Now that you have evaluated an article and decided to use it in your paper, you need to read it critically so that you can get a deeper understanding of Where to find ideas that capture the scholarly conversation. In this reading we suggest the reading order of the components of a typical research article to capture its ideas for synthesis. The order we suggest is different from the order these components appear in the paper.
Before delving into any article, take what you've learned from your evaluations (see the CRAAP Test reading) of the article to give you an idea of what to expect about the article. Who is the author? What are their credentials? Why did they write the article? When did they write it? What kind of article is it? This should help you understand where the article fits into your research paper.
Knowing how to read your sources will really help you when it comes to synthesizing them well. It will save you a lot of time as you create your own synthesis matrix for the Module 5 Assignment. It will also save you time in the future as you do more research and read more academic articles for the upper level classes in your major, graduate school, or as part of your job.
Start with the abstract and then the introduction. When you are first deciding whether an article will be useful to your research, reading the abstract can help you understand what the article is about. If you want a more in depth summary, you can also read the introduction.
Starting with the abstract, you can quickly determine whether the article is going to be useful for your research. If it is, the abstract helps you find the main points of the article without having to read the whole article.
Once you have identified the main points of the article, you should be able to find sections or paragraphs that touch on each of the identified main points and focus on those sections. Highlighting the points that are relevant to your topic will be helpful for going back to it later.
The introduction provides a more in-depth overview of the article. The introduction might either include or be followed by a literature review. A literature review is a summary of all the current research surrounding the topic of the paper, to give the reader some context. as to where this study is coming from. This is a valuable place to get more background information, as well as to find other sources that might work in your research.
After the introduction, the next parts that you want to read are the discussion section and the conclusion. These sections are not always clearly labeled and are sometimes combined. The discussion section provides an interpretation of the study’s findings and what was learned in the course of the research. The conclusion section captures the main findings and their implications. These sections will likely be the most applicable to your research needs.
Lastly, read the methods section and the results section. The methods section discusses how the research was conducted and what limitations and potential biases should be taken into account. The methods section helps advanced researchers determine the validity and accuracy of the research by detailing how it was conducted, so the study can potentially be validated through replication. The results section provides the data that came out of the study, typically summarized in tables and charts. The methods and results sections are the most complex and technical parts of the article. Since the results are interpreted in the discussion section you can probably skip the results section itself for the purposes of synthesis This means that it is important to the authority and accuracy of the article, but is not necessary to read to get the main points of the article. You only need to read it if you think it will further your understanding of your topic.
