Learning in Higher Education

Learning in Higher Education

Contents
1. 2. 3. LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION .................. 4 LEARNING STYLES AND PREFERENCES .............. 4 LISTENING .............................................. 6

Getting the Most from a Lecture......................................... 6 Before the Lecture ........................................................ 6 During the Lecture ......................................................... 8 After the Lecture ........................................................10 Listening in Group Discussions ............................................10 Purposes of Notes ........................................................11 Forms of Notes ...........................................................12 Non-linear Notes .........................................................13 Making Best Use of Your Notes .........................................14 Using Notes for Assignments and Revision ..............................14 Organising Your Notes ....................................................15

4.

READING ............................................... 17

Purposes of Reading.......................................................17 Reading Quickly ...........................................................18 Reading Slowly and Critically .............................................18 Reading from the Computer ..............................................19 'Listening' through your Screen .........................................20

5.

WRITING ............................................... 21

The Process of Writing ...................................................21 Relevant Writing ..........................................................22 The Use of Other Peoples Ideas ........................................25 Ways to Avoid Plagiarism ................................................25 Referencing Conventions ..................................................26 Referencing from the Internet ..........................................28

6.

ESSAY WRITING ...................................... 29

Analyse the Questions ....................................................29 Plan Your Approach .......................................................30 Gather and Sort Information ............................................30 Structure your Essay .....................................................30

Write Your First Draft ...................................................30 Check Your Essay for Coherence and Relevance .......................31 Check Your Spelling, Sentence Structure and Punctuation ............31 Write Your Final Draft ...................................................31 Presentation of your writing .............................................31

7.

PREPARING FOR EXAMS .............................. 33

Thinking Positively.........................................................33 The Day of the Exam ....................................................33 What Is the Question Asking? ..........................................35 How Should You Tackle an Essay? .......................................36 Write a Beginning .........................................................36 Write a Middle ............................................................36 Write an End ..............................................................36

8.

PRESENTATIONS...................................... 37

Preparation ................................................................37 Overcoming Nerves .......................................................38 Delivery Techniques .......................................................38

9. USING VISUAL AIDS ................................. 39 10. GROUP PRESENTATIONS ............................. 39 11. ANSWERS .............................................. 40
Exercise 1 Answering the Question ...................................40

1. Learning in Higher Education

This section of the course looks at various aspects of how students learn and work at university. There is a section on learning styles that encourages you to consider what works best for you. Different people like to use various study methods and there is also usually a particular time of the day when we find we can concentrate best and seem to get more done. We will also look at ways of getting the most out of lectures and reading in order to produce better work and therefore maximise the marks received for written assignments. Tips on how to set out essays and to properly reference any work produced are also included. Exam techniques and presentation skills are also included in this section although they will not be covered until later in the course.

2. Learning Styles and Preferences

If you ever wondered why you might be more comfortable with some teachers than with others, it may relate to your learning style. Some people like to build up their information methodically bit by bit and respond well to teachers who present it that way. Others look for the 'big picture' and find it difficult to learn new information if they can't see how it fits in. Some theorists divide people into types according to their learning preferences, such as: visual related to writing, remembering what you've read, visual related to images, remembering graphs, pictures, shapes, colours,

auditory remembering things you have heard, physical remembering things you have done. You can have some fun with topics that fit into your own preferred way of learning. Learning does not have to mean just sitting turning over pages of a book with half your mind elsewhere. If the material is not presented in a way that you like, you can turn it into something more suitable by putting it in your own words, creating an image, making a recording or a model, or just by talking to someone about it. Think about how you like to receive your information. Most of us have a mixture of styles and preferences and won't necessarily always conform to 'type': but it is still worth thinking about how you might get your information in a way that suits you rather than just the way it is initially presented. The most important thing is to always work to your strengths. You will have a bit more flexibility to do this at university than at school, as your hours will not be so rigid. If you do your best work at midnight then this is when you should tackle any assignments you may have.

3. LISTENING
Lectures used to be the main medium of learning and for some students this is still the case. The effectiveness of lectures is being questioned in current thinking, as it can be a very passive process for students. The efficiency of lectures, on the other hand, means that information can be passed to a large number of people at once.

Getting the Most from a Lecture

If there is a danger of the lecture being too passive for students, then you will need to find ways of minimising that danger. The main point of this section is to encourage you to think of a lecture as something that happens in the middle of a process; in other words, you should also take into account what happens before and after the lecture.

Before the Lecture

Because it is such a passive process, the main function of a lecture is to get information across to the students. Many students feel comfortable with this; they like to think Ill get the information and then Ill give it back to the lecturer at an appropriate time. This will show that Ive learned something. Though this may happen sometimes, students who take this simple approach often fail to achieve real understanding. It is important for you to think about the purpose of the lecture. Is it trying to give you a detailed picture or a framework to assist your reading? If you have been given a framework, then the lecturer will not be happy just to get this back. You will be expected to have filled in some details for yourself. In fact, lecturers have many purposes for their lectures. This is demonstrated in the following statements from two lecturers from the same department:

If you think that these lecture notes will help you pass the exam, then youd better think again. We expect you to do some reading too. I give quite detailed lecture notes. If you use these along with the handouts Ive given you, you should have enough to pass the exam.

Some students ask whether it is right to have these differences its confusing and they would like all lecturers to be the same. But the topics are different and will require different approaches. The same lecturer may even give an outline one day and a detailed background to an experiment on another occasion. It is important that you are aware of this. Another feature that leads to different purposes and approaches is the lecturers own learning style. If a lecturer likes to get the big picture of a subject, then the lecture will be an overview possibly given very enthusiastically as the lecturer wants to motivate you to further study. On the other hand, a lecturer who likes to build up a subject logically, step by step, may show all these steps very clearly. Some lecturers will use the lecture in novel ways to pose questions, raise issues and even to disturb students. Having your ideas challenged can lead to an opening of your mind which is essential for learning something new. So, before the lecture, it is worth thinking about what the purpose might be. What do you already know about: the title of the lecture, the lecturers personality and preferences, where the lecture fits into the course? You might not know the answers to some of these questions. However, there are other questions you can ask: what do I already know about this topic? is there anything about this in the textbook (or other sources, e.g. the Internet)?

what was the last lecture about? is this lecture likely to be useful for my essay? will this lecture tell me about x? Your own purpose might not be quite the same as the lecturers. For instance, the lecturer might want to enthuse you with a passion for the subject, while all you want is a set of decent notes that will help you write your essay! By asking yourself questions before the lecture, you are preparing your mind for the lecture itself. If the lecture is part of a connected series, this is particularly helpful; but even if it is not, the more thinking you can do beforehand, the more likely you are to provide some fertile ground for the lecture.

During the Lecture

You have to do several things at once in a lecture, e.g. listen, think, write, sketch, ask questions It is no wonder people find it hard to concentrate. If you have prepared a little beforehand, it may be easier to work out what is going on; in any case, you should establish the general structure as soon as you can. Listen for signposts the lecturer might give, e.g. the objectives of this lecture are... I shall start with an overview and then describe a particular problem,

this lecture is in three sections... If a lecturer has a highly structured approach to lecturing, then patterned notes might be possible. For example, the response to this lecture is in three sections for some people is to draw three large branches extending from the topic in the centre of the page as shown below.

HEALTH

Health Promotion

Health Education

Health Protection

Governments White Paper: Designed To Care 1997

For people who prefer linear notes, there may still be a decision about what the page should look like. If there are likely to be a lot of technical words, would it be a good idea to draw a margin and write any unfamiliar words in it in order to look them up later? Or perhaps you could put any questions that occur to you in a margin. While the lecturer is talking, you will want to get down key points. Sometimes it can be hard to see what these are. For example, some lecturers get annoyed if students copy down every detail of anecdotes and examples; other lecturers say that the examples are what help the students remember the underlying principle.

The balance between listening and writing is up to you, even if lecturers complain about it. However, their advice might be useful, as it might not have occurred to you how important the examples could be. Learn from your approaches at lectures. You can experiment a little to find out what works best for you. If a particular approach has not been successful, find out what the main points were after the lecture by talking to the lecturer or other students or going to the library to look the topic up.

After the Lecture

Your work is not finished when the lecture is. Because of the passive nature of lectures, you need to do something so that you make notes instead of taking them. The very first useful thing you can do is number your pages (some people do this during the lecture). Unnumbered notes soon get into a muddle. It may also be useful to date the lecture pages chronology is often a reliable way to organise notes. It is a good idea to look at your notes again within 24 hours. This is before you have forgotten what your own shorthand might mean. If you think there is a danger that your notes will not be easy to understand later, then rewrite them so that they are. Many students find it useful to compare lecture notes with other students. This can be very reassuring. If it also promotes discussion on the topic, that will help your learning as well.

Listening in Group Discussions

A more interactive approach to listening is when you have the opportunity to contribute to what is being said. Group discussions are very useful because it is here that you can try out your ideas and then refine them in the light of other peoples comments. Some students are afraid to do this for fear of appearing stupid; however once you have realised that you have the right to put forward your ideas and defend them, but change your mind about them later if appropriate, then you will realise how useful discussions can be for learning. Listening skills will help this refinement. By listening to counter examples to your ideas, you will be able to refine your defence of them or accept that there are alternative explanations. In a lively discussion, there are many things that can get in the way of this process. Even where you sit in the discussion can make a difference. Students with poor hearing may find they are sitting in the wrong place to hear the speakers properly. Noise in the communication can come from less obvious sources. For example, people who have strong opinions or prejudices might not be prepared to listen to counter arguments. 10

Some people may have an underlying motive for the discussion taking a particular direction (for example, to promote a political view). Sometimes people think others have a hidden motive, when they dont. To help listening when a speaker is not clear, good feedback is necessary. Listeners may respond by trying to repeat back to the speaker in their own words what they think the speaker has said; this can highlight any misunderstandings. It can be useful to make notes of a group discussion especially if some action is expected as an outcome of the discussion. The advice for lecture notes would be useful for group work but there is far less likely to be a structure in a group discussion. A good facilitator might try to introduce a structure for ease of understanding, by summing up the main points every so often and indicating how they relate to each other.

Purposes of Notes
Some of the broad purposes for having notes are: they remind us of important points

they summarise large amounts of material

they assist learning by forcing us to process information. When you are writing an essay, preparing a presentation or revising for an exam you will be very grateful that you have a set of notes to work from and there will be no question in your mind that notes serve a useful purpose. However, when students take notes, they often forget about these purposes. Having your purpose in mind as far as possible at the start will help you to make more useful notes.

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Even the words take notes and make notes indicate different approaches. when you take notes, you are taking someone elses words and writing them down, for a purpose which may not be very clear, when you make notes, you are making the ideas your own for your own purpose.

Forms of Notes
Notes dont have to consist of a set of phrases or sentences on l ined paper. They can appear in many guises. If someone is partially sighted, for example, their notes might be in Braille or on tape. Students with dyslexia also often prefer to have their notes on tape, though there are disadvantages (for example, it can be more difficult to find a specific part of a tape). Before reading on, can you think of as many different formats for notes as possible? Bear in mind the sorts of learning preferences people have. Here are just some suggestions. The book itself (if it is your own!) as a source of notes margin comments, underlined words, key points highlighted in appropriate colours, pieces of paper with headings inserted at appropriate pages. Notes in diagram form sometimes called spider diagrams, mind-maps, etc, Drawings or a story board, Notes on index cards, put in alphabetical order, Notes on audio tape perhaps using a Dictaphone, Notes kept on a computer, e.g. using the Notepad feature; key points cut and pasted into a word-processed document.

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Most notes, however, are linear notes that is, they go across and down the page starting at the top left hand corner. Features from the other approaches may help you to augment your linear notes; for example, can you add colour or shape to them? It is worth exploring a couple of other methods in a little more detail. Use these ideas to prompt ideas of your own.

Non-linear Notes
The main distinct approach is the non-linear approach to note making which has several different names, such as mind maps, spider diagrams etc. The example below shows how this is done. Starting with the main topic in the middle of the page, several branches are drawn from this with the most important subtopics written on them. Each branch can be further subdivided, until you are getting down to a very detailed level. Each branch could be a different colour. Pictures and links are encouraged in this approach.
info help read file compare tapes cutline edit style Lectures concentration notes understanding use follow up read file discuss discussion start research map review audience cheap valuable purpose personality find absorb habit? frame reading notes tape?

afterwards

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The benefit of this approach is that it forces you to identify key words and to group and link ideas together. It can be quite hard to do this in some circumstances (e.g. a lecture) and non-linear lecture notes might be very rough but made to look more artistic later. Some people find it easier to see the application of non-linear notes to mapping the chapter of a book or planning an essay.

Making Best Use of Your Notes

If you have written notes for a specific purpose, then it will not be too hard to see what use they will have. They may have more than one use, of course, and some of these uses may be unexpected. This means that you have to know what notes you have and where to find them.

Using Notes for Assignments and Revision

When you have a useful set of notes, it will be important to see how they relate to your assignment topic. Some of your notes may not be relevant for this assignment. There is a danger that students try to cover every piece of information just because they have notes on it. Use your notes intelligently in conjunction with the question asked in the assignment. For exams, you are not quite sure what is going to be relevant and what is not. Your notes will be an important guide as to what the coverage might be. As exams are based more on memory than many learning tasks, establishing a system of frequent review might help you. For example: Re-read your notes: 24 hours after you have written them then a week later then a month later then six months later

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This is quite a difficult routine to establish, but students who use it say that it helps. If you start this process at the beginning of a course, then you will build up slowly into the appropriate routine. In week 1, for instance, you would only be reading the previous days notes. Even if you dont use such a strict revision process, it is worth thinking about the principles involved. Put simply, these are: review soon after you have taken the notes, review frequently. To do this, you need to be very organised.

Organising Your Notes

Re-reading your notes will also give you the opportunity to edit them. Cross-reference the main ideas, compare and contrast different theories, and add further comments. In other words, read with a purpose as well. Organising your notes would also include: filing them you need to establish some kind of system for storing your notes where you can find them. It is very easy to end up with a huge pile of notes which are so disorganised that you cant find anything. A lot of the time you have invested in making your notes will be wasted if you dont take the time to work out a simple and effective filing system classifying them notes could be classified under author, but you may find it more useful to classify them under subject. This way you can build up your own small library of materials for each subject that you are studying. keeping them there will come a time when you will need to discard some of your notes. However, dont be too hasty.

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Being over-anxious to have a clearout can often lead to articles being thrown out that could come in useful at a later date. Dont assume that because you are moving into another year of study, e.g. from 1st to 2nd year, that you wont need the notes you made in first year. You will probably find yourself looking back to these notes in order to build on previous knowledge. Its probably safer and wiser to keep your notes for the whole length of the course.

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4. READING
You can remember about 20 per cent of what you read. This is why at university we make notes on important things and read selectively to concentrate on the most important issues. You will be given a short list of recommended reading for your essay. This short section offers you some ways of approaching the reading you are expected to do.

Purposes of Reading
As with listening, asking a question before reading is a very useful starting point. For example, a student might have been asked to write a psychology essay on the following topic: How effective is the use of unpleasant images in changing people's attitudes to smoking? The essay is about attitudes and the student will be looking for evidence to support or refute the idea that unpleasant images can change people's attitudes. They will also look for evidence that specifically relates to smoking. These are some of the thought processes a good student might have: This evening I want to find out as much as I can about the use of images in attitude change. I'll use the indexes and contents pages to find out what my books say about it. Some questions are: How might images change attitude? What do the books say about unpleasant images?

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Reading Quickly
You won't be able to read every single page of every book that is recommended by your lecturers. Some students feel very uncomfortable about this. It is helpful to develop techniques of scanning and skimming books so that you can find the bits where you should be giving your attention. As well as scanning contents pages and indexes, it is worth looking for introductions, summaries and conclusions to the book, to sections or to individual chapters. These can all be useful for providing an overview, especially when you look at them with a specific question in mind. To skim read a section or chapter to see how useful it is, you can quickly look down the page for particular words in our example, you might look for 'image', 'attitude' or even 'smoking'. Being alert to these words does help you to spot them more quickly. If the book doesn't seem to be saying much about your main themes, is it going to be useful? It still might: there are other words that might catch your eye that you hadn't anticipated, such as 'scare tactics' or 'undesirable'. As you skim, you might also see lots of big words that you don't know. These can be off-putting, but you are not reading closely at the moment so you can worry about them later. Another good idea is to read the first sentence in every paragraph. Some writers make their first sentence the most important one other sentences provided detail or examples of the point they are making. (This is useful to know about for your own writing too.)

Reading Slowly and Critically

When you have found a passage or chapter you think is important, then you will want to set aside an appropriate time to read in depth and to read critically to try to answer your question. Your time management will help here: you might say, for example, 'I'll allocate no more than two hours to this' and try to complete the task in that time. If you do it more quickly,

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that's a bonus; if it looks as if it needs longer, then you will need another study session. This helps you feel that the reading is manageable. Being critical doesn't mean that you have to reject everything the writer has said' it does mean that you should retain your questioning approach. There are many more questions that might be going through your mind now: How is the chapter structured? What is the author's main point and do I agree with it? Does it contradict anything I have read before? What would be the most useful format for my notes? Is there anything here I would want to quote directly? (not the whole chapter though!) What does this word mean? For example, if you were reading about attitudes, you might come across the expression 'cognitive dissonance' and you might not understand it. If it's frequently found in the material you have been asked to read, then you need to take the time to ensure you understand its meaning. The best thing to do is to read something carefully and then try to write the main idea in your own words. Then you can check with the original to see whether you have understood it correctly.

Reading from the Computer

When you have finally found the information you want, there may be quite a lot of it. Having information on a screen is not quite the same as having a physical book in your hands that you can flick through, check the index, mark and so on. However, some of these facilities may actually be available to you, in a slightly different form:

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flicking through scroll through the document to get an overall feel for what it is about, checking the index using your research question, perform a search on the document with a key word. Note the context where it appears and ask yourself whether this might be relevant to your purposes, marking relevant paragraphs cut out relevant paragraphs and put them in a separate file, using the notepad facility or a word processing package. Remember that this is still original material and you need to say where it comes from if you ever use it in your essay. Many people would still find this trickier than reading a physical document. It may be a question of getting used to it; however, if you cant print out the document, it might make more sense to regard it as a lecture rather than a book and listen to it instead, as described below.

'Listening' through your Screen

In a typical lecture, you only hear the material once and your notes have to be your record of the event. You could say the same of the book that is much in demand and is due back in the library in an hour. It really does concentrate the mind, thinking that this is the only opportunity to get the information I need. If you have a document to read on a computer, it may be helpful to concentrate your mind in the same way. For example, you can decide that you are only going to read it once and write down the most important points. Look out for the 'signpost' words and clues to the structure such as headings and highlighted words, as you might listen for emphasis in a lecture. Just as in a lecture, you may find that you want to go back to the topic later and do some further reading or 'listening'. But thinking about it as a lecture on a computer may save you hours of wading through pages of printouts from the Internet. If you just try looking up 'cognitive dissonance' on a search engine, you will probably see what I mean! 20

5. WRITING
Purposes of Writing Before you read on, you might want to spend a moment or so thinking about the reasons most academic courses give you written assignments to do. Writing can: reinforce and consolidate learning it is very often the case that until you are forced to write about something, you don't really know how much you actually know about the subject. Having to write about a particular subject will force you to consider what you have learned and what you still need to learn

demonstrate your knowledge and understanding assignments give you the opportunity to demonstrate that you have understood the concepts and theories taught on your course and can apply them to the real situation. This is good practice for you in the future when you are required to explain and present arguments at work. You will also be able to see for yourself the relevance and application of what you have been studying

provide opportunities for evaluation of learning a written assignment gives your tutor the opportunity to identify and correct any gaps in your understanding of the subject. Thus, assignments are very useful progress indicators both for you and your tutor. Feedback from your tutor is an important factor in your ability to improve your learning and writing.

The Process of Writing

Writing depends on you being both creative and critical. If you try to be both at the same time it can cause blocks.

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To overcome a writing block, try one of the following: write down all the points you want to mention as they come into your head and don't put them into the right order until a day or so later, write down what you know already about the subject, then identify any gaps in your knowledge, leave the introduction until last, make a mind-map talk to someone else about your ideas, use the outlining facility of a word-processing package (e.g. Word) to start you off. People are different in the ways they can get started. Some people like to plan carefully before they write anything; others like to find out what they are thinking by writing a draft for themselves that no one else sees. It is a good idea to leave your rewriting until a later date. You are then using the critical part of your brain rather than the creative part. This means you have to plan your time appropriately to allow for more than one draft.

Relevant Writing
Not answering the question is one of the most common pitfalls of student writing. Writing a very good answer to a question that wasn't set will gain you no marks at all. We will keep coming back to this point when we look at each of the types of writing you may be asked to do. For now, try the following exercise:

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Exercise 1 Answering the Question

Most assignments will have words that contain key instructions. The following is a list of key instruction words: a. b. c. d. discuss compare evaluate describe e. f. g. illustrate contrast criticise

Read through the following explanations. Now, using the list of key words above, assign one key instruction to each of the explanations. Try to decide for yourself what the answer is before checking. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. appraise or assess the worth of something, explain the differences; explain the distinction between, examine or argue; give reasons for and against, give your opinion; make a judgement about the concept of, describe an example; or using a figure, explain, look for similarities and differences, give a detailed account; explain.

(answers at the end on the booklet)

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Sometimes, there will be three or four different parts to a question. If this is the case, you must make sure that you have answered all parts. The next exercise is an example of a question that contains three parts. In some cases, particularly in assignments that require short answers, individual marks are awarded to each part of the question. This allocation of marks can be extremely useful in determining how much time and effort you should spend on each part of the assignment. When answering an assignment question, therefore, you need to: read and re-read the question thoroughly before making a start on the assignment, allocate appropriate time and effort to the various parts of the assignment refer back to the question throughout your assignment to make sure that you are on the right track and have not strayed from the precise wording of the question. Having a copy of the question in front of you (pinned to the wall or clearly positioned on your desk) will help. Now try the following exercise.

Exercise 2
Having completed the first exercise, consider the following assignment question.

Leaders are born and not made.

Discuss this statement with reference to your own experience. Evaluate the role of education in improving leadership performance. Suggest three forms of training that would be beneficial in improving leadership performance.

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This assignment contains three parts but provides no information on how many marks will be allocated to each part. The key instructions are 'discuss', 'evaluate' and 'suggest'. These three words and your understanding of them are crucial in answering all three parts of this question. By breaking the question into parts and highlighting the instructions, you will see exactly what the question is asking:

discuss this statement with reference to your own experience, evaluate the role of education in improving leadership performance, suggest three forms of training that would be beneficial in improving leadership performance. Breaking the assignment down into parts will help you to formulate the question better in your own mind and structure your answer. Use a highlighter and highlight the key words. This way, you will keep yourself focused on the actual requirements of the question.

The Use of Other Peoples Ideas

For most academic essays or reports, you will depend on material from other writers. If you do not acknowledge the fact that you are using other writers, you are plagiarising. It is wrong to take someone else's work and pass it off as your own and university lecturers and tutors have been asked to be very strict about this.

Ways to Avoid Plagiarism

Use your own words as much as possible. When making notes from books, lectures, electronic media or other sources, try to put the main point into your own words, e.g.:

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close the book and don't look at it again until you have summarised the key points yourself (if you're tempted to open the book again, sit on it!), try to remember the main points of the lecture or electronic text, write them down and then check any notes you took. Acknowledge ideas and direct speech from other people. Academic writing always uses other people's ideas as background or evidence for the new piece of work. It saves people having to rediscover ideas all the time. If you use someone else's idea, then say so. If you use their direct speech (the actual words they wrote) then you must put it in inverted commas.

Referencing Conventions
Different subject areas might use different conventions for using references. For example, you might see either: The ideas originated with Smith2 who ran three test experiments. The ideas originated with Smith (1998) who ran three test experiments. The second example is now the more usual the Harvard Method and is the one used here. But check with your lecturers, tutors or department to see what is expected in your own subject.

The Harvard Method of Referencing There are various ways in which you can acknowledge the source of the writing. The following are some examples: Indirect Referencing here you acknowledge the source of the writing by putting it into your own words. For example: Occasionally a writer will challenge the prevailing methodologies. Buzan (1989), for instance, believes that linear note taking does not follow the

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natural patterns of the brain. connections between ideas.

Buzan's mind-maps make non-linear

Direct Quotation if you only want to refer to a few words, then acknowledge the source and put the exact words in quotation marks: The advice that Ellis and Hopkins (1985) give about the use of reference material, stress the need to use evidence to support your statements. This evidence, they suggest, might come in the form of a survey, statistics, or a quotation from a recognised authority. On the other hand, you might want to refer to a longer passage. In this case, you should indent it from your main text:

Until students understand the specific academic use of the word argument, they are unable to participate fully in the academic community. Nightingale (1988) points to research that suggests that this lack of participation is at the heart of the literacy problem: They discovered that there was, in fact, little need for simplistic remedial programmes aimed at usage, mechanics or spelling, or even developing syntactic sophistication. There were, however, serious deficiencies in students' higher order skills such as their capacity to analyse information critically and to extend their argument beyond the kinds of platitude used by the public media. It is only when students try to cope with these problems that their writing becomes incoherent.

Note that in all these examples, the convention is to give the author and the date of publication. At the end of your essay or report you must give the full source. Using the Harvard method, these references would appear as follows: REFERENCES Buzan, T (1989) Use Your Head, BBC Books, 27

Ellis, R and Hopkins, K (1985) How to Succeed in Written Work and Study, Collins, Nightingale, P (1988) Language and Learning: A Bibliographical Essay in G Taylor et al (eds) Literacy by Degrees SRHE/Open University Press.

The references are presented in alphabetical order according to the surname of the author. If you are unable to use italics for the title of a book or journal, then it is acceptable to underline it. Note that individual articles are not italicised you can, however, put inverted commas round them though not everybody does. Until you are confident about using references, it is a good idea to see how it is done in academic textbooks and follow the style. Remember, though, that if your department wants you to use a particular style, that is the one you should follow.

Referencing from the Internet

With an increased use of the Internet, students frequently want to refer to websites or correspondence. The basis for advice is to try to keep as close to the Harvard method as you can and add relevant information that might help your reader to find it. Walker (1997) adds the version or file number, the document date or date of last revision, the address and the date of access. Here is an example of a link that might be quoted (and one that is worth looking at for advice on this): Walker, J Columbia Online Style: MLA-Style Citations of Electronic Sources.Vers.1.2 Rev.11/97. http://www/cas/usf.edu.english/walker/mlahtml (18 March 1998)

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6. ESSAY WRITING
The following are suggested stages for writing an essay. Note that they do not all have to be completed on the same day. In fact, your essay will benefit from being written over several days (if not weeks). analyse the question, plan your approach, gather and sort information, structure your essay, write your first draft, check your essay for coherence and relevance, check your spelling, sentence structure and punctuation, write your final draft, proof-read your final draft. We will now take a brief look at each.

Analyse the Questions

Allow yourself time to understand the question and make sure you know: the topic - what it is about, the focus - what the scope is, the limitations, the key instruction - what you have been asked to do. Keep going back to the question.

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Plan Your Approach

It is probably worth thinking about your essay structure even before you start your reading. Think about the implications of the question and how this might affect your planning. This will help you to focus your reading. You can always change your plan later. Most essays have an argument, which can be traced throughout. What is yours likely to be? Some people like to return to plan their essay briefly, some want more detail and some dont plan until after their first draft. Go with what feels most comfortable.

Gather and Sort Information

Look for information, which specifically relates to the question rather than trying to read a whole book. Any information you are going to use in your essay is evidence. It should be used to support statements, which you yourself are making. Think about what you are going to quote directly and what you are going to put into your own words.

Structure your Essay

Does the information you have gathered and sorted fit in with your rough plan, whether it is a mental or written down one? Perhaps the following will force you to rethink your ideas - if so, you should go back to the question to make sure youre still on target to answer it.

Write Your First Draft

Your first draft might be very rough. If you are still unsure of the sequence of your themes, you could write each paragraph on a separate sheet and then fit them together later. If you do this, you will need to make sure that you include links between the themes. The main thing is to get words on paper; you can always polish them up later.

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Check Your Essay for Coherence and Relevance

Check that you have a logical sequence and that the connections are clearly made between the different parts of your essay. For instance, your conclusion should be the result of the arguments put forward in your essay and should resolve the problem that was explained at the beginning of your essay.

Check Your Spelling, Sentence Structure and Punctuation

If you are a computer user, you should use the spell-checking and thesaurus facilities.

Write Your Final Draft

Make sure that your final draft is neatly laid out. Use wide margins, wellspaced paragraphs, neat handwriting and do not add any pen marks which are not appropriate.

Presentation of your writing

We all know how important first impressions can be, and this is particularly true of your writing. Your reader will expect it to look like an academic piece of writing. This includes being accurate for spelling, grammar, punctuation, use of vocabulary and sentence structure. You should leave these issues to the final draft of your writing and then consider them very carefully indeed. When you write your final draft, you should have your reader in mind. What will your document look like? Here are some tips: use a word processor or typewriter to produce the final version of your work. If this is not possible, make sure that your handwriting is neat and tidy, use standard A4 size paper, 31

have a clear title page which includes your name, your course and subject, the date and for whom the assignment is intended and, of course, an appropriate title, number your pages, use double spacing to make reading easier, provide space for the reader's comments by leaving wide margins, don't write to the very bottom of the page; leave about 5 cm. This will also be useful for comments, include a list of contents to help your reader understand the structure of your work. A separate list of any diagrams, tables or graphs should be included if necessary, make sure that the pages are firmly bound together, keep a copy of your own work, follow any specific instructions about layout or presentation, e.g. the use of numbered headings, referencing conventions, use a spell-checker and a grammar checker if you can understand it. proof-read carefully to pick up small mistakes and typographical errors, make sure you have followed the instructions: asked for a report, don't hand in an essay. if you were

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7. Preparing for Exams

One of the best ways you can help yourself to prepare for the exam is to see yourself in as much detail as possible doing what needs to be done to be successful in it.

Thinking Positively
This has two benefits: you have to work out what needs to be done so you are more likely to do it positive visualisation has been proven to be successful; many athletes use it to help them with their sport, for example. Picture yourself on the day of the exam looking at the questions and knowing that you can answer them. If you think you are likely to have an attack of nerves, picture yourself recovering from that allowing yourself time to get yourself composed. See yourself analysing each question carefully and spending a sensible length of time answering it. See yourself looking into your own mind for your 'triggers' to the information you need. That might help you to determine how these triggers should be put together in the way that is best for you.

The Day of the Exam

On the front page of your exam paper, you will see what is known as rubric the basic instructions for the exam. This includes how many questions you have to answer and any restrictions e.g. which sections they should come from. Make sure you follow these instructions carefully as it would be a pity to lose marks because you have not answered questions from the correct section.

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Here is a rather complicated exam paper rubric from a few years ago. 9.30-12.30 Attempt question 1 and THREE others, at least ONE from Section B and ONE from Section C. (Question 1 carries 31 marks and all other questions 23 marks.) Students had 180 minutes to cope with this. What was the best way of spending this time? First of all, you will need some time to read over the paper and work out which questions to answer as well as question 1. If you allow 10 minutes for this, this gives some time to get used to being in an exam (and get over the panic!) Another 10 minutes at the end of a three- hour exams gives some flexibility in case youve been struggling. So that leaves 160 minutes. Almost a third of the marks come from question 1, so perhaps almost a third of the time should be allocated to it say 55 minutes. That leaves 105 minutes for the other three questions that neatly divides into 35 minutes each. So a good strategy for this exam would be: Reading the paper, settling down Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Checking over 10 mins 55 mins 35 mins 35 mins 35 mins 10 mins

Some people, however, would prefer simply to launch into question 1 and worry about the rest of the paper later. This would be OK, as long as you leave sufficient time. If you spent much more than an hour on question 1, then you would not be allowing sufficient time for the other questions. Sometimes, people ask whether it would be a good idea to concentrate on your three best questions in a situation like this. The advice is that it rarely would be. In an essay type question, the first 25% is relatively

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easy to get the last 25% almost impossible. In that case, you will get more marks for trying more questions. Similarly, in multiple choice exams, you might have 60 minutes to answer 20 questions. Effectively that gives you three minutes to read and answer each question. Any question where you spend any longer will mean a sacrifice in one of the other questions. It may not seem fair, but planning your time is a necessary part of your exam strategy.

What Is the Question Asking?

Now, we come to the questions themselves. Whether it is a maths problem or an essay, it is vital that you answer the question asked. Look out for instruction words: calculate, estimate, discuss, evaluate. When the instruction is a verb, it is fairly clear. Sometimes, however, you have to work out the instruction as in the following example. What tools are available to a government to control the growth of the money supply? Answer with reference to the policy of UK monetary targeting during the 1980s. The broad topic that the students will have been studying is growth of the money supply. There is a big danger that a student will remember the causes of growth of the money supply and ignore all the other words in the question. The question focuses on control of the growth and also UK targeting and the 80s. Causes are not mentioned at all. The instruction is hidden in the words what tools. You would be expected to give examples of tools and justify your choice of examples. It wont necessarily work every time, but it is worth looking at questions and asking yourself: What is the broad topic that we studied that this relates to? How is the question focused? (e.g. are there any time periods mentioned, or specific groups of people?) What is the instruction word? 35

Look back at the section on writing at university. You will see that we covered this then as well. It is just that you have to respond rather more quickly under exam conditions.

How Should You Tackle an Essay?

When you have analysed the question, a lot of ideas may come to you at once. The problem is that they might not come in the right order. You could jot them down quickly and then number them to show in which order you should present them in your essay. You can always score this plan out before you hand your paper in (or leave it, if you think it might help the examiner understand what you were trying to do).

Write a Beginning
If you find you cant think how to start your essay, dont be afraid to leave a space and write your beginning last. The beginning is where you set out your stall what you are going to do to answer the question. You might not be fully aware of this until you have done it. (It depends on what kind of writer you are).

Write a Middle
This is the main body of your essay. Start a new paragraph for each new point or theme if you have made a plan, you have probably identified these. Link your sentences and paragraphs with signposts that help the reader. Use examples and evidence to back up your main argument.

Write an End
Remember the logic of your argument. Your end is likely to one of the following: Summary of the main points. Therefore or The conclusion is xxxx because. 36

8. Presentations
As part of this course, you will participate in a small group presentation towards the end of the course. By presenting as part of a group, you will have the opportunity to develop your presentation skills and also the ability to work effectively with others. Most employers today highly value good presentation skills and the ability to work well as part of a team. Indeed it is not unusual to be asked to give a presentation as part of a job interview. The following paragraphs give an outline of the important points to consider when giving presentations in general. In addition, there are tips on how to present as part of a group.

Preparation
This is the most important aspect of a successful presentation. Failure to prepare can only lead to disaster. Consider the following: If a presentation is being formally assessed, make sure you know what the criteria for assessment are. It is vital that you know your material well. Write out what you want to say in detail and then work on reducing it to headings and prompts which can be put onto cards, overheads etc. Rehearse you can do this by talking into a mirror, tape recorder or even to a willing audience of family or friends. Timing is vital if you are asked to speak for 10 minutes you must stick to this. Ensure you know how to operate any equipment you wish to use such as overhead projectors or computers before you start the presentation. 37

Overcoming Nerves
Most people find the prospect of standing up and speaking in front of an audience daunting. However you can use various techniques to overcome this. Thorough preparation obviously helps, as you will feel more confident and in control if you have taken the steps outlined above. You could also try some of the following: Relaxation techniques such as breathing exercises. Make sure you turn up on time it is advisable to arrive early to get all your preparations out of the way before your audience arrives. Have a drink of water to hand in case nerves cause your mouth to go dry.

Delivery Techniques
Make eye contact with the audience throughout the presentation If you find this difficult you could look slightly over their heads this will still give the impression you are looking at them. Speak in a slow, clear and slightly louder voice than normal. Try to relax and smile where appropriate. Be conscious of your non-verbal communication and try to avoid moving around too much or fidgeting. Let the audience know if you prefer them to ask questions as the end or as you go through the presentation.

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9. Using Visual Aids

Make sure you know how to work equipment. Dont distribute handouts before the end, as people may tend to read them rather than focus on you. When using an overhead projector: switch it off when you are not showing a slide as the blank screen can be distracting, think about where you are standing dont block the screen, use a pen to point out on the slide where you want the audience to focus, employ show and reveal technique cover up the slide and progressively uncover the information as you go through it, dont put too much information on each slide or use too many coloured pens.

10. Group Presentations

The general points above are relevant for group presentations, but there are other considerations: Share the workload equally. Clarify the tasks each member of the group is responsible for. Discuss any concerns or differences of opinion. If agreement cant be reached, put it to a vote and go with the majority. Be clear about each persons role during the presentation. Work and present co-operatively dont hog the limelight. Be supportive when other group members are presenting e.g. smile encouragingly, display positive body language. Above all try to relax and enjoy the experience! 39

11. Answers
Exercise 1 Answering the Question
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. c f a g e b d

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