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After reading, the student should ask these questions:
Not everything that readers learn from an article is stated explicitly. Students should rely on their prior knowledge and world experience, as well as the background provided in the article, to draw inferences from reading material. Research has shown that readers who actively draw inferences are better able to understand and recall information.
As an example, the box below contains an excerpt from the Introduction of an article in the journal Biochemistry *. The comments in italics are questions and inferences that might be drawn by a student reader.
Rett Syndrome is a childhood neurodevelopmental disorder and one of the most common causes of mental retardation in females Comment: Hmmm…must be related to a gene on the X-chromosome, with an incidence of 1 in 10000-15000. Comment: How common is that? Not too likely to happen to me, but there must be several such children born in Houston every year. Rett syndrome patients are characterized by a period of normal growth and development (6-18 months) followed by regression with loss of speech and purposeful hand use. Comment: What happens? Something must be triggered or activated at late infancy. Patients also develop seizures, autism, and ataxia. After initial regression, the condition stabilizes and patients survive into adulthood. Studies of familial cases provided evidence that Rett is caused by X-linked dominant mutations in a gene subject to X-chromosome inactivation. Recently, a number of mutations in the gene encoding the methyl-CpG binding transcriptional repressor MeCP2 have been associated with Rett Syndrome. Comment: MeCP2 mutations probably cause Rett Syndrome. This must be an important master-regulator to affect so many processes in the brain. I wonder what they know about it…
*excerpt from Ballestar, E., Yusufzai, T.M., and Wolffe, A.P. (2000) Effects of Rett Syndrome Mutations of the Methyl-CpG Binding Domain of the Transcriptional Repressor MeCP2 on Selectivity for Association with Methylated DNA. Biochemistry 31, 7100-7106. Comments in italics added.
Effective readers take notes—it improves recall and comprehension. Advise students to put quotation marks around any exact wording they write down so that they can avoid accidental plagiarism when they write about the article. Read more about recognizing and avoiding plagiarism here.
Complete citation. Author(s), Date of publication, Title (book or article), Journal, Volume #, Issue #, pages:
If web access: url; date accessed
Key Words:
General subject:
Specific subject:
Hypothesis:
Methodology:
Result(s):
Summary of key points:
Significance:
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