Dr Kerry Hempenstall, Senior Industry Fellow, School of Education, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.

Updated July 2021

Over the years, as I read a research paper I look for a quote that triggers my memory of the gist of this paper or at least of a finding that can act as a building block in the support of evidence-based instruction. This strategy which commenced in about 1999 has developed into a very large file of about 200 pages of (mostly) literacy quotes. Though not in strict chronological order of publication, they do largely reflect articles published from 2021 back to around 1999.

When I decide to address a topic for my blog or for a journal article, the first action is to perform a keyword search of this document. For example, if I do an advanced pdf search for fluency, by pressing shift-control-f, I find it is mentioned 237 times and phonological 307 times. Using this facility, I can quickly find all the relevant quotes and identify the articles that then form the starting point for a subsequent broader literature search.