At postgraduate level, effective reading involves paraphrasing, synthesising, and acknowledging sources so that you maintain academic integrity. Understand what the expectations are for your level of study.

Responding to academic sources

You may find writing an annotated bibliography is a useful way to gather all your thoughts on different pieces of literature you've read.

When you start reading, you will also need to start processing the ideas and presenting them along with your analysis. It is important to be able to identify what ideas are from your readings and appropriately acknowledge those to avoid plagiarism. Our Avoiding Plagiarism handout answers some questions you may have about plagiarism.

Our Avoiding Plagiarism handout answers some questions you may have about plagiarism.

One main skill you need to develop is paraphrasing (explaining ideas in your own words). Have a look at our Effective Paraphrasing handout to see how to explain and cite ideas from your sources accurately. You may also want to refer to our Reporting Verbs handout to learn the different verbs or action words you can use to report on ideas from your readings. The Academic Phrasebank from the University of Manchester is an additional resource you may find helpful.

Appropriately acknowledging your sources means you are showing academic integrity. In the video below hear what some students say about academic integrity.

There are many different citation systems. Know which style is required for your area of study and find out how it is done. Below are links to four of the most common systems: