1 Reading and note taking 1.1 Preparation for study One of the main purposes of this unit is to help you develop two kinds of skills: the general skills of being a student some skills which are particularly associated with the way social scientists work. Both are of fundamental importance to your success in studying other courses. This unit is about the very basic study skills of reading and taking notes. These are basic in the sense that they are the foundation for all successful study. But that does not mean they are simple. If you have no recent experience of reading academic texts you need to re-learn your reading skills. Reading magazines, newspapers or fiction is a useful basis, but entails very different skills from academic reading. The same goes for taking notes. Scribbling down the important bits of a recipe from a television cook or underlining some interesting advice from a magazine article helps, but of course there is a lot more to taking notes from a social science text. So we suggest that you spend the time working on these skills. Then, when you need to use these skills, you will be able to use them quickly, effectively and with more confidence. In Sections 1–3 of this unit we: ask you to think about how you read now by testing yourself on a piece of everyday reading matter, introduce you to some basic techniques for adjusting your reading to suit the purpose you have in mind, and focus on some of the more common problems that students may experience when reading unfamiliar material and suggest some possible ways of dealing with them. In Sections 4–8 we focus on techniques of: highlighting, note taking and shorthand, processing information and interrogating key ideas, writing in your own words, and referencing and quoting sources. In the final sections we focus on newspapers, and provide a number of activities to get you thinking critically about the press as a source of ideas, information and evidence. This unit is organized around a series of activities which focus on articles and extracts from a range of sources, including textbooks and newspapers. The articles chosen focus on crime and are pitched at about the same level as the materials you will work with on an introductory level course. However confident you are about being an effective reader and an effective note taker, we suggest that you take some time to work through what follows. If it really is very familiar, keep moving quickly on to the next activity. You might find you complete the whole thing in a couple of hours, or you might spend weeks working through it – especially if you have time to follow up our suggestions for finding other pieces of material and practising on them. It really is up to you. We hope you find it useful. 1.2 How do you read? A good way of getting started on developing your reading and note-taking skills is to think about how you read now. Activity 1 The short extract reproduced below is taken from The Scotsman and is a journalistic piece of writing, rather different from something you would read in a social science textbook. It focuses on a ‘child curfew’ scheme introduced in Hamilton, Lanarkshire in October 1997. Read through the extract and then: Jot down any feelings and thoughts you had about the content of the article: for example, did you feel that the idea of a child curfew scheme was a good one or did you have reservations about it? Think about how you read it: did it take you a long time to read?, did you read it straight through or did you have to stop and go back at intervals?, did you read each word individually or were you able to move more quickly, getting the general gist of the ‘story’? You will find our feedback and comments noted in the Now read the discussion link beneath the article. Try not to read these until you have completed the activity. Hamilton child safety curfew to be extended Calls for scheme to go national, despite rise in crime on estates where trial held Jim Wilson The expansion of the so-called child curfew in Hamilton was announced yesterday as the Government called for the controversial scheme to be copied across Scotland. The operation will now cover the whole of the Lanarkshire town, despite official research suggesting that crime rose in the three housing estates where it was launched a year ago. The extension of the initiative, in which children out after dark are taken home, was announced as Strathclyde Police and the Scottish Office released analysis suggesting the community patrols have overwhelming support in the town. Opinion polls in Hamilton, including one run by a local newspaper, revealed more than 90 per cent backing for the curfew, although more than half of all children thought police did not understand youngsters and stopped them for no reason. Yesterday, the Scottish Office urged the other seven Scottish forces to copy the curfew, despite critics claiming the operation is unnecessary and heavy-handed. No other Scottish force has voiced any interest in adopting a similar strategy but Henry McLeish, the Scottish Office home affairs minister, said every town and city could benefit. He said chief constables must decide their own operational strategies, but the success of the initiative in Hamilton could not be questioned and promised to send the new analysis to every force and police board. ‘I would be delighted to see this initiative copied and developed elsewhere,’ he said. ‘This should be the start of a huge debate about how best to reclaim our communities for decent, ordinary people.’ Research, commissioned by the Government and carried out by Stirling University, looked at the first six months of the operation, October 1997 to April 1998, and revealed that reported crime in the chosen estates fell by 23 per cent compared with the previous six months. However, researchers concede seasonal trends meant more crimes are committed in summer and, when compared with the same six months of the year before, reported crime actually rose on the estates of White-hill, Hillhouse, and Fairhill, by 17 per cent. In addition, a survey in Hillhouse revealed that, while 44 per cent of people felt safer since the curfew was launched, a rising number of residents, 84 per cent, would not now enter certain areas of the estate. Critics claim police should already be protecting very young children and Save the Children in Scotland fears the rights of young people could be violated. Yesterday, the charitys director, Alison Davies, said the research demanded careful scrutiny. ‘The figures and factors underpinning the research must be studied closely’. The Government is keen for the Hamilton scheme to be a template for adoption by forces across Britain, but John Orr, the Strathclyde chief constable, conceded the research was not wholly supportive. He stressed, however, that complaints to the police had fallen by 20 per cent in the pilot areas while the initiative, which will be continued as a pilot project for another year, had won backing from parents, children, and traders. He said the scheme had been misrepresented as a curfew intended to reduce crime, but had instead been driven by the need to protect vulnerable children and encourage their parents to take more responsibility. He said: ‘The suggestion that officers are going around like dog-catchers snatching children off the streets is simply wrong. There has not been a single complaint about the initiative and it has clearly been given the communitys seal of approval.’ Mr Orr said the number of community officers involved in the expanded initiative would have to be doubled, possibly trebled, from the two teams of six currently involved. A total of 280 children have been returned home over the past year. Five were charged with offences. Seventy per cent were boys, 14 per cent were aged under eight years old, and almost ten per cent were drunk. Sixty-one children have been taken home in the last six months compared with 221 in the first half of the trial, and officers believe the reduction indicates that more parents are taking responsibility for their children. Allan Miller, the director of the Scottish Centre for Human Rights, said there was legitimate scepticism concerning crime figures and claimed the research proved only that treating all youngsters as potential criminals is not the answer. He said ‘The statistics on crime complaints and safety perceptions are mixed if looked at on the whole. For the police, the lesson should be to listen to and understand young people and to recognise their needs and rights.’ Mr Miller said 77 per cent of the children taken home by police were aged 12 to 15 and had done nothing wrong. He said it was significant the scheme had been renamed since being launched to include the protection of youngsters. Meanwhile, South Lanarkshire Council yesterday announced the opening of a new £3 million centre for young people as part of the increased provision of youth facilities. 1.3 Active reading Whatever the specific objective of reading, as a student you will always need to read in an active way. Active reading involves reading with a purpose; that is reading in order to grasp definitions and meanings, understand debates, and identify and interpret evidence. It requires you to engage in reading and thinking at one and the same time in order to: identify key ideas extract the information you want from the text process that information so that it makes sense to you re-present that information in assessments, using your own words. It may involve you pausing at intervals to think about what you have just read, checking that you have grasped the main point and perhaps even noting down questions that come to mind or highlighting key words that you might want to return to at a later date. A crucial part of active reading is matching the way you read to the purpose you have in mind – that is reading for a purpose.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 01:26:26 +0000
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