EmpoWord: A Student-Centered Anthology & Handbook for College Writers

Appendix B: Engaged Reading Strategies 466 Encountering an Article in a Hurry: Some articles, especially scholarly articles, have abstracts. An abstract is typically an overview of the discussion, interests, and findings of an article; it’s a lot like a summary. Using the abstract, you can get a rough idea of the contents of an article and determine whether it’s worth reading more closely. Some articles will have a conclusion set off at the end of the article. Often, these conclusions will summarize the text and its main priorities. You can read the conclusion before reading the rest of the article to see if its final destination is compatible with yours. If you’re working on a computer with search-enabled article PDFs, webpages, or documents, use the “Find” function (Ctrl + F on a PC and ⌘ + F on a Mac) to locate keywords. It’s possible that you know what you’re looking for: use technology to get you there faster. Encountering a Book in a Hurry: Although print books are more difficult to speed-read, they are very valuable resources for a variety of reading and writing situations. To get a broad idea of a book’s contents, try the following steps: Check the Table of Contents and the Index. At the front and back of the book, respectively, these resources provide more key terms, ideas, and topics that may or may not seem relevant to your study. If you’ve found something of interest in the Table of Contents and/or Index, turn to the chapter/section of interest. Read the first paragraph, the (approximate) middle two to three paragraphs, and the last paragraph. Anything catch your eye? (If not, it may be worth moving on.) If the book has an introduction, read it: many books will develop their focus and conceptual frameworks in this section, allowing you to determine whether the text will be valuable for your purposes. Finally, check ou t this video t hat has both practical tips to increase reading speed and conceptual reminders about the learning opportunities that reading creates. Appendix B Endnotes Attributions for images used in this section are located in the Alt Text for each image. Complete citations are included at the end of the book. 1 G allop 11. 2 T his activity was developed by Brian Gazaille, University of Oregon, 2018. Reproduced with permission of the author. 3 I bid.