How to Read Journal Articles in the Social Sciences
A Very Practical Guide for Students
- Phillip C. Shon - Professor of Criminology at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology
Student Success
Refreshingly free of jargon and written with you in mind, it’s packed full of interdisciplinary advice that helps you to decode and critique academic writing. The author’s fuss free approach will improve your performance, boost your confidence and help you to:
- Read and better understand content
- Take relevant effective notes
- Manage large amounts of information in an easily identifiable and retrievable format
- Write persuasively using formal academic language and style.
New to this edition:
- Additional examples across a range of subjects, including education, health and sociology as well as criminology
- Refined terminology for students in the UK, as well as around the world
- More examples dealing specifically with journal articles.
Clear, focused and practical this handy guide is a great resource for helping you sharpen your use of journal articles and improve your academic writing skills.
‘I have used the book over the last five years with my students with great success. The book has helped students to develop their critical thinking, reading and writing skills and when it comes to writing a dissertation they have used the code sheet in their own writing.’ - Pete Allison, Head of the Graduate School of Education, University of Edinburgh
Student Success is a series of essential guides for students of all levels. From how to think critically and write great essays to boosting your employability and managing your wellbeing, the Student Success series helps you study smarter and get the best from your time at university.
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Shon provides an excellent guide on how to read journal articles. The reading code sheet helps to demystify the role of journal articles as proposals to knowledge and journals as forums for debate. I have used the book over the last five years with my students (many of whom are international and studying in a second language) with great success. The book has helped students to develop their critical thinking, reading and writing skills and when it comes to writing a dissertation they have used the code sheet in their own writing.
This is an excellent ‘how-to’ book on the skill of reading and writing critical literature reviews. Its practical guidance is offered in clear and accessible ways. The Reading Code Sheet developed by Chong Ho Shon is particularly useful when putting this book into practice. I recommend it to both students and colleagues.
Teachers assume that by the time youngsters reach secondary school age they are competent readers. However, unless they have been trained or have trained themselves to do otherwise, they probably read in the same way they were taught to when they were five years old. This is not an easy read, being aimed at university students... and their lecturers. However, I believe that it could be useful for teachers who despair at their pupils’ poor reading habits and/or low retention rates.
The book has the potential to interest students in a very systematic way to read academic articles. Such systems have great benefit for students who do not take easily to reading for academic purposes. Some of the codes could be helpful for most student guidance, particularly being able to identify critiques of previous literature, gaps and findings in articles and synthesising them to produce rationales for their own research.
This book, part of the Sage Study skills guides, provides a supportive framework to allow students to develop and refine their reading skills. Having used the reading codes myself, I would recommend it as a valuable resource for students to quickly ascertain relevant content within articles. A useful companion to this book is Shon’s book in the same series The Quick Fix Guide to Academic Writing: How to avoid big mistakes and small errors, which uses the reading codes as a means of developing academic writing.
This book gives time to the art of reading a journal. It is itself word heavy and as such it may or may not be suitable to all students learning styles.
This is a very practical guide for students in second/third year. There are step by step practical procedures that enable students to consider the challenges initially faced when reading journal articles.
This book is a good practical guide for undergraduates learning to engage with journal articles.
The book's recommendations seem very practical and helpful to me and I hope for the students as well: I know from experience that my students don't have a guideline on how to read, which - as the author points out - is closely connected with writing abilities. Although I currently cannot ask my students in a course on data gathering and analysis to delve into a full course of reading a paper, I will use much of the books guidelines and teach the essential topics in a compact version during the course. I believe that the reading code will help the students to form an identity as a researcher in the social sciences - which entails to be text-savy and this book deals exactly with this in a hands-on way.
This is very useful in masters programmes especialy for mature practitioners who have been out of academia for some time.
