Critical Reading
Reading 40-page chapters and research papers for argument structure, evidence, and position โ the structurally different reading approach university requires.
University reading is structurally different from school reading and most students don’t notice until their notes become unusable. The school habit is to read linearly and summarise paragraph by paragraph, which works for textbook chapters with one clear argument but fails for primary literature, theoretical chapters, or research papers, where the argument is the whole point and the evidence is distributed across the text in a non-linear way. The course teaches a three-pass reading method: first, a structural pass on abstract, introduction, conclusion, headings and figures to extract the argument and the structure of the evidence; second, a focused pass on the evidence sections to evaluate whether the claims are supported; third, a detail pass only on the sections that matter to your own work. The aim of each pass is different: the first answers “what is the author trying to claim, and what is the shape of the argument?”; the second answers “is the evidence good?”; the third answers “what should I take away for my essay or dissertation?”. The course covers argument-mapping techniques (a simple diagrammatic format that survives complex theoretical texts), how to take reading notes that produce essay paragraphs rather than restated content, and the honest discipline of putting a book down when the argument is weak or the evidence is irrelevant to your work. The single highest-leverage habit: read with a question, not for completion.
Recommended YouTube videos
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