How to Read Journal Articles in the Social Sciences

Shon provides an excellent guide on how to read journal articles. The reading code sheet helps to demystify the role of journal articles as proposals to knowledge and journals as forums for debate. I have used the book over the last five years with my students (many of whom are international and studying in a second language) with great success. The book has helped students to develop their critical thinking, reading and writing skills and when it comes to writing a dissertation they have used the code sheet in their own writing. -- Pete Allison This is an excellent 'how-to' book on the skill of reading and writing critical literature reviews. Its practical guidance is offered in clear and accessible ways. The Reading Code Sheet developed by Chong Ho Shon is particularly useful when putting this book into practice. I recommend it to both students and colleagues. -- Ian Walmsley Teachers assume that by the time youngsters reach secondary school age they are competent readers. However, unless they have been trained or have trained themselves to do otherwise, they probably read in the same way they were taught to when they were five years old. This is not an easy read, being aimed at university students... and their lecturers. However, I believe that it could be useful for teachers who despair at their pupils' poor reading habits and/or low retention rates. -- Terry Freedman The book has the potential to interest students in a very systematic way to read academic articles. Such systems have great benefit for students who do not take easily to reading for academic purposes. Some of the codes could be helpful for most student guidance, particularly being able to identify critiques of previous literature, gaps and findings in articles and synthesising them to produce rationales for their own research. -- Sue Greener, Brighton Business School This book, part of the Sage Study skills guides, provides a supportive framework to allow students to develop and refine their reading skills. Having used the reading codes myself, I would recommend it as a valuable resource for students to quickly ascertain relevant content within articles. A useful companion to this book is Shon's book in the same series The Quick Fix Guide to Academic Writing: How to avoid big mistakes and small errors, which uses the reading codes as a means of developing academic writing. -- Caroline Ford