Business Journal

You have probably been reading for one or more decades by now. Has it occurred to you that you might still need to learn how to read? Whipple (1910) was not very optimistic about college students’ abilities to read. His assessment of students is not entirely realistic – College students today would not be in college if they were poor readers. Still, reading scientific articles is different from casual reading.

People do not often pick up journal articles for casual reading. One of the major reasons is that scientific writing often involves complex ideas that are unfamiliar to many readers. In spite of the complexity of journal articles, it is important for you to read about research if you are ultimately going to write about your own research.

When you read a journal article, you will be reading slowly. There is a lot of information in an article, and that information is densely packed. You will also need to read most journal articles more then once because it will be very difficult to take in all the details with just one reading.

In order to help your memory for the material in the article, you should take notes. I hope to give you some pointers that will help you navigate successfully through research articles. You can use argument mapping to help keep track of related topics. It is related to idea maps and involves identifying the claims that authors make, the statements that they use to support their claims, the counterarguments that others have raised, and so forth.

This approach provides trail of ideas that allows you to see if an argument is sound or if it falls prey to logical fallacies.

By: Hina Khosa

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