Laura Kennedy & Rebecca Parry

Laura Kennedy and Rebecca Parry | University of Chester

From our experience of working with students to support the development of their study skills across all levels, but particularly Level 4, it is clear that students are often intimidated by the reading they are required to undertake as part of their degree programme. We have found that students have been inclined to blame themselves for finding their engagement with sources, such as academic journal articles, challenging, asserting that they themselves are ‘not very academic’. This can, understandably, be demotivating and result in a situation where students will only engage with material long enough to be able to extract a quotation that works in their essay, rather than allow their reading to shape their arguments.

The intention of our workshop is to present a range of tasks designed to help demystify academic reading for students and perhaps even make it more enjoyable by likening to process to building a friendship. We believe it is important to explicitly acknowledge certain truths about academic reading in order to empower students with the knowledge that they are not unusual for finding the transition into degree-level reading difficult. The title of the workshop embodies our approach: to teach the student to get to know the text gradually and know the right questions to ask to get what they require from the text. The activities are designed to be short, easily embedded and, hopefully, to open a dialogue about reading in the seminar room or lecture theatre that is both fruitful and reassuring to students.