1. Critical Reading - They don’t read
do they?
Sandra Sinfield - LDU – LearnHigher
CETL and LDHEN
London Met 2007

2. London Met – reading reading
Why students are not reading
What’s it for – why do we want our students to
read?
Range of practical activities to encourage
reading – thinking - writing

3. Why some don’t read
Lack cultural capital
Lack of academic capital
Studying seen as part time
Students read less than they did
Sheer amount of information…
Shift to modularity – more reading expected of less inducted
students with less time
Subjects seen as vocational rather than academic
Effect of HE policy and practice

4. What’s it for?
Quantity?
The ability to find difficult sources?
The discovery of obscure texts?
Reading for meaning?
Reading for critical engagement?
http://www.publishinghub.net/

5. What we can do
Make explicit what we mean by taken for granted
practices
Independent learner
Reading list
Read around the subject
Read and make notes

6. Activity
Brainstorm:
Why do we read?
How do we know what to read?
How can we read effectively?
How much should we read?
Discuss with group – acknowledge reading is difficult – but
gets easier with practice

7. Read in the curriculum
Embed opportunities for students to develop
academic practices in the curriculum:
Acknowledge time constraints: specify …
photocopy…
Make space for reading and reading related
activities:

8. Model it!
Model reading yourself – breaking text into
chunks – use of skim and scan & in depth
Discuss your reading – it can be difficult for
everyone!
Split students into pairs/groups – give a text to
read in class
Textmapping can help:
http://www.textmapping.org/using.html

9. Support it
Make a meal of reading use your QOOQRRR
Q – Question – novice, initiate
O – Overview1 – of course
O – Overview2 – of text
Q – Question – why am I reading this now?
R – read actively and interactively
R – re-read and make notes
R – review

10. Active, interactive & critical reading strategy
Activity:
For EACH significant section:
What is this paragraph about?
Where is the writer coming from?
Who would agree/disagree with this position?
What is the argument? Who would dis/agree?
What is the evidence? Is it valid? How do you know?
Annotations – marginalia - short notes.
TIP: index cards of all sources – re-cycle reading

11. Link to writing:
We feel that students ‘cannot write’ because
they do not read!
Hence increase in plagiarism?
Possibly link reading strategy to writing strategy
‘The paragraph as dialogue’

12. Writing questions:
What is this paragraph about?
What exactly is that?
What is your argument? (Tell me more)
What is the evidence (for & against)?
What does it mean?
How does this relate back to the question as a
whole?

13. Make reading necessary
Read this & come to seminar with:
Three words that describe how it made you feel
A bare bones summary (25 words)
A visual summary
An object that represents something from the text – to
discuss
One question that you would ask the author
A one minute presentation
Value the effort that is put in when it is.

14. Emergency tactic:
When half of them have not read the set text:
Get everyone to select one sentence from the text that
they have found meaningful (a main point or an idea
with which to argue)
Get them to write this on a post-it or on the whiteboard
and say why they chose it.
The ones who did read should be able to make an
informed choice – others have to busk it…
An interesting discussion ensues!!
Maybe they all read next time.

15. Research
If you want to participate in the Learn Higher
CETL research into reading and notemaking
Or share your reading/notemaking resources
and strategies
Contact Sandra Sinfield s.sinfield@
londonmet.ac.uk for more
information.