First Experiences with Reading Primary Literature by Undergraduate Life Science Students
Open accessAbstract
Learning to read and understand research articles (primary literature) is an important step in the enculturation of higher education students into the scientific community. We presume, based on ideas from the field of genre analysis, that it is important for the development of reading skills to become conscious of the rhetorical structures in research articles. So, we determined how well science students are able to identify 2 important elements of this rhetorical structure: conclusions and grounds. First-year undergraduate life science students who followed a course called ‘Biomedical Research’ made assignments in which they had to identify these 2 elements. We analysed the answers of 20 students in detail and compared their answers with 2 expert readers. Furthermore, we conducted task-based interviews with 4 students to gain more insight into their reading strategies and to determine how they identify conclusions and grounds. Our results show that students and experts defined conclusions and grounds in different ways. Students and experts agreed on the most important conclusion of the articles. However, students identified a wide range of sentences which were not seen as conclusions by the experts. The grounds students mentioned mostly matched their conclusions. Students sometimes failed to mention important grounds for a particular conclusion. In conclusion, our study shows the differences between student and expert readers of primary literature. Based on our results, we formulated criteria for the design of a teaching strategy that aims to improve students' skills for reading primary literature.
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There have been many strategies and supporting resources developed to help inexperienced readers engage with the primary literature.
“There have been many strategies and supporting resources developed to help inexperienced readers engage with the primary literature [6,8–14].”
From Perceptions of scientific research literature and strategies for reading papers depend on academic career stage (2017) · cites this paper as [14]
The Literature review (page unavailable) identifies several hands-on studies using primary literature with college students, supporting the existence of approaches to help inexperienced readers. It does not establish that many supporting resources have been developed; the Discussion (page unavailable) describes this paper’s own teaching strategy as future work. (LLM, conf=0.82)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredUndergraduate students have previously been shown to define conclusions of scientific papers differently to expert readers, and to overlook important grounds for particular conclusions, i.e. were more likely to rely on author statements in the discussion than to interpret primary results for themselves.
“Undergraduate students have previously been shown to define conclusions of scientific papers differently to expert readers, and to overlook important grounds for particular conclusions, i.e. were more likely to rely on author statements in the discussion than to interpret primary results for themselves [14].”
From Perceptions of scientific research literature and strategies for reading papers depend on academic career stage (2017) · cites this paper as [14]
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Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredNovice readers are likely to identify incorrect conclusions and supporting evidence for those conclusions.
“Novice readers are also likely to identify incorrect conclusions and supporting evidence for those conclusions (van Lacum et al., 2012; Hubbard and Dunbar, 2017).”
From Reading Primary Scientific Literature: Approaches for Teaching Students in the Undergraduate STEM Classroom (2023) · cites this paper as van Lacum et al., 2012
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References 64 · Cited by 48
Research works printed but not linked: 1
- Connor, U., Upton, T. A., & Kanoksilapatham, B. (2007). Introduction to move analysis. In D. Biber, U. Connor, & T. A. Upton (Eds.), Discourse on the move: Using corpus analysis to describe discourse structure (pp. 23-41). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Authors
- van Lacum, E., Ossevoort, M., Buikema, H., & Goedhart, M.
- Affiliations
- University of Groningen (NL)
- Venue
- International Journal of Science Education
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2012-08
- Volume
- 34
- Issue
- 12
- Pages
- 1795-1821
- ISSN
- 0950-0693 (ISSN-L)
- 1464-5289
- OpenAlex
- W2142332012
- Cited by
- 48
- References
- 64
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 12 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 3 · 2014: 1 · 2013: 3
- FWCI
- 6.13
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hal.science
- Licence
- other-oa
- Locations
- International Journal of Science Education (publishedVersion)
- University of Groningen research database (University of Groningen / Centre for Information Technology) (publishedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Trinity's Access to Research Output (TARA) (Trinity College Dublin) (submittedVersion)
- University of Groningen research database (University of Groningen / Centre for Information Technology) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › Science Education and Pedagogy
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Educational Strategies and Epistemologies
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Discourse Analysis in Language Studies
- Keywords
- rhetorical structure, genre analysis, reading strategies, scientific literacy, reading instruction
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