more important. The assignments for the majority of college writing classes are steps of the writing process. You write and get input at multiple steps. For example, student and professional researchers write proposals that have a basic thesis and capture some of the early research in order to get input or approval before moving forward with more in-depth work.

Capture Your Own Writing Process

What is your personal process when you have to write something that requires thought? You might be responding to a boss’ email, writing an application, or responding to the text of a romantic interest. Either way, there are some individual steps you take that help you with your writing process.

• Think about the type of writing you will do for this class. You’ll do short writing that communicates your ideas or ideas & evidence related to the topic. You’ll move through multiple short reading, research, and writing tasks to produce a long research essay. The typical writing process steps are the main content of the class.
• Think about the way you typically write. Are there responsibilities you need to deal with? Do you need to put earplugs in because it’s noisy where you’ll be doing work? Do you put your favorite earbuds in and put on a favorite playlist because noise helps you concentrate? How are you sitting? What beverages do you need?
• Draw or write a Doing my Best Writing Process. Instead of capturing the steps for the quarter, capture the steps you would take to do your best research and writing for the activities and assignments in this class.

Example: Stephanie’s Best Writing Process

Research & the Writing Process Copyright © 2023 by Stephanie Ojeda Ponce is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, 113 great research paper topics.

General Education

One of the hardest parts of writing a research paper can be just finding a good topic to write about. Fortunately we've done the hard work for you and have compiled a list of 113 interesting research paper topics. They've been organized into ten categories and cover a wide range of subjects so you can easily find the best topic for you.

In addition to the list of good research topics, we've included advice on what makes a good research paper topic and how you can use your topic to start writing a great paper.

What Makes a Good Research Paper Topic?

Not all research paper topics are created equal, and you want to make sure you choose a great topic before you start writing. Below are the three most important factors to consider to make sure you choose the best research paper topics.

#1: It's Something You're Interested In

A paper is always easier to write if you're interested in the topic, and you'll be more motivated to do in-depth research and write a paper that really covers the entire subject. Even if a certain research paper topic is getting a lot of buzz right now or other people seem interested in writing about it, don't feel tempted to make it your topic unless you genuinely have some sort of interest in it as well.

#2: There's Enough Information to Write a Paper

Even if you come up with the absolute best research paper topic and you're so excited to write about it, you won't be able to produce a good paper if there isn't enough research about the topic. This can happen for very specific or specialized topics, as well as topics that are too new to have enough research done on them at the moment. Easy research paper topics will always be topics with enough information to write a full-length paper.

Trying to write a research paper on a topic that doesn't have much research on it is incredibly hard, so before you decide on a topic, do a bit of preliminary searching and make sure you'll have all the information you need to write your paper.

#3: It Fits Your Teacher's Guidelines

Don't get so carried away looking at lists of research paper topics that you forget any requirements or restrictions your teacher may have put on research topic ideas. If you're writing a research paper on a health-related topic, deciding to write about the impact of rap on the music scene probably won't be allowed, but there may be some sort of leeway. For example, if you're really interested in current events but your teacher wants you to write a research paper on a history topic, you may be able to choose a topic that fits both categories, like exploring the relationship between the US and North Korea. No matter what, always get your research paper topic approved by your teacher first before you begin writing.

113 Good Research Paper Topics

Below are 113 good research topics to help you get you started on your paper. We've organized them into ten categories to make it easier to find the type of research paper topics you're looking for.

Arts/Culture

• Discuss the main differences in art from the Italian Renaissance and the Northern Renaissance .
• Analyze the impact a famous artist had on the world.
• How is sexism portrayed in different types of media (music, film, video games, etc.)? Has the amount/type of sexism changed over the years?
• How has the music of slaves brought over from Africa shaped modern American music?
• How has rap music evolved in the past decade?
• How has the portrayal of minorities in the media changed?

Current Events

• What have been the impacts of China's one child policy?
• How have the goals of feminists changed over the decades?
• How has the Trump presidency changed international relations?
• Analyze the history of the relationship between the United States and North Korea.
• What factors contributed to the current decline in the rate of unemployment?
• What have been the impacts of states which have increased their minimum wage?
• How do US immigration laws compare to immigration laws of other countries?
• How have the US's immigration laws changed in the past few years/decades?
• How has the Black Lives Matter movement affected discussions and view about racism in the US?
• What impact has the Affordable Care Act had on healthcare in the US?
• What factors contributed to the UK deciding to leave the EU (Brexit)?
• What factors contributed to China becoming an economic power?
• Discuss the history of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies  (some of which tokenize the S&P 500 Index on the blockchain) .
• Do students in schools that eliminate grades do better in college and their careers?
• Do students from wealthier backgrounds score higher on standardized tests?
• Do students who receive free meals at school get higher grades compared to when they weren't receiving a free meal?
• Do students who attend charter schools score higher on standardized tests than students in public schools?
• Do students learn better in same-sex classrooms?
• How does giving each student access to an iPad or laptop affect their studies?
• What are the benefits and drawbacks of the Montessori Method ?
• Do children who attend preschool do better in school later on?
• What was the impact of the No Child Left Behind act?
• How does the US education system compare to education systems in other countries?
• What impact does mandatory physical education classes have on students' health?
• Which methods are most effective at reducing bullying in schools?
• Do homeschoolers who attend college do as well as students who attended traditional schools?
• Does offering tenure increase or decrease quality of teaching?
• How does college debt affect future life choices of students?
• Should graduate students be able to form unions?

• What are different ways to lower gun-related deaths in the US?
• How and why have divorce rates changed over time?
• Is affirmative action still necessary in education and/or the workplace?
• Should physician-assisted suicide be legal?
• How has stem cell research impacted the medical field?
• How can human trafficking be reduced in the United States/world?
• Should people be able to donate organs in exchange for money?
• Which types of juvenile punishment have proven most effective at preventing future crimes?
• Has the increase in US airport security made passengers safer?
• Analyze the immigration policies of certain countries and how they are similar and different from one another.
• Several states have legalized recreational marijuana. What positive and negative impacts have they experienced as a result?
• Do tariffs increase the number of domestic jobs?
• Which prison reforms have proven most effective?
• Should governments be able to censor certain information on the internet?
• Which methods/programs have been most effective at reducing teen pregnancy?
• What are the benefits and drawbacks of the Keto diet?
• How effective are different exercise regimes for losing weight and maintaining weight loss?
• How do the healthcare plans of various countries differ from each other?
• What are the most effective ways to treat depression ?
• What are the pros and cons of genetically modified foods?
• Which methods are most effective for improving memory?
• What can be done to lower healthcare costs in the US?
• What factors contributed to the current opioid crisis?
• Analyze the history and impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic .
• Are low-carbohydrate or low-fat diets more effective for weight loss?
• How much exercise should the average adult be getting each week?
• Which methods are most effective to get parents to vaccinate their children?
• What are the pros and cons of clean needle programs?
• How does stress affect the body?
• Discuss the history of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
• What were the causes and effects of the Salem Witch Trials?
• Who was responsible for the Iran-Contra situation?
• How has New Orleans and the government's response to natural disasters changed since Hurricane Katrina?
• What events led to the fall of the Roman Empire?
• What were the impacts of British rule in India ?
• Was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki necessary?
• What were the successes and failures of the women's suffrage movement in the United States?
• What were the causes of the Civil War?
• How did Abraham Lincoln's assassination impact the country and reconstruction after the Civil War?
• Which factors contributed to the colonies winning the American Revolution?
• What caused Hitler's rise to power?
• Discuss how a specific invention impacted history.
• What led to Cleopatra's fall as ruler of Egypt?
• How has Japan changed and evolved over the centuries?
• What were the causes of the Rwandan genocide ?

• Why did Martin Luther decide to split with the Catholic Church?
• Analyze the history and impact of a well-known cult (Jonestown, Manson family, etc.)
• How did the sexual abuse scandal impact how people view the Catholic Church?
• How has the Catholic church's power changed over the past decades/centuries?
• What are the causes behind the rise in atheism/ agnosticism in the United States?
• What were the influences in Siddhartha's life resulted in him becoming the Buddha?
• How has media portrayal of Islam/Muslims changed since September 11th?

Science/Environment

• How has the earth's climate changed in the past few decades?
• How has the use and elimination of DDT affected bird populations in the US?
• Analyze how the number and severity of natural disasters have increased in the past few decades.
• Analyze deforestation rates in a certain area or globally over a period of time.
• How have past oil spills changed regulations and cleanup methods?
• How has the Flint water crisis changed water regulation safety?
• What are the pros and cons of fracking?
• What impact has the Paris Climate Agreement had so far?
• What have NASA's biggest successes and failures been?
• How can we improve access to clean water around the world?
• Does ecotourism actually have a positive impact on the environment?
• Should the US rely on nuclear energy more?
• What can be done to save amphibian species currently at risk of extinction?
• What impact has climate change had on coral reefs?
• How are black holes created?
• Are teens who spend more time on social media more likely to suffer anxiety and/or depression?
• How will the loss of net neutrality affect internet users?
• Analyze the history and progress of self-driving vehicles.
• How has the use of drones changed surveillance and warfare methods?
• Has social media made people more or less connected?
• What progress has currently been made with artificial intelligence ?
• Do smartphones increase or decrease workplace productivity?
• What are the most effective ways to use technology in the classroom?
• How is Google search affecting our intelligence?
• When is the best age for a child to begin owning a smartphone?
• Has frequent texting reduced teen literacy rates?

How to Write a Great Research Paper

Even great research paper topics won't give you a great research paper if you don't hone your topic before and during the writing process. Follow these three tips to turn good research paper topics into great papers.

#1: Figure Out Your Thesis Early

Before you start writing a single word of your paper, you first need to know what your thesis will be. Your thesis is a statement that explains what you intend to prove/show in your paper. Every sentence in your research paper will relate back to your thesis, so you don't want to start writing without it!

As some examples, if you're writing a research paper on if students learn better in same-sex classrooms, your thesis might be "Research has shown that elementary-age students in same-sex classrooms score higher on standardized tests and report feeling more comfortable in the classroom."

If you're writing a paper on the causes of the Civil War, your thesis might be "While the dispute between the North and South over slavery is the most well-known cause of the Civil War, other key causes include differences in the economies of the North and South, states' rights, and territorial expansion."

#2: Back Every Statement Up With Research

Remember, this is a research paper you're writing, so you'll need to use lots of research to make your points. Every statement you give must be backed up with research, properly cited the way your teacher requested. You're allowed to include opinions of your own, but they must also be supported by the research you give.

#3: Do Your Research Before You Begin Writing

You don't want to start writing your research paper and then learn that there isn't enough research to back up the points you're making, or, even worse, that the research contradicts the points you're trying to make!

Get most of your research on your good research topics done before you begin writing. Then use the research you've collected to create a rough outline of what your paper will cover and the key points you're going to make. This will help keep your paper clear and organized, and it'll ensure you have enough research to produce a strong paper.

What's Next?

Are you also learning about dynamic equilibrium in your science class? We break this sometimes tricky concept down so it's easy to understand in our complete guide to dynamic equilibrium .

Thinking about becoming a nurse practitioner? Nurse practitioners have one of the fastest growing careers in the country, and we have all the information you need to know about what to expect from nurse practitioner school .

Want to know the fastest and easiest ways to convert between Fahrenheit and Celsius? We've got you covered! Check out our guide to the best ways to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit (or vice versa).

These recommendations are based solely on our knowledge and experience. If you purchase an item through one of our links, PrepScholar may receive a commission.

Christine graduated from Michigan State University with degrees in Environmental Biology and Geography and received her Master's from Duke University. In high school she scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT and was named a National Merit Finalist. She has taught English and biology in several countries.

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The One Method That Changes Your—and All Students’—Writing

Science-based writing methods can achieve dramatic results..

Posted May 14, 2024 | Reviewed by Abigail Fagan

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• A focus on writing style might have limited the method's impacts.

I remember spending hours commenting painstakingly on my students’ papers when I was a graduate student teaching in the Expository Writing Program at New York University. My students loved our classes, and they filled my sections and gave me terrific course evaluations. Yet I could see that their writing failed to change significantly over the course of the semester. I ended up feeling as if I should refund their money, haunted by the blunt instruments we had to teach writing.

As I’ve learned from directing five writing programs at three different universities, methods matter. When I reviewed comments on papers from instructors who taught in my programs, I discovered that the quantity and quality of comments on students’ papers made only a slight impact on writing outcomes. For instance, one notoriously lazy instructor took several weeks to return assignments and only used spelling and grammar checkers to automate comments. But his conscientious colleague made dozens of sharp observations about students’ arguments, paragraphs, and sentences. However, Mr. Conscientious’ students improved perhaps only 10% over Mr. Minimalist’s students. Even then, the differences stemmed from basic guidelines Mr. Conscientious insisted his students write to, which included providing context sentences at the outset of their essay introductions.

Educators have also poured resources into teaching writing, with increasing numbers of hours dedicated to teaching writing across primary, secondary, and higher education . Yet studies continue to find writing skills inadequate . In higher education, most universities require at least a year of writing-intensive courses, with many universities also requiring writing across the curriculum or writing in the disciplines to help preserve students’ writing skills. However, writing outcomes have remained mostly unchanged .

While pursuing my doctorate, I dedicated my research to figuring out how writing worked. As a graduate student also teaching part-time, I was an early convert to process writing. I also taught those ancient principles of logos, ethos, and pathos, as well as grammar and punctuation. Nevertheless, these frameworks only created a canvas for students’ writing. What was missing: how writers should handle words, sentence structure, and relationships between sentences.

Yet researchers published the beginnings of a science-based writing method over 30 years ago. George Gopen, Gregory Colomb, and Joseph Williams created a framework for identifying how to maximize the clarity, coherence, and continuity of writing. In particular, Gopen and Swan (1990) created a methodology for making scientific writing readable . This work should have been a revelation to anyone teaching in or directing a writing program. But, weirdly, comparatively few writing programs or faculty embraced this work, despite Williams, Colomb, and Gopen publishing both research and textbooks outlining the method and process.

Peculiarly, this framework—represented by Williams’ Style series of textbooks and Gopen’s reader expectation approach—failed to become standard in writing courses, likely because of two limitations. First, both Gopen and Williams hewed to a relativistic stance on writing methods, noting that rule-flouting often creates a memorable style. This stance created a raft of often-contradictory principles for writing. For example, Williams demonstrated that beginning sentences with There is or There are openings hijacked the clarity of sentences, then argued writers should use There is or There are to shunt important content into sentence emphasis positions, where readers recall content best. Second, these researchers failed to tie this writing framework to the wealth of data in psycholinguistics, cognitive neuroscience , or cognitive psychology on how our reading brains process written English. For instance, textbooks written by these three principal researchers avoid any mention of why emphasis positions exist at the ends of sentences and paragraphs—despite the concept clearly originating in the recency effect. This limitation may stem from the humanities’ long-held antipathy to the idea that writing is a product, rather than a process. Or even that science-based methods can help teachers and programs measure the effectiveness of writing, one reason why university First-Year Writing programs have failed to improve students’ writing in any measurable way.

Nevertheless, when you teach students how our reading brains work, you create a powerful method for rapidly improving their writing—in any course that requires writing and at all levels of education. Students can grasp how writing works as a system and assess the costs and benefits of decisions writers face, even as they choose their first words. This method also works powerfully to help students immediately understand how, for instance, paragraph heads leverage priming effects to shape readers’ understanding of paragraph content.

Using this method, I and my colleagues have helped students use a single writing assignment to secure hundreds of jobs, win millions in grant funding, and advance through the ranks in academia. However, we’ve also used the same method without modifications in elementary and secondary classrooms to bolster students’ writing by as much as three grade levels in a single year.

Perhaps the time has arrived for this well-kept secret to revolutionizing student writing outcomes to begin making inroads into more writing classrooms.

Gopen, G. D. and J. A. Swan (1990). "The Science of Scientific Writing." American Scientist 78(6): 550-558.

Gopen, George. The Sense of Structure: Writing from the Reader’s Perspective . Pearson, 2004.

Gopen, George. Expectations: Teaching Writing from the Reader’s Perspective . Pearson, 2004.

Williams, Joseph. Style: Toward Clarity and Grace . University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Williams, Joseph. Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace . Harper Collins, 1994.

Williams, Joseph. Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace . Longman, 2002.

Jane Yellowlees Douglas, Ph.D. , is a consultant on writing and organizations. She is also the author, with Maria B. Grant, MD, of The Biomedical Writer: What You Need to Succeed in Academic Medicine .

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Why writing by hand beats typing for thinking and learning

Jonathan Lambert

If you're like many digitally savvy Americans, it has likely been a while since you've spent much time writing by hand.

The laborious process of tracing out our thoughts, letter by letter, on the page is becoming a relic of the past in our screen-dominated world, where text messages and thumb-typed grocery lists have replaced handwritten letters and sticky notes. Electronic keyboards offer obvious efficiency benefits that have undoubtedly boosted our productivity — imagine having to write all your emails longhand.

To keep up, many schools are introducing computers as early as preschool, meaning some kids may learn the basics of typing before writing by hand.

But giving up this slower, more tactile way of expressing ourselves may come at a significant cost, according to a growing body of research that's uncovering the surprising cognitive benefits of taking pen to paper, or even stylus to iPad — for both children and adults.

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In kids, studies show that tracing out ABCs, as opposed to typing them, leads to better and longer-lasting recognition and understanding of letters. Writing by hand also improves memory and recall of words, laying down the foundations of literacy and learning. In adults, taking notes by hand during a lecture, instead of typing, can lead to better conceptual understanding of material.

"There's actually some very important things going on during the embodied experience of writing by hand," says Ramesh Balasubramaniam , a neuroscientist at the University of California, Merced. "It has important cognitive benefits."

While those benefits have long been recognized by some (for instance, many authors, including Jennifer Egan and Neil Gaiman , draft their stories by hand to stoke creativity), scientists have only recently started investigating why writing by hand has these effects.

A slew of recent brain imaging research suggests handwriting's power stems from the relative complexity of the process and how it forces different brain systems to work together to reproduce the shapes of letters in our heads onto the page.

Your brain on handwriting

Both handwriting and typing involve moving our hands and fingers to create words on a page. But handwriting, it turns out, requires a lot more fine-tuned coordination between the motor and visual systems. This seems to more deeply engage the brain in ways that support learning.

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"Handwriting is probably among the most complex motor skills that the brain is capable of," says Marieke Longcamp , a cognitive neuroscientist at Aix-Marseille Université.

Gripping a pen nimbly enough to write is a complicated task, as it requires your brain to continuously monitor the pressure that each finger exerts on the pen. Then, your motor system has to delicately modify that pressure to re-create each letter of the words in your head on the page.

"Your fingers have to each do something different to produce a recognizable letter," says Sophia Vinci-Booher , an educational neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University. Adding to the complexity, your visual system must continuously process that letter as it's formed. With each stroke, your brain compares the unfolding script with mental models of the letters and words, making adjustments to fingers in real time to create the letters' shapes, says Vinci-Booher.

That's not true for typing.

To type "tap" your fingers don't have to trace out the form of the letters — they just make three relatively simple and uniform movements. In comparison, it takes a lot more brainpower, as well as cross-talk between brain areas, to write than type.

Recent brain imaging studies bolster this idea. A study published in January found that when students write by hand, brain areas involved in motor and visual information processing " sync up " with areas crucial to memory formation, firing at frequencies associated with learning.

"We don't see that [synchronized activity] in typewriting at all," says Audrey van der Meer , a psychologist and study co-author at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She suggests that writing by hand is a neurobiologically richer process and that this richness may confer some cognitive benefits.

Other experts agree. "There seems to be something fundamental about engaging your body to produce these shapes," says Robert Wiley , a cognitive psychologist at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. "It lets you make associations between your body and what you're seeing and hearing," he says, which might give the mind more footholds for accessing a given concept or idea.

Those extra footholds are especially important for learning in kids, but they may give adults a leg up too. Wiley and others worry that ditching handwriting for typing could have serious consequences for how we all learn and think.

What might be lost as handwriting wanes

The clearest consequence of screens and keyboards replacing pen and paper might be on kids' ability to learn the building blocks of literacy — letters.

"Letter recognition in early childhood is actually one of the best predictors of later reading and math attainment," says Vinci-Booher. Her work suggests the process of learning to write letters by hand is crucial for learning to read them.

"When kids write letters, they're just messy," she says. As kids practice writing "A," each iteration is different, and that variability helps solidify their conceptual understanding of the letter.

Research suggests kids learn to recognize letters better when seeing variable handwritten examples, compared with uniform typed examples.

This helps develop areas of the brain used during reading in older children and adults, Vinci-Booher found.

"This could be one of the ways that early experiences actually translate to long-term life outcomes," she says. "These visually demanding, fine motor actions bake in neural communication patterns that are really important for learning later on."

Ditching handwriting instruction could mean that those skills don't get developed as well, which could impair kids' ability to learn down the road.

"If young children are not receiving any handwriting training, which is very good brain stimulation, then their brains simply won't reach their full potential," says van der Meer. "It's scary to think of the potential consequences."

Many states are trying to avoid these risks by mandating cursive instruction. This year, California started requiring elementary school students to learn cursive , and similar bills are moving through state legislatures in several states, including Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina and Wisconsin. (So far, evidence suggests that it's the writing by hand that matters, not whether it's print or cursive.)

Slowing down and processing information

For adults, one of the main benefits of writing by hand is that it simply forces us to slow down.

During a meeting or lecture, it's possible to type what you're hearing verbatim. But often, "you're not actually processing that information — you're just typing in the blind," says van der Meer. "If you take notes by hand, you can't write everything down," she says.

The relative slowness of the medium forces you to process the information, writing key words or phrases and using drawing or arrows to work through ideas, she says. "You make the information your own," she says, which helps it stick in the brain.

Such connections and integration are still possible when typing, but they need to be made more intentionally. And sometimes, efficiency wins out. "When you're writing a long essay, it's obviously much more practical to use a keyboard," says van der Meer.

Still, given our long history of using our hands to mark meaning in the world, some scientists worry about the more diffuse consequences of offloading our thinking to computers.

"We're foisting a lot of our knowledge, extending our cognition, to other devices, so it's only natural that we've started using these other agents to do our writing for us," says Balasubramaniam.

It's possible that this might free up our minds to do other kinds of hard thinking, he says. Or we might be sacrificing a fundamental process that's crucial for the kinds of immersive cognitive experiences that enable us to learn and think at our full potential.

Balasubramaniam stresses, however, that we don't have to ditch digital tools to harness the power of handwriting. So far, research suggests that scribbling with a stylus on a screen activates the same brain pathways as etching ink on paper. It's the movement that counts, he says, not its final form.

Jonathan Lambert is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance journalist who covers science, health and policy.

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