Some common abbreviations

8.2Skim reading for something specific

Often you will find an article or chapter that is supposed to help you prepare for a class or essay. You could sit and read it all through slowly. However sometimes it may be more economical to “skim read” it first to see if it is worth reading more closely. How do you do this?

• Read the introductory paragraph (or two) carefully. Here an author will state what the following pages will be about.

• Read by paragraph: look at each opening sentence to see whether the rest of the paragraph might be of help. Each new paragraph usually means a new step in the argument, or a new piece of evidence.

• Don’t just look for one key word from your essay title. Look for related words and words with similar meanings. If you are looking for material on slaves, don’t just look for ‘slave’, also look out for e.g. ‘free’, ‘unfree’, ‘status’, ‘manumission’ (= freeing slaves), ‘‘master’, ‘bondage’ etc.

• Don’t forget to skim read the notes too!

• When you see your target, zoom in on that paragraph and read it carefully. Also look back and forward a paragraph to see where that fact has come from.

• Finally, read the concluding paragraph carefully. It should summarise the writer’s argument, and may point to something you missed.

8.3Using online resources

Be as critical as you would in a library, only more so. Most of what’s out there is rubbish; don’t just type “Aphrodite” into Google (you’ll just get a load of porn sites and new-age stuff). Use specialist classical gateways (Michigan, Oxford, Reading) and resources (BMCR, Perseus, Diotima, Stoa, TOCS-IN), and get to know the good classics Departmental sites like Temple and the Open University. The golden rule is that online sources are only of value as a way of locating information in printed sources. (The only significant exception is online academic journals and conference proceedings.)

• Always check the site’s credentials. Ask who the site’s aimed at: GCSE students, A level, undergraduates, amateurs, fringe loonies? You may need to check other pages from the site to find the answers to some of these questions. As a rule of thumb, anything reliable will be hosted at a university address (.edu, .ac.uk, etc.).

• Avoid: online student essays (most are awful beyond words), GCSE or A-level revision sites (too elementary), amateur sites (there are a lot of nutters out there), and anything unsigned (if no author is credited, be very, very cautious about the content). This includes Wikipedia, which should NEVER be cited as a scholarly authority, or indeed at all; it has academic value only as a clearing-house of references and links to more reliable sources, for example online translations of ancient texts, (and in that respect can be quite useful).

• Always make a note not just of the URL but of author, page title, and real-world institutional location (University of Chiswick, or wherever). You’ll need all these for the bibliography.

• Never, ever, ever paste online text into essays, even accidentally, without quotation marks and full reference. It’s the easiest kind of plagiarism to detect – that’s why we have the Turnitin system – and the College penalties are absolutely merciless.

9Taking Notes from Reading

9.1What kind of notes are they?:

• Notes for e.g. a specific essay will be different from more general ones you use to get into a new subject.

• when and how am I likely to use them again? Most notes will be consulted again long after they were initially written, e.g. for exam revision. So...

• how can I make sure that I can understand them again in some months’ time?

• am I making sure that I note clearly where I get my information from?

• have I got a good filing system so I can find them again easily?

9.2What are the notes for?

• If you are taking notes for a specific title, write that title clearly at the top of the first page. This helps in two ways:

– you can always look back to check that what you are writing actually answers the question.

– you can find the notes easily again later amongst a year’s worth of notes!

• If your notes are more general, to help you understand a topic, make sure that you have clear sub-headings to help you find your way through them again later.

TOP TIP:

• Have a separate page for different subjects. You can then write down information drawn from different sources on specific subjects together. This helps you to see connections and is an excellent way to organise material for exam revision later. But if you do this, make sure that you also note down WHERE you found the information (see 10.4 below).

Directory: classics -> documents -> doc
classics -> Andrea wilson nightingale
classics -> Curriculum vitae (10/10/16) Karen Van Dyck
doc -> Value: 1 unit = 30 credits Prerequisites: none Course delivery
classics -> Scholastic play by play classics
classics -> Huma 401W: Intro to Humanities: Travel in the Pre-modern Mediterranean and Beyond Fall 2016

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