The reading codes describe the textual function of various sentences and paragraphs within the context of journal articles. Journal articles are not organized in formless ways; instead, they are organized in predictable and expectable ways. Once you understand how a journal article is structurally organized and the work done in it, you will be able to understand the content of the readings and avoid meandering reading. Article by Mr. Hamza.
The reading codes describe the textual function of various sentences and paragraphs within the context of journal articles. Journal articles are not organized in formless ways; instead, they are organized in predictable and expectable ways. Once you understand how a journal article is structurally organized and the work done in it, you will be able to understand the content of the readings and avoid meandering reading.
For instance, most journal articles contain an abstract, introduction, literature review, data and methods, results, discussion and conclusion, and a reference section. The Results or Findings (the main findings of an article) appear in three places: the abstract, the results section, and the discussion and conclusion section. They are repeated three times within one paper because they represent the most important part of a journal article - they are the "golden nuggets" as they represent what the article is "about" and because the results dictate the citational authority of a paper. Primarily, one cites an author based on her main findings/results, not other parts of the paper.
Results of Findings (ROFs) is one of the reading codes discussed in the previous post. What They Do (WTDs) is another reading code that appears in abstracts and introductions. WTDs code is very easy to spot within the context of journal articles for the simple reason that almost all articles have sentences that begin with "This article examines..." or "The purpose of this paper is …." A WTD simply describes what the author of a paper does in their documents. WTDs appear in the abstract, introduction, and in the past tense in the discussion and conclusion sections (What They Did, WTDD). This code captures the main research question that the author is posing in the text.
Another reading code is the Summary of Previous Literature (SPL), which describes the sentences and paragraphs that summarize the existing findings of the literature on a given topic. For instance, if I publish a journal article on the topic of "weapon usage in parricides in preindustrial South Korea," then a student who discusses the findings of this paper (ROFs) would have to treat that article and its findings as an SPL.
SPLs are the work that others have already done. In fact, in almost any journal article, SPLs will be the most frequently occurring reading code in the literature review section - about 70-80% of any competently executed literature review. The other 20-30% will be composed of a Critique of Previous Literature (CPL), which points out the shortcomings in the existing literature, such as the literature on a given topic is incomplete; something is missing in the literature; the knowledge on the given topic is missing something.
CPL highlight that missing component and logically illustrates a GAP or a shortcoming within the literature. If something is missing in the literature (GAP), then what are the implications of this shortcoming? Why is this GAP significant? How does this absence affect the state of the literature? Why should anyone care about the topic you have selected and the GAPs in research? The answers to those questions constitute the Rationale or RAT.
RATs (the Rationale) is a reading code that in well-written papers appears in the introduction in a coordinated list. Appropriately situated RATs in an introduction are sublime: the authors explain to the readers the significance of their work in a forceful way.
I have mentioned that ROFs (Results of Findings) are the golden nuggets of any journal article. In addition to the citational authority of a paper, a journal article's discussion and conclusion hinge on the ROFs in the following ways. After the authors of journal articles have presented their findings, they must then interpret and contextualize their findings in the context of the work that others have done. There are two interpretive possibilities: the current ROFs are consistent with the literature (RCL) and support existing findings, or they are inconsistent with the literature and the results are to the contrary (RTC). RCLs and RTCs do not appear in introductions and literature reviews; they appear in the rear sections of journal articles in discussions and conclusions. The same pattern applies to Recommendations for Future Works (RFW), which appear in the very last sections of journal articles.
The reading codes appear in non-random ways in various sections of journal articles. The reading strategy codes may or may not appear, but these illustrate the advanced reading strategies that readers will invariably deploy. For instance, you may come across a finding that you think is incorrect in one of the readings; that error you have found becomes a Point of Critique (POC); a POC becomes the basis of your CPL (Critique of Previous Literature) of the literature. Let us say that you are reading a discussion section in a journal article and a connection between an ROF and SPL was overlooked; that omission becomes an MOP (Missed Obvious Point) that could be turned into a POC.
My argument (Mr. Hamza, the Founder and CEO at HAMNIC Solutions) is that students can be taught to write research papers more effectively if they use the reading codes to read the journal articles, to organize their notes in the form of reading codes (RCOS), and to use the RCOS to write their research papers. In the upcoming posts or articles, I will be demonstrating how to accomplish that task.
Once students learn to read using the reading codes, they will be able to differentiate between well-written journal articles and not-so-well-written articles. They will see the difference between well-synthesized paragraphs and paragraphs written by lazy authors. Once they are able to identify the difference between good and bad texts as they read, they will become better writers due to that newly acquired knowledge. And once their eyes have been opened to the logic of texts, they will not be able to go back to reading and writing blindly.
