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Guide to: Academic Reading

Before you Read: The 5 S's

The 5 S’s: Setting, Supplies, Screens Away, Sips, and Scan

Before you Read: The 5 S's. Before you begin reading something for school, there are a few things you should do to get comfortable and ready to take in information: Setting - make sure to find the study setting that works best for your attention span. Are you someone who needs silence to concentrate? Try the quiet zones of the library. Need a little ambient noise? Check out our green zones or one of our campus coffee shops! Supplies - Make sure you have whatever you need to take notes on the reading - highlighters, pens, pencils, a fully charged tablet, whatever you need! Sips - It’s always good to have your emotional support water bottle or favorite coffee drink with you! Screens Away - Have a plan for staying off your phone/ unrelated internet content while you’re reading! Try putting your phone in your backpack, using a focus filter on your devices, or using a timer to keep off of the internet. Scan - Look at the text in front of you and take in the title, abstract, sub headings, visual aids, and whatever else catches your eye in an initial scan. Get a sense of how long the article is, what kind of content it contains, and the structure of the writing. Use all of this information to plan out how you’re going to read the article, perhaps with strategies like chunking or saving some sections to come back and read later.

What does it mean to Scan an Article?

Scanning a Reading

Before you start reading your article in full, you should look through the article to get an idea of what it is about and how it is structured. This will help you determine how long it will take you to read, the best method for taking notes, and give you a better sense of the article's main points and relevancy to your information need.

Here are the steps to take when Scanning an article:

  1. Take in the articles general information: Read through the title and abstract of the article, note the publication date and what field of study the article is written about.
  2. Go through the pages of the article: Identify subheadings of the article and take a moment to look at any data tables or visual aides it may contain.
  3. Read through the conclusion of the article: this will give you an idea of what the article has discussed and what conclusions the author has reached by the end of their research. 

Once you have completed these steps it will be much easier for you to determine how you want to break down the article for reading, and what you will gain from reading the article in full. Usually you are reading an academic article to support a class discussion or add to your own research project, so establishing why you are reading helps you to get more out of the text than you would by just starting!