In addition to textbook readings, college students are faced with the task of deciphering information from scholarly journals and essays. Explanations, examples, and practice exercises are presented in this chapter for: (1) recognizing the parts of formal essays; (2) reading narrative, descriptive, and expository essays; (3) reading popular press articles; (4) reading scholarly journal articles; (5) critically analyzing essays and scholarly articles. This is done by comparing the parts of an essay (title, introduction, thesis statement, body, and conclusion) with the parts of an article (summary of related research, description of research, results, implications, discussion, conclusions, and further research). The parts of popular press articles (title, dateline, credit line, byline, lead, nut graph, body or development, and conclusion) are also discussed.
Suggestions for improving the reading of expository essays are given as well as suggestions for reading essays and articles more critically.
