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Essential Skills for College and University Students

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About Course

This course is for anybody who is thinking of studying for a university degree and would like to develop the English reading and writing skills needed to succeed. You’ll be introduced to academic reading and effective note-making strategies. You’ll develop your essay writing. You’ll look at academic style and vocabulary-building strategies. You’ll also enhance your understanding of sentence structure and punctuation. You will learn through a range of engaging activities aimed at extending your existing language skills.

 

What Will You Learn?

  • After completing this course you will be able to:
  • follow an active reading method to help you read academic texts and make notes
  • critically read source texts and appropriately use the information they contain in your writing
  • link ideas in your writing so that your readers can easily understand your ideas
  • make use of vocabulary and grammatical structures to express yourself more formally
  • make the most of online dictionaries and look at ways to record new words for future use
  • understand how to organise and punctuate sentences to increase clarity.

Course Content

Introduction and Guidance

  • Lesson one

How to get a certificate

Week 1: Reading skills for university study

1 Getting started: looking at academic and specialist sources

1.1 What do you read?

1.2 What do university students have to read?

1.3 What academic sources look like

1.4 Where information sources are located

2 Challenges and strategies

2.1 The main challenges

2.2 Effective reading strategies

3 Reading actively

3.1 Skimming the text

3.2 Recalling your background knowledge about its topic

3.3 Scanning for specific information

3.4 In-depth reading to find key points

3.5 Making sense of texts containing difficult words

4 Making notes

4.1 Adding short notes in the margins of highlighted texts

4.2 Making notes in a notebook

5 Reorganising notes

5.1 Organising information into subtopics

5.2 Using a mind map

5.3 Using a table

6 This week’s quiz

7 Summary

Week 2: Using ideas and information from your readings in your writing

Introduction

Critically processing what you read

1.1 How to read critically

2 Using information from source texts

2.1 Your current use of information from sources

2.2 Reasons for using sources at university

2.3 Distinguishing between summaries, paraphrases and quotations

3 Reproducing information from sources

4 Paraphrasing text

4.1 Using synonyms

4.2 Using another word of the same word family

4.3 Reorganising the original text

5 Summarising text

5.1 What is a summary?

5.2 The 5 Rs of summarising: reduce, reject, reword, reproduce, repackage

5.3 Writing a longer summary

5.4 Organising a summary: order of information

6 Quoting

7 Referencing

7.1 Referencing in everyday life

7.2 Why should sources be cited in students’ assignments?

7.3 In-text citation

7.4 End-of-text-referencing

8 This week’s quiz

9 Summary

Week 3: Writing university assignments

Introduction

1 Everyday writing

1.1 Types and structure of everyday writing

2 University assignments

2.1 Types of assignment

2.2 Distinguishing between different types of assignment

2.3 Typical challenges

3 The essay-writing process

3.1 Some useful strategies

3.2 A step-by-step process

4 Planning an essay: the pre-writing steps

4.1 Reading the essay question

4.2 Identifying the instruction words

4.3 Identifying key content words

4.4 Practice understanding the essay question

4.5 Producing a draft outline

4.6 Practice producing draft outlines

4.7 Using diagrams to plan an assignment

4.8 Using diagrams to plan a science assignment

5 Planning a report

5.1 Planning a science or a technology report

5.2 Planning a business report

6 This week’s quiz

7 Summary

Week 4: Writing well-organised essays

1 How to successfully communicate with other people

1.1 Communicating in everyday life

1.2 Communicating with tutors through essays

2 From outline to essay

2.1 Analysing the assignment question and deciding what to read

2.2 Using a mind map to identify key themes

2.3 From mind map to revised outline

2.4 Writing an essay based on an outline

3 Writing an introduction

3.1 From general to specific

3.2 Practice writing introductions

3.2 Practice writing introductions

4 Organising paragraphs

4.1 From general to specific

4.2 Sequencing sentences within a paragraph

4.3 Using a paragraph to make a point

4.4 Presenting your paragraphs

5 Using the last paragraph to conclude the essay

6 This week’s quiz

7 Summary

Week 5: Linking ideas

Introduction

1 Helping your reader to follow your text

1.1 The house analogy

1.2 Linking the introduction to the assignment question

1.3 Linking the main body paragraphs to the introduction

2 Using familiar information to introduce new information

2.1 Linking paragraphs

2.2 Linking sentences

3 Using connectives to link information

3.1 Adding information and ideas

3.2 Giving examples

4 Comparing and contrasting ideas

4.1 Becoming familiar with words and phrases that signal comparison and contrast

4.2 Putting it into practice

5 Using linking words to express cause and effect relationships

5.1 Writing cause–effect sentences

6 Referring to visual information

7 This week’s quiz

8 Summary

Week 6: Understanding and using academic style

Introduction

1 Different situations call for different styles

1.1 Everyday talk

1.2 Written styles in everyday life

1.2 Written styles in everyday life

1.3 Use of specialist words in everyday life

2 Academic style

2.1 Distinguishing between formal and informal texts

3 The main features of academic style

3.1 Comparing formal and informal language

3.2 Identifying specific features of academic style

4 Using formal vocabulary

4.1 Replacing phrasal verbs with one-word equivalents

4.2 Becoming familiar with specialised vocabulary

5 Reporting information from sources

6 Hedging

7 This week’s quiz

8 Summary

Week 7: Learning new specialised and academic vocabulary

Introduction

1 Learning new academic and specialised words

1.1 Reflecting on your current vocabulary building strategies

1.2 Looking at some more strategies

2 Looking up words in an English language dictionary

2.1 Different types of dictionaries

2.2 Using an online search engine to find information about a word

2.3 Finding and understanding specific information about a word

2.4 Using several dictionaries to find more information about a word

2.5 Finding collocations

3 Understanding the grammatical information about a word

3.1 Countable and uncountable nouns

3.2 Distinguishing between countable and uncountable nouns

3.3 Word classes

3.4 Avoiding word class confusions

4 Deciding which words to learn

4.1 Understanding texts that contain specialised and academic vocabulary

4.2 Deciding which words to learn

4.3 Identifying specialised and general academic vocabulary

5 Recording vocabulary

5.1 Using vocabulary cards to record vocabulary

5.2 Using mind maps and tables to record vocabulary

6 This week’s quiz

7 Summary

Further reading

Week 8: Structuring sentences and word groups

Introduction

1 Units of language

2 Structuring noun groups

2.1 Giving information in noun groups

2.2 Ordering information before the main noun

2.3 Use of the apostrophe to express possession

2.4 Using noun groups to write more concisely

2.5 Using noun groups to label diagrams

2.6 Learning to recognise and use noun groups

3 Structuring verb groups

3.1 Indicating present, past and future in English

3.2 Selecting the most appropriate tense

3.3 Expressing the past

3.4 Using the past tense

4 Structuring simple sentences

4.1 Simple sentences and independent clauses

5 Structuring compound sentences

5.1 Using conjunctions in compound sentences

5.2 Using adverbs in compound sentences

6 Structuring a complex sentence

6.1 Connecting sentences with ‘if’ and ‘when’

6.2 Other connecting words that work like if and when

7 This week’s quiz

8 Summary

References

Acknowledgements

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