Strategic

Read only parts needed to achieve the purpose.

The purposefulness of academic reading means that academic readers have to read strategically. There are too many things to read without making some choices. But the strategies the academic reader must deploy are not just to reduce the number of things one reads, they are also to develop deeper and broader understanding in context that is difficult if not impossible to achieve by ‘brute force’ at high volume.

The choices academic readers make:

1. What to read
2. Which parts of any text to read
3. In what order to read the text
4. What mode of engagement to deploy

Academics will only read the texts and parts of text that help them achieve the purpose of identifying and debating the relevant facts and arguments.

This may mean reading some texts very carefully, skimming others, or only reading selected sections of others.

One issue with strategic reading is that it is often recommended as an approach to deal with overload. But in fact, it is the superior approach to develop an understanding of an entire field. This is a theme that is common to all the characteristics of academic reading.

Choosing the Approach

For an academic reader being strategic means more than being selective about what they read, it means also choosing a reading approach. The academic reader will have to switch between different modes depending on what text they are reading with what purpose in mind.

The academic reader will switch between two modes:

• Narrative reading
• Ruminative reading
  • Skimming
  • Scanning

The difference between narrative and ruminative reading is essential to the academic reader’s success. (See Appendix for details).

Choosing Tools

Not all tools are equally well suited to different modes of reading. For example, it is difficult to skim a text to get an overall sense of its direction by listening to it from beginning to end. But it is ideal to listen while reading to help maintain focus. Listening can also be done in the background to achieve a similar result as with skimming.

Equally, a tool with slow page turns like an e-reader or a tool with a small screen like the smartphone will not be as useful for skimming as a computer with a large screen. Many of these elements can be remediated by the designers of the tools by providing better navigation features.

Also, other advantages of these devices such as the non-reflective screen of an e-ink reader or the short chunks of text on the smartphone screen may outweigh the disadvantages. Readers can reduce the downsides further if they increase their fluency in the use of the existing affordances.

But it is important that the reader is aware of the trade offs they are making.

In choosing a tool, the academic reader will have to keep in mind what mode of reading they will use it for and how to best support that mode using the features and affordances available.