Identifying Reading Skills for Dissertation Writing
Dissertation writing at any level, masters or doctoral requires extensive research and reading. The process of extracting and absorbing information that is later developed and analyzed to be assimilated into a dissertation or a research paper takes a very long time for a dissertation to get completed.
For this reason it is essential for a dissertation writer to develop reading skills that best suits a resource material. Doing this helps students save time and make their dissertation writing process quicker than it usually takes.
Students tend to apply similar reading strategy to all texts and resources. In most cases it is the reading tactic that they have developed during the course of their academic studies. In classroom learning and exam preparation, students have to apply intensive reading strategy to absorb information and remember it for a longer period of time. However, when they move beyond the classroom learning, they continue to use the similar reading strategy.
For higher academic purposes like dissertation writing, it is important for the dissertation writer to become aware of the different types of reading strategies that can be applied for effective and quick reading. Some of the important reading tactics have been discussed below:
Skimming: When browsing through the resource material for research, you will have to sieve the productive and useful books from the non productive ones. You cannot read every book to know whether a book is useful for you or not. For this it is recommended to skim through the book to find out its main idea and see if it is relevant to your research or not. Skimming therefore is running your eyes through the text to get the gist of it.
Scanning: When you begin writing your dissertation you have the topic at hand. You will then have to look for research resources that deal with your research topic. Here you have the purpose behind reading a particular text. When you look for a particular piece of information in a given text, you are scanning the text.
Extensive Reading: This type of reading is common when reading lengthy texts for pleasure. This reading strategy is uncommon in academic writing as it does not have a particular aim or objective.
Intensive Reading: Reading with a purpose to get the accurate detail of the given text, along with delving into its implications and metaphorical connotations is called intensive reading. This is the most common form of reading in academics. Whether you are reading a poem for its critical analysis, or a research paper for a reference and review, you will have read beyond the objective of overall understanding of the written word. It requires the reader to read slowly by applying attention to minute details. When you have the resource that you are likely to use in your dissertation writing, you must apply intensive reading to it.
