Reading Comprehension

Teaching students to read academic articles effectively is crucial for their success in higher education and beyond. This curated list of resources provides strategies and tools to help students navigate complex texts, identify key arguments, and critically evaluate research. From deciphering jargon to understanding methodological approaches, these resources aim to empower students to become more confident and proficient readers of scholarly literature.

Teaching Strategies

Apply the Rand Model of reading - each of the three components may be adjusted to better equip students to read text they might not be familiar with.
Practice the skills and scaffolding in the class for reading. Give students time in class.
Promoting student autonomy. Allow students to select the text that they would like to read.
Give students guiding questions and/or notes to review as they read.
Provide Graphic organizers.
Develop a pre/post what I know concept map.
- Keep amending maps over several readings/topics over the semester.
Try different reading strategies for their readings (one for one reading, another for the next, etc.)
- List group label, concept map, KWL chart, relational reasoning questions (such as how the text does or doesn’t fit with what they already know)
Help students see connections across texts, as this may not happen as automatically
Make explicit how you want them to come prepared for class.
- What do you want students to get out of this reading?
- How do you expect them to approach the reading?

Thanks to Dr. Allison Zengilowski and Dr. Courtney Hattan for sharing this list of strategies.

Lehigh Librarians

Our Instruction and Outreach librarians are available to visit your classroom and provide direct, hands-on instruction to help students develop essential skills in approaching and critically reading scholarly work. This can include guidance on identifying credible sources, understanding academic conventions, dissecting complex arguments, and effectively extracting information from scholarly articles.

Educational Technology

Tools for annotated reading, such as Perusall, can provide a guided and collaborative framework for how to read an article.

Further Research

The RAND Model is a heuristic framework for thinking about reading comprehension that considers the reader, the text, and the purpose or activity of reading.

https://www.lifescied.org/doi/full/10.1187/cbe.11-03-0027

Listed resources from Google Scholar

https://asa.lib.lehigh.edu/asa/Record/00011860200?sid=64008994