Critical Reading and Writing for Postgraduates

by Mike Wallace, Alison Wray

Overview

This guide to critical reading and self-critical writing is a must-have resource for postgraduate students and early-career academics. Packed with tools for analyzing texts and structuring critical reviews, and incorporating exercises and examples drawn from the social sciences, the book offers step-by-step advice on how to:

• Read any text critically and analyze it in the depth appropriate to one's project
  
• Develop a self-critical approach to one's own academic writing
  
• Ask questions in order to evaluate authors' arguments
  
• Keep a review manageable by using focused review questions
  
• Structure a comparative review of multiple texts
  
• Build up a convincing argument
  
• Integrate critical literature reviews into a dissertation or thesis
  
• Make the transition from postgraduate to professional academic writer
  

Essential reading for novice researchers, the book will also be invaluable for supervisors, methods course tutors, and academic mentors who teach and support the development of critical reading and self-critical writing skills.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781529727654
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	05/25/2021
Series:	Student Success
Edition description:	Fourth Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.69(w) x 9.53(h) x (d)

About the Author

Mike Wallace is a Professor of Public Management at Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, where he teaches postgraduate courses on research methods. He was formerly an Associate Director of the Advanced Institute of Management Research (AIM), responsible for research capacity building in the management field, and also the Economic and Social Research Council’s Strategic Adviser for Researcher Development. His research on managing change in the public services is reported in many books and academic journals. Most recently, he is lead author of a major monograph Developing Public Service Leaders: Elite Orchestration, Change Agency, Leaderism and Neoliberalization (Oxford University Press 2023). He is co-author of Critical Reading and Writing for Postgraduates (4th edition 2021).

Alison Wray is a Research Professor of Language and Communication at Cardiff University. Her research concerns the modelling of lexical storage and processing, particularly in relation to formulaic phrases, and it has been applied to language learning, evolution of language and language disability. Her two monographs Formulaic Language and the Lexicon (Cambridge University Press, 2002) and Formulaic Language: Pushing the Boundaries (Oxford University Press, 2008) are internationally acclaimed. Her current research focusses on dementia communication. Her 2020 book The Dynamics of Dementia Communication won the 2021 book prize of the British Association for Applied Linguistics and came second in the biennial book award of the American Association for Applied Linguistics. She has also published Why Dementia Makes Communication Difficult: A Guide to Better Outcomes (2021), aimed at people with dementia, their families and carers. She has a longstanding commitment to researcher training, including the developing of academic expertise. She is lead author of the popular undergraduate research methods textbook Projects in Linguistics (Hodder, 2012) and co-author of Critical Reading and Writing for Postgraduates (4th edition 2021).

Table of Contents

Part One: Becoming a critical reader and self-critical writer
What it means to be critical
Making a critical choice
Getting started on critical reading
Getting started on self-critical writing
Creating a Comparative Critical Summary
Part Two: Developing an in-depth analysis
A mental map for exploring the literature
Components of your mental map
Developing a Critical Analysis of a text
A worked example of a Critical Analysis
Developing your argument in writing a Critical Review of a text
Part Three: Constructing a critical review of the literature
Focusing and building up your Critical Literature Review
Integrating Critical Literature Reviews into your dissertation
Tools for structuring a dissertation
Building your academic career on critical reading and self-critical writing

Editorial Reviews

A must-read for any student looking to develop their reading and writing skills at research level. It delves into how students can develop their critical thinking and research skills before tackling their writing woes. Wallace and Wray will become personal tutors, offering an array of academic knowledge through writing exercises in which students can apply in their research directly. It is one of the few books on the market written with the student in mind, and one in which effectively identifies the steps needed to write a research paper, dissertation, and/or thesis.

Tamara Tarchichi

This book provided invaluable practical help for me in both organising my approach to research and in writing my thesis. A real strength of the book is that it backs up the various approaches it suggests with worked examples of all the points made. As a result, I saw a genuine and marked improvement in the quality of my own writing.

Stephen Cutler

A comprehensive and sharp guide to taking your reading, writing, and thinking to the next level. The authors do not only explain the concepts they bring forward, but also show what it can look like in a text. It makes everything much easier to understand!

The tools in the book have helped me a lot! This book taught me how to logically structure a piece of work before even starting to write it, which, in my case, took away lots of stress, and made my work much easier to follow. I strongly recommend reading this book!

Axel Bergström

'Mike Wallace and Alison Wray's book confirms that the answers that you get depend on the questions that you ask. One of the most important skills for researchers to acquire is that of asking the right questions, and they show that this process begins with identifying the questions that need to be asked about the existing literature on a chosen subject. Wallace and Wray demonstrate that critical engagement with one's sources pays dividends in terms of depth of understanding what those sources tell us. In addition, developing the skills of the critical reader also helps to make budding researchers into better writers, through the realisation of what works better and what works less well when communicating ideas and information. The book is written in a clear and straightforward fashion that is guaranteed to make you think, as well as encouraging constructive and engaging modes of writing that will improve your connection to your audience. '
Professor Graham Crow,
University of Southampton

Praise for first edition:

A very clear, accessible introduction that will be invaluable to postgraduate students trying to engage with reading and writing in a critical way' - R.M. Lee, Professor of Social Research Methods, Royal Holloway University of London

From the Publisher

This book demystifies the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of critical reading and writing in a highly accessible way. Scaffolded activities which encourage self-reflection provide essential practice for postgraduates wishing to develop their critical sub-skills, and are also an invaluable resource for Learning Development professionals working to foster these sub-skills in their students, whatever their disciplinary context or cultural background.

Chris Bishop

The best research-skills support I have encountered for social-sciences postgrads. It not only breaks down the anatomy of a research project in detail and with practical examples, but also illuminates theoretical issues such as author bias and reader response.

This book is invaluable, and I find myself turning back to it frequently as I reach the next stage of a project. It will always have a place on my desk!

Bethan Tovey-Walsh

This book will be a must read for my research students. It is practical with its various techniques and strategies, without being prescriptive. It will build your confidence in critically engaging with what you read and, because the authors treat reading and writing as an intertwined process, it will help with evidencing your own claims, identifying gaps in your arguments and seeing the assumptions you forget you are making. Indeed this book has the capacity to support us all to become better writers.

Melanie Nind

This updated and expanded edition contains a welcome revision of a very useful guide to critical reading, writing and thinking in academic work. It provides an extremely detailed step-by-step guide to engaging with several types of academic literature and it presents numerous worked examples of how critical writing should be done. The book should be regarded as essential reading for postgraduate students, especially with regard to the preparation of dissertations and theses. It will also be of great value for academics engaged in the critical review of literature in their respective fields and for critical reflection upon their own work for publication.

Alan Phipps