Academic Reading

Learning Outcomes

This assignment is designed to address Reading outcomes. These specific outcomes are incorporated into the grading rubrics for the papers.

If you wish, you may click HERE to download the American Association of Colleges and Universities VALUE rubric on Reading

Teaching

This assignment will put you in touch with the field of literature associated with the study of Sociology. By "literature" we mean the writings of other Sociologists and related disciplines that define the scope and knowledge base of the field of Sociology.

This literature is published in specialized magazines we refer to as "journals". These specific writings distinguish themselves from other types of writing in that they are written in compliance with accepted scientific standards defined by the field and are subjected to review by other sociologists prior to publication...this is why they are referred to as "peer reviewed".

While some of these sources may be available on the web, many are only available through specialized subscriptions to these journals. The target audience is other Sociologists, not the public, and not YOU the beginning student of Sociology. So, when you read them they may come across as rather technical...keep in mind, they were written for other professionals in the field.

Your textbook is a collection of these works that has been gathered and organized for YOU, the student of Sociology, to comprehend. In this sense your textbook is referred to as a "secondary resource" while the articles cited in it are often referred to as "primary resources". (Just to complete this discussion, encyclopedias and most of the web is considered a "tertiary resource"...primary is the BEST source for detailed information...from that point on the details become watered down, but are often more comprehensible by most people!)

In this assignment we are going to compare and contrast primary, secondary, and tertiary resources on a topic.

You are to do the following:

• Identify an interesting topic in your textbook that contains a reference to a peer reviewed journal article (these topics will include a reference to a peer reviewed article in the actual text...this in-text citation refers to a more full reference to the peer reviewed article that can be found in the references section in the back of the book).
• Identify key terms associated with that topic that are present in the textbook.
• Look up these key terms using Google and find a website having to do with this topic (a newspaper article might do as well).
• Look up the peer reviewed article itself in the online databases available through the library (see the "Writing" resources available in the course website).
• Write your paper in accordance to the rubric below.
• Submit your paper to the appropriate drop box.

Grading Rubric

The following criteria will be used to evaluate and grade your submission: