Approach
The methods can be used at any point in a module of course, but the article analyses and the use of research papers obviously necessitate the students' knowing some advanced concepts so that they are able to argue and debate with at least understanding of ideas and principles if not specific points. So here are suggested mechanisms:
1 Structured writing
Many students find it difficult to write in a consistently coherent and lucid manner, whilst still trying to exhibit knowledge, understanding and critique of complex ideas. Having taught post graduate students (MA, MPhil, and PhD) who find this difficult, we thought that the best thing was to start off any course by emphasising the importance of language - written and spoken. So being able to understand the point of structure as well as the principles seemed to be a good starting point. It occurred to us that an excellent way to approach this would be through the use of research into topics on the syllabus and we hit upon the idea of 'reverse engineering abstracts'. Basically, each student (individually) is given a published paper (you could make it one of your own) photocopied so that the abstract is deleted. The task is then for the student to write an abstract themselves. I give students a week to do this, asking them to bring their completed abstracts to the next class, whereupon I give each of them the correct (author) abstract. The students then mark their own as compared to the author's and I then put students in groups of 4 to list the difficulties and discrepancies of the task between theirs and author abstracts. We then spend time discussing the writing processes, the abstracts themselves and not least of course, the paper that they've read and the main ideas therein, linking it to the syllabus topic that we're doing. I then take all the students' work in, commenting on their assessment of their own work, and the quality and structure too.