using reading

1. Academic Writing: using your
reading in PG assignments
Explain when and how to use academic
reading in your writing
Apply techniques of comparison and
synthesis to a selection of readings
Write an extended synthesis of a
selection of readings
Happy Diwali!
Rhian Wyn-Williams
Academic Skills Tutor
Skills@ljmu.ac.uk

2. Where’s the reading?
• Look at the extract taken from a student's essay on
your handout.
• Work together to identify where they have used
reading in their writing.​
• How have they used the reading?​

3. Over the past two decades, the issue of the ethical stance of businesses appears to have become more
explicitly an area of public debate and consumer awareness. Two illustrations of this are the number of
publications that give consumers information about the most ethical companies (for example
the Ethispere and Good Shopping Guide sites), and the fact that many large organisations now have an ‘our
ethics’ tab somewhere on their website. The UK ethical sales market is currently valued at over £38 billion,
and has been expanding year on year over the past decade, with current growth at about 8.5% (Ethical
Consumer Research Association and Triodos Bank 2017). This essay will briefly define business ethics and
then consider whether it does and should have value as an aspect of both business activity and business
theory and training. Defining what constitutes a business is contentious in itself, but for the purposes of this
short essay it will be defined as any profit-making enterprise, including charities ,who make profits to invest
back into the enterprise (Smith and Jones, 2014; Rogers, 2013 ; Appleton, 2011). Similarly, there are
numerous, overlapping definitions of business ethics. Shaw and Barry define it as ‘what constitutes right and
wrong (or good and bad) human conduct in a business context’ (p. 25). This is a broad definition that needs
some refining in two areas. One distinction to make is that ethics is not the same thing as general
morality. Crane and Matten (2016) explain that although morals are a basic premise of ethics, ethics and
ethical theory go a step further because they focus on how morals can be applied to produce
explicit standards and rules for particular contexts, of which business is one. Ferrell, Fraedrich and Ferrell’s
definition of business ethics as the ‘principles and standards that guide behaviour in the world of business’
(Ferrell et al. 2002, p.6) is pertinent here, as it emphasises the application of morals to produce codes and
guidelines. Codified ethical behaviour usually falls under what is called ‘corporate social responsibility’ (CSR),
which in turn is usually seen as part of corporate governance, although there is overlap between the two areas
of activity. The second aspect of defining business ethics which needs unpacking is that, as Crane
and Matten point out, ethics is not synonymous with legality. They state that there is some overlap between
law and ethics, but that legislation usually only regulates the lowest level of acceptable behaviour. In addition,
as Trevino and Nelson (2010) state, the law is limited in what it can do to prevent unacceptable actions,
because legislation follows rather than precedes trends in behaviour. Business ethics, then, according to
Crane and Matten, is mainly concerned with areas of conduct that are not specifically covered by law, and that
are therefore open to different interpretations, a fact that means a particular behaviour may be legal albeit
viewed by many as unethical.
Opening statement based on
reading
Specific examples to support
Use of statistics to explain why this
issues should be researched
Thesis statement: what the essay
will discuss
Synthesised reference showing
research
Analysis of the research
Specific selected research to
support and extend
Showing synthesis and depth of
understanding
Concluding based on research

4. Why is reading an essential for your writing?
You are part of an academic
community that values research
and evidence: all of your work
needs to be supported by that
research and evidence.
That community is connected
through ideas, theories,
concepts, evidence: sit at the
table and join in.
You don’t want to steal from that
community: academic integrity.
When working on your
dissertation or thesis, you need
to show how your research fits
in.

5.  Read with your module’s learning objectives or your research
aims and objectives in mind.
 Choose your reading carefully so that you get a wide range of
different perspectives.
 Keep asking yourself: Do I need this? How will I use it?
 Read abstracts, introductions and conclusions first before you
decide whether to carry on reading.
Your writing
Your
reading
Reading for your post-graduate degree

6. This means you need to
analyse, compare and
contrast and synthesise
your reading before you can
use it in your writing.
‘Zoom in and zoom out’

7. Analysis and evaluation: zooming in
Read critically:
• Who is the author?
• What is the central point or main
argument?
• What findings and conclusions are made?
• What evidence is used? Effective?
• What methodology has the author used?
• Does the author make any assumptions?
• What is not being said?
• Is there any explicit or hidden bias?
• What is its significance?
• What are its limitations?
• How can I use this?

8. Finding your academic voice
Now you are sitting at the academic
table, you need to join in.
What do you think? What is your
interpretation? What does the reading
mean to you and for your assignment?
Your analyse of the reading will help
you do this.
Keep asking questions: Why? How?
What if? What next? So what?

9. Have a go...
In your groups, you have a range of
extracts about the role of education
in society for the question ‘Discuss
the role of Higher Education in the
UK in the 21st Century’.
Read and discuss them, using some
of the critical reading questions.

10. Arthur H. Camins
‘Debate about the purposes of education never seems to
end. Should young people become educated to get prepared to
enter the workforce, or should the purpose of education be focused
more on social, academic, cultural and intellectual development so
that students can grow up to be engaged citizens? With each new
workforce development or economic competitiveness demand on
our…schools, there has been push-back from those who want
greater emphasis on a broader view of education. But it doesn’t have
to be either-or. Education should prepare young people for life,
work and citizenship. Knowledge of the natural and engineered
environments and how people live in the world is critical to all three
purposes of education. Critical thinking, creativity, interpersonal skills
and a sense of social responsibility all influence success in life, work
and citizenship. For example, unhappy personal relationships often
spill over into the work environment, while a stressful workplace or
unemployment negatively impacts family life. Uninformed
disengaged citizens lead to poor policy choices that impact life, work
and citizenship. To paraphrase the verse in the old song, “You can’t
have one without the others.”’

11. Paulo Friere
The goals and purposes of adult education as
societal transformation and contended that
education is a consciousness-raising process.
From his view, the aim of education is to help
participants put knowledge into practice and that
the outcome of education is societal
transformation. Freire believed in human’s ability
to re-create a social world and establish a
dynamic society, and that the major aim of
education is to help people put knowledge into
action. Doing so, according to Freire, would
enable people to change the world – to humanise
it. Freire is clearly concerned with creating a
better world and the development and liberation
of people. As such, the goals and purposes within
this learning context are oriented to societal as
well as individual improvement.

12. bell hooks
‘The heart of education as a practice of
freedom is to promote growth. It's very much
an act of love in that sense of love as
something that promotes our spiritual and
mental growth.
When people frequently ask me, 'What
changed your life; what enabled you to come
from this working-class, segregated home
where [your] parents were not college-
educated people into being one of our
nation's well-known intellectuals?' [My
answer is,] 'It's there in that space where I
learned to be a reader and a critical thinker.'

13. Mike Rustin
‘Opposition to the government's higher education
policy [of greater focus on employability skills] is
from people who has so far been expressed in very
traditionalist terms – with the idea that a university
has an intrinsic value and good. On the one hand,
you have the marketised view of universities as
equipping people to earn their living, and on the
other hand, a traditional view that universities are
about pure learning, but the students we have here
have always seen benefits beyond learning for its
own sake. We have really hard evidence to show
that students are fairly clear about why they want to
go to university – and for the vast majority, it is
about getting a better job and having a successful
career. A lot of people say what about learning for
learning's sake? I find that problematic. Everyone
has a purpose for why they want to learn.’

14. Comparing and synthesising your reading:
zooming out
To synthesise your literature, you need to:
Make comparisons and connections
Position key points against each other
Identify themes and trends
Areas of agreement or disagreement
This is where you
can start to
position yourself.

15. Jamie is evaluating the effects of undergraduate
students’ study habits at LJMU.
How could per improve this paragraph to show more
synthesis?
Hennessy (1968) believes that all first year
university essays should only be written from
lecture notes as students know so little of
their subject. According to Choudrey (2015),
academic essays should be well researched.
This research should be done from books
listed in the module handbook and using the
online resources in the library. Beko (2013)
says that assignments are written using
information collected from the library and
reliable online sources. Cottrell (2012) argues
that students should use library resources and
some academic websites.

16. According to Choudrey (2015) and Beko (2013) students should research
for assignments using resources in the library and from online sources.
They both stress that website based research should be done carefully.
This is further supported in the work of Cottrell (2012). Choudrey
(2015) also adds that book lists in Module Handbooks should also be
used. These contemporary opinions are in contrast to Hennessy writing
in 1968 who argued at least in first year students should only refer to
lecture notes for research.
Similarity
Additional point
ContrastThis is a simple example.
How can you achieve this
with the more advanced
reading and evaluation you
need to do?

17. Research into mega-events has highlighted their positive economic impact (Getz and Page, 2016), which Kasimati (2003) has
demonstrated to be frequently used as justification for event bidding. However, economic gain is not restricted to sale generation
but can also be found in the host’s tourism industry (Taylor, 2005; Djaballah et al, 2015) and job stimulation in the surrounding
area (Djaballah et al, 2015; Yolal et al, 2016). This has been argued by both Kapalnidou (2013) and Chun Ma (2016) to positively
affect the social needs of residents, thus reinforcing the notion that the economic impacts of hosting a mega-event can act as a
basis for achieving wider social needs. Lee et al., (2017) have hypothesised that this is not only the case for individuals, through
increased income, but also for wider communities. Indeed, in relation to job related impacts, wage has been found to be the
largest multiplier and consequently can be viewed as being the most impactful effect (Lee et al, 2017). In turn, this repeatedly
been shown to increase the amount of tax received in the area (Taylor, 2005; Ying-Wen et al, 2016; Kim et al, 2017), suggesting
further positive economic benefits can be felt in the local area after the holding of a mega-event. Similarly, Lee et al., (2017)
emphasise the impact of permanent jobs being created by the hosting of a mega-event and therefore the long term benefits they
bring, but the figures they present are relatively modest. However, there is far more convincing research that has noted that
most employment generated by hosting events is in fact not permanent due to the very nature of those events (Taylor, 2005;
Mathurin et al, 2013; Dwyer et al, 2016; Kim et al, 2017). Ultimately then, despite the positive economic impact of hosting a
mega-event, the research indicates that any economic boost experienced individually and by the wider community is only
temporary. This project will consider whether small-scale hotel-based events offer similar economic impacts and whether any
positive impact experienced is also short-term in nature.
In pairs, read this example paragraph from a PG student, which is on your handout. How are they showing their
synthesis? Think about their use of language to show synthesis and refer to their reading.

18. Research into mega-events has highlighted their positive economic impact (Getz and
Page, 2016), which Kasimati (2003) has demonstrated to be frequently used as
justification for event bidding. However, economic gain is not restricted to sale generation
but can also be found in the host’s tourism industry (Taylor, 2005; Djaballah et al, 2015)
and job stimulation in the surrounding area (Djaballah et al, 2015; Yolal et al, 2016). This
has been argued by both Kapalnidou (2013) and Chun Ma (2016) to positively affect the
social needs of residents, thus reinforcing the notion that the economic impacts of
hosting a mega-event can act as a basis for achieving wider social needs. Lee et al., (2017)
have hypothesised that this is not only the case for individuals, through increased
income, but also for wider communities. Indeed, in relation to job related impacts, wage
has been found to be the largest multiplier and consequently can be viewed as being the
most impactful effect (Lee et al, 2017). In turn, this repeatedly been shown to increase
the amount of tax received in the area (Taylor, 2005; Ying-Wen et al, 2016; Kim et al,
2017), suggesting further positive economic benefits can be felt in the local area after the
holding of a mega-event. Similarly, Lee et al., (2017) emphasise the impact of permanent
jobs being created by the hosting of a mega-event and therefore the long term benefits
they bring, but the figures they present are relatively modest. However, there is far more
convincing research that has noted that most employment generated by hosting events is
in fact not permanent due to the very nature of those events (Taylor, 2005; Mathurin et
al, 2013; Dwyer et al, 2016; Kim et al, 2017). Ultimately then, despite the positive
economic impact of hosting a mega-event, the research indicates that any economic
boost experienced individually and by the wider community is only temporary. This
project will consider whether small-scale hotel-based events offer similar economic
impacts and whether any positive impact experienced is also short-term in nature.
Comparison,
contrast and
synthesis
Reporting verbs
Analysis of reading –
the voice

19. A reading grid can help you. This is part of Jamie’s assignment
evaluating effects of undergraduate students’ study habits at LJMU
Author, title Topic Key idea/theme Strengths/
Weaknesses
How to use Relate to project
A. Rieder (2017)
The First Year at
University (LJMU
Press)
Effects of
stress on
university students
during transition
Chap 3: students
need differences in
study practices
made clear at the
outset: primarily
the responsibility
of the university
Very small sample
but longitudinal
study –
appropriate
methods
Rich data – see
transcripts
Compare to Jones
(2001) and Ali
(2002) -they
emphasise the
responsibility of
the student in
adapting
Show agreement
with Smith, 2013;
Mohammad et al,
2015; Jackson,
2017
Jackson also uses
longitudinal study
Part of current
growing concern
with students’
mental health –
chap 3 only e.g. so
far relating it to
study practices –
lack of sustained
research: I aim to
fill!
Will test with a
bigger sample size
Notice how some topics may not at
first sight appear relevant. You
make the connections. Breadth is
essential.

20. Have a go….
• You have a copy of a basic reading
grid. In your groups, complete it
using the articles on the role of
Higher Education in society, which
you read earlier.
• Once completed, write a short
paragraph synthesising the
information.

21. Reflection…..
• What top tip you would you now pass on to
another PG student about using their reading in
assignments?

22. Next steps
Next week:
Academic Writing: Critical Analysis for
PGs
The following week:
Academic Writing: summarising,
paraphrasing and quoting for PGs
and
Academic Writing: Developing your
Academic Language at PG Level