Reverse Outlining

An Article Analysis Tool

You’ve probably made an outline for a paper you’ve written in some class at some point in your academic career. Perhaps because this was genuinely useful. Perhaps because an instructor made you do it.

Maybe it looked like this:

Or maybe some one tried to make you think about writing as a hamburger:

Or they may have even taught you to think about funnels (I really hate this one):

So none of this is wrong but when students try to writing like this–or anyone, but why would anyone do so, if not forced?!– it usually come out terribly stilted and with no actual flow. YES you need structure, but if you don’t have something to SAY a logical structure is only going to make your writing worse, not better.

How does one learn to write academic prose and have a structure?

1. PRACTICE
2. FROM THE MISTAKES AND SUCCESSES OF OTHERS

Obvious right?! Well, this assignment is about number 2. It is about learning to read as the peer of the author and noticing not just what they say but how they say it and whether that is any good.

Think of your research for this class this way

• Find a topic that Interests you
• Find what others think about that topic
• Find primary evidence
• Develop an informed opinion about that evidence (and what others say about it)
• Express your ideas and relevant material supporting those ideas in a way others expert in the topic an understand

Generally speaking they happen in about this order, but it really isn’t that rigid. Once you start doing reading secondary literature you keep doing it throughout the research and writing process. Your topic may inform your final thesis (opinion) but that might also completely change as you find primary evidence through your readings and other matters. It’s messy. Or, at least its messy if its any good!

This assignment is about deepening your reading of secondary literature relevant to your final paper AND practicing thinking about how information is structured.

Steps

Downloadable Word Doc Template for this Assignment

1. Look over your annotated bibliography AND my feedback. Select one PR journal article or second choice a discrete essay in an edited volume that is NOT an introductory survey. DO NOT choose a chapter from a handbook or a chapter from a single author book. Ideally it will be something that seems like it will be SUPER USEFUL to your final paper and WELL WRITTEN. {Choose something you’re not going to hate spending time on.} Is there nothing like this on your annotated bibliography? Then it’s likely that you’re re doing that assignment. Take this opportunity to search for that great article. Struggling? Email me and ask me to suggest some readings.
2. Download a PDF of this article.
3. Decide if you’d rather print and scribble all over the print out or mark up with color highlighting in Adobe Reader or Acrobat. This is NOT an activity to do on a phone.
4. Skim the whole article to get a sense of structure and what to anticipate before you begin.
5. Read carefully the introduction. Find something you think is the main thesis of the article. Highlight it in green [or double underline it]. It may be as long as three sentences. To check that you found the right thesis, read the conclusion and the abstract, it should be restated in both at least to some degree.
6. Re read everything before the thesis. What information does the author think is important to introduce BEFORE they get to the thesis?
7. How does the author communicate the limits on the scope of the article? Highlight limits in red [or put square brackets around them]. How would you summarize these limits?
8. Does the author engage in any signposting? This involves say what will be talked about when or in what order in the article. Highlight signposts in blue [or mark with a dotted underline]. Summarize the nature of the signposting and after you’re done with the article come back and say whether or not you think the nature of the signposting was accurate or helpful.
9. Does the author engage in definition of terms? Highlight definitions in grey [ or draw a box around them].
10. Where does the author discuss other scholarship? Ignore footnotes, I mean where the author talks about the state of scholarship in the body of the text and whether they agree or disagree with it. Highlight such discussion in some other color [or put an asterisk next to it].
11. Now mark up at least substantial three paragraphs:
    1. highlight the topic sentence if there is one in yellow [or underline]
    2. highlight references to primary evidence in pink [or box]
    3. Summarize in your own words how the topic/analysis in this paragraph relates to the thesis of the article.
12. How does the author conclude? Do they suggest area for future research? Do they re iterate thesis? Do they point to the implications of this reseach on other research? What’s the strategy?
13. You now should have very colorful or scribbly PDF of the article you read . You’ll need to upload that to Bb. You’ll also need to upload the word document in which you answered these numbered questions. Below:
    1. try to create a bullet point or numbered outline of the main sections/ideas/topics covered in the article {something that looks like what one of your other instructors might recognize as a ‘outline’; see pics above}
    2. say what worked well and didn’t work well in the structure as you’ve outlined
    3. summarize what advice you might give to the author about how to improve the clarity of their writing

The process of reverse outlining is also commonly used by writers to help them revise and improve their writing.