doi: 10.18178/IJLLL.2019.5.2.203
The Effect of Reading in Shaping Undergraduates‟ Academic Research To
Honghao Xie
- School of English and International Studies, Beijing Foreign Studies University, 100089, China.
Abstract
Existing evidence has proved that reading isintegral in academic writing process and served differentpurposes at various junctures of students’ writing journey. Yet,few empirical studies investigate the effect of reading in shapingtopic selection and formulation. This study aims to explore theprocess of undergraduate researchers determined theirresearch topic through several rounds of reading. A qualitativeresearch method was adopted in this research and sixsophomore students were interviewed respectively. Resultssuggest that the novel researchers perused assorted literature inthe phase of topic selection, and they showed a proclivity oncertain types of literature according to distinct topic selectionprinciples. Academic journals, monologues, textbooks werechosen by participants. In the phase of topic formulation,reading literature journals helped them identify their possibletopics’ academic significance and pervasive research method,through which they could locate a board research area, thenmonographs and books assisted them to apprehend relevantknowledge and to assess research method so that they couldnarrow down their key terms and research context and finallythey could formulate an appropriate research topic. Thealteration of reading materials was caused by their insufficientknowledge of their research. Pedagogical implications are alsodiscussed.
Keywords
- Reading
- academic writing
- topic selection
How to Cite
Honghao Xie, "The Effect of Reading in Shaping Undergraduates‟ Academic Research To," International Journal of Languages, Literature and Linguistics, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 51-56, 2019. https://doi.org/10.18178/IJLLL.2019.5.2.203
Copyright & License
Copyright © 2019 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).