Reading and Writing

Academic study typically requires a great deal of reading. What is the purpose of all that reading you must do in order to fulfill the usual requirements of a university course? A fit response is that not only do we read to acquire information, the what of a book, but we must learn to read with a sense of the way in which ideas are presented and supported, and be able to assess their purpose to the author’s overall argument or intent—the how and why of a book or article. Reading critically entails identifying what the writing is about, inferring why it was written, noting how the material is structured and presented, and, if relevant, how evidence is used to support an argument.

The aims of education in the humanities and much of the social sciences are largely to develop your abilities to read and think critically. Your ability to think critically about a subject is usually assessed through some form of writing, most often an academic essay. Apart from essays, two of the most common writing assignments in disciplines such as history, geography, and the social sciences are summaries of articles and book chapters, and book reviews. The purpose of these assignments is largely to assess your critical reading skills, though your ability to articulate and organize your thoughts and responses into a coherent summary or review format is certainly assessed as well.