Student's guide to writing college papers, Fourth edition - Kate L. Turabian 2010

Read generously to understand, then critically to evaluate
Engaging sources
Writing your paper

5.1 Read Generously to Understand, Then Critically to Evaluate

5.2 Use Templates to Take Notes Systematically

5.3 Take Useful Notes

5.3.1 Take Notes to Advance Your Thinking

5.3.2 Record Relevant Context for Each Key Point

5.3.3 Record Keywords That Categorize Your Notes for Sorting

5.3.4 Record How You Think the Note Is Relevant to Your Argument

5.4 Write as You Read

5.5 Review Your Progress

5.6 How and When to Start Over

5.6.1 Search Your Notes for a Better Answer

5.6.2 Invent the Question

5.6.3 Re-categorize and Resort Your Notes

5.7 Manage Moments of Normal Panic

Once you find a source worth a close look, don't read it mechanically, recording only what it says. Note-taking is not clerical work. You must record the words of a source accurately, but you have to go further to engage its ideas: Why does she use those words? How is this section connected to the next? Are these ideas consistent with earlier ones?

But you must take yet another step, from its words and ideas to their implications, shortcomings, and unspoken possibilities. Talk back to your source as if its writer were sitting with you, eager to hear what you have to say (imagine your readers engaging you in the same way). If you passively absorb your research and then pass it on untouched by your own ideas, your report will be no more than a summary.

5.1 Read generously to understand, then critically to evaluate

If you can, read promising sources twice, first quickly to understand them on their own terms. Read as if your job was to believe everything the author says. If you disagree too quickly, you're likely to misunderstand and miss useful ideas.

Then reread slowly and critically, as if you were amiably but pointedly questioning a friend; imagine the writer's answers, then question them. You probably won't be able to engage any source that fully until you've read enough to develop a few ideas of your own. But from the outset, be alert for ways to read sources not passively, as a mere transcriber, but actively and creatively, as an engaged partner.