LYNN SANTELMANN

Assistant Professor, Applied Linguistics
Portland State University
santelmannl@pdx.edu

Reading Primary Literature

These questions are intended to lead you through reading a journal article or research paper in a book. It gives a general outline that most research articles follow. The goal is to help you identify the important information to look for, but please note that some of these questions may not be appropriate for every study. There may be other important information in some studies that I haven't asked about here. Use your own judgment!

Background Issues/Intro

• What general issue or question are the authors addressing? For example: Is the ability to discriminate phonemes innate or learned? Do parents from all cultures use the same kind of "baby talk" with their infants? This information is usually found in the general introduction or the abstract of the paper.

• Who is the audience for this literature? What is the purpose of this article? For example: Is it being presented to colleagues (people currently working in the same field), as might be the case for new research? Or is it intended for students, or more general audiences as might be the case for some of the book chapters which summarize previous research? This information is usually NOT stated explicitly - it's something that you must infer from where the article has been published and the general structure of the article. It is important information to know, however, because who the intended audience is will affect the structure and level of the article. It will affect everything from the "register" of the writing, e.g., how much background knowledge they assume and how technical the writing is, to the presentation of the data, e.g., how careful they are in presenting methods and results, to the types of issues that are raised in the discussion. You need to know this in order to be able to analyze the article fairly.

• What is already known or currently believed about this topic? In other words, what previous research on this topic do the authors discuss? Where does this paper fit in with the current body of research? This information should be given in the introduction. The purpose of this information is to "set the stage" for the discussion to come. There could be a little or a lot of background given, depending on the audience and purpose for the writing.

Experiment/Study

• Issues What specific question, issues or hypotheses are the authors addressing? This is different than the general issue. An general issue might be whether the ability to discriminate phonemes is innate or learned. A specific hypothesis would be whether Japanese 6 month old infants who have heard only Japanese can discriminate /r/ from /l/ (we know that Japanese adults cannot do this).

• Method How do the authors seek to answer this question? Is the research experimental or observational? Is it cross-sectional or longitudinal? Note: Research articles will generally have a section called "method" where the answers to the questions about how the research was done are carefully laid out. Summary articles may simply  refer back to the original studies. Some observational and ethnographic studies will not have a sepearte methods section, but will instead put this information in the body of the introduction.
• If the research is experimental:

a. What experimental method do the authors use?
b. What are the experimental materials?
c. Who are the participants (called “subjects” in older studies) in the study?  What age? What language background?
d. How are responses measured?
e. What is a “correct” response? An “incorrect” response?

•  If the research is observational:

 a. How were the observations conducted - recordings? diary notations?
 b. What was the context where the observations conducted?
 c. Who were the participants in the study? What age? What background?
 d. Who was doing the observing? Parents? Researchers?
 e. What was the criteria for recording observations? (Examples, all utterances in a 30 minute recording, first 100 questions uttered by a child over a certain time period.)
 f. What kind of utterances or language/communicative behaviors were analyzed?

• Results What are the major results or arguments in the study? Most articles will have two - three points that they are making, and several sub-arguments to support those points. Try to focus on the general structure of the arguments, not the details of the examples used to support those points.

• Discussion What is the significance of this study, according to the author(s)? How do the authors tie their study to the broader information raised in the introduction? Depending on the format, some articles will have results and discussion as separate things, some will tie them together.

Your Analysis

• Critical Analysis: What questions have the authors left unaddressed - either that they note or that you noted as you read the paper? Are there any major flaws in the authors’ data? Are the results strong enough to support the conclusions the authors draw?
• Seeing the big picture: What contribution does this article make (despite any potential flaws) to the field?  How does this article fit in with the larger issues in the field?

© Lynn Santelmann, 2001