Resources for students on (I kid you not) 'how to read a paper'

[QueenRefusenik]

Week two of a soc sci/humanities adjacent theory unit and my students are telling me they 'struggled with the wordiness' of the reading. Given I deliberately picked what I thought were 3 very easy and readable papers for this first seminar, they only HAVE to read one of them, and it's a second year unit, I'm a bit taken aback (been teaching this unit a few years now and never had them ALL say this!). I'm clearly going to have to repurpose a seminar to go over basics... Obviously I'll signpost them to the academic skills hub (and they'll duly ignore that, sigh) but does anyone know of any useful resources I can point them at that might help?! Struggling to get beyond 'place bum in seat, put phone out of reach and concentrate!'

Honestly I'm amazed they have even attempted it and not just stuck it into AI for a summary.

To be fair academic writing is deliberately obtuse at least in my discipline. I tell my students to read the abstract and then the first paragraph of the discussion first, then go back and read the lit review and method, skip the findings if it's too stats based and then the discussion in full.

I'm not sure how many of them did really attempt it! At least one of these was a non-acadenic (or non-traditiinal academic) piece as one of the things I was going to talk about was going to be the 'genre' of academic writing! Hmm, I might suggest they try an AI summary first, THEN read the paper after (or is that just opening up a world of pain for myself?!). I do sympathise a bit, it's getting harder and harder to sit down and read a paper properly even for those of us who pre-date smartphones...

In public health science I would say Methods is the most important section, followed by Results. Rest of the document is fluff, often pointless fluff. Sometimes title or abstract tells you something not well explained in the Methods, I suppose.

tbf, If I'm reading a scientific paper outside my disciplines, like Math, Biology or Physics or Chemistry, I can only understand well some parts of Intro & Conclusions.

You can recommend Jeremy Kaplan on YouTube,

It's got a US bias to it, but its useful and pretty simplified.

They teach this to students at Leeds Uni - library staff do it. How to read…

Talk to the library team.

Look at old GCSE English materials for non function comprehension.

look at the academic skills hub info and see if there’s anything that feels useful (so spoon feed them).

Talk to academic skills and see if they’ll come and help.

All good suggestions, thanks. And you're right, as well as sending them to the library team workshops maybe someone from there can drop into a timetabled teaching session for the unit. I'll go over some basics in class first though, that video looks useful, thanks! It's just frustrating given we cover all this in the first year academic skills module, but I guess you have to teach the students you have rather than the ones you wish you had!

Have you asked them what they expected of their second year of a degree?

They should all have had the 'second year, time to step up' speech, but yes seems like it's worth going through that again!

I found this helpful in the subject I was learning:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781394206933

Don't know if similar is available in your field?

When I did my history degree decades ago I found most of the papers unbearably dry and impenetrable.

I did my social science undergraduate degree back in the 1980s. Most tutorials I was the only one who had done the reading so it was a dialogue between the tutor and myself. The rule was you had to attend 2 out of 3 so I always stayed away on week 3. I sometimes wondered if they all sat in silence for an hour.

Yes getting anyone to actually speak is a whole other problem... Sigh. One thing at a time!

Forget reading, I can't even keep them awake! I heard snoring on Wednesday. Looked down to the front row and there she was, snoring! Her friend was appalled and really embarrassed.
I've won awards for my teaching and regularly get feedback stating I'm one of the best and most interesting lecturers yet still they snore.

On my god! I haven't had that yet, though someone did answer a phone call in a lecture once... Luckily his friends were mortified and made him hang up!

Maybe two things can be true at once. Academic papers are written in a deliberately obscure way to signal hierarchy and that only certain people are allowed knowledge, and also that students can’t be bothered with much that isn’t spoon fed.
what is your subject?

You might need to do a primary school style comprehension seminar. So read a paragraph, ask what it's saying etc.

Anything here that helps?

https://aldinhe.ac.uk/product-category/learnhigher-resources/reading/

It is a teacher's job (at whatever level) to make the material/information etc accessible to their students. Since time immemorial teachers have been complaining about students' of all ages not being at the expected level. Just be a bit more patient and guide them through the process, as others have advised.

I’m guessing OP is noticing a decline rather than a low bar. International sts who do the pre-sessional start their courses better equipped to navigate the reading than some (most?) home students. Academic literacy is a thing which is both coming into its own, and treading on quicksand with the rise of AI. It’s made meetings really dull

This is all true. However what the OP (and many other people) are observing is a huge decrease in capability over a short period of time. And it's hard to work out how to get them from where they are to where the need to be in the time available.

I do something similar. It helps. But I spent thirty years teaching in the secondary sector, so it comes fairly naturally.

I agree a lot of academic papers can be difficult to read even for those of us used to 'academic writing', but the readings for the seminars are carefully chosen to be easier at this early stage and then get more complex later in the semester and I've never had this issue in the years the unit has been running, so it did come as a surprise!

I've now had the workshop where I asked what problems they'd encountered and why, even had a mentimeter slide up in case they were embarrassed to admit it... Only half the class turned up and everyone there swore blind they hadn't had any problems and everything was absolutely fine. I went through some of the basics with them and showed them excepts from the Jeffrey Kaplan video anyway, and they seemed to enjoy that. Waiting for the academic skills team to get back to me too... So now I can obviously look forward to the next seminar when everyone will have done the reading. Right?! But thanks for those additional resources above, they look useful and I'll post them on the VLE for everyone to ignore, sigh