Academic English Now - Read research papers FAST (5 little-known techniques)

Short Summary

Main recommendation: read research papers and books strategically and selectively, using targeted reading techniques rather than reading everything, which the speaker says makes academic reading too slow. The video presents five little-known techniques for speeding up academic reading so that early career researchers can build a more thorough literature review and write more papers.

Key Points

• The five techniques, as listed in the video, are: (1) screen titles and abstracts before reading and discard irrelevant papers; (2) define a specific reason for reading before starting; (3) use headings and table of contents to jump to the relevant section; (4) read only the first sentence of each paragraph to find the relevant paragraph; (5) search for specific keywords in the PDF.
• An abstract is described as a one-paragraph summary of the whole paper, making it an efficient way to decide whether the full paper is worth reading.
• Reading with a specific goal (for example, finding a research gap or a single statistic) lets you skip sections that do not serve that goal.
• The speaker says that about 90 percent of the time, unknown words can be inferred from context or are not needed to understand the paragraph, so you can keep reading instead of stopping to look them up.

Details Worth Noting

• Concrete instructions:
  • Step 1: After your database search, scan only the titles. Discard any title not relevant to your goal. For relevant titles, read the abstract and decide whether it is relevant to your current research. If not, stop. If it is, save it for later reading.
  • Step 2: Before reading, state to yourself why you are reading. Example goal: finding research gaps. Read the introduction (researchers point out gaps they see there) and the conclusion or discussion (researchers note the limitations of their study). You do not need the rest of the paper.
  • Step 3: Example goal: finding a specific statistic, such as the number of current PhD students in the UK. Scan only the results section of relevant papers, skipping the introduction, literature review, and methodology.
  • Step 4: For books and papers, use the table of contents and section headings to identify which part contains your information, then read only that part.
  • Step 5: Within the chosen section, read the first sentence of each paragraph, since it expresses the main idea. Once you find the relevant paragraph, read it in full.
  • Step 6: Open the PDF in a reader, use the search function, and type the key term (for example, "PhD students"). Review each match to find the information you need.
  • Step 7: When you encounter an unfamiliar word, first try to infer its meaning from context. If the word is not needed to understand the paragraph, skip it and keep reading.
• The speaker demonstrates the heading approach by jumping to a chapter and reading subtitles such as research on teaching grammar in language classes, reading only the part relevant to the goal.

Bottom Line

Effective academic reading comes from narrowing what you read before you start: filter by title and abstract, set a specific goal, and then read only the sections and paragraphs that serve that goal.