English: skills for learning - The Open University

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SWE_1B English: skills for learning
About this free course
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section-overview
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978-1-4730-1304-9 (.kdl)
978-1-4730-0536-5 (.epub) Contents . Introduction
. Learning outcomes
. Week 1
. 1 Getting started: looking at academic and specialist
sources
. 2 Challenges and strategies
. 3 Reading actively
. 4 Making notes
. 5 Reorganising notes
. Quiz - Week 1
. Week 1 Summary
. Week 2
. 1 Critically processing what you read
. 2 Using information from source texts
. 3 Reproducing information from sources
. 4 Paraphrasing text
. 5 Summarising text
. 6 Quoting
. 7 Referencing
. Quiz - Week 2
. Week 2 Summary
. Week 3
. 1 Everyday writing
. 2 University assignments
. 3 The essay-writing process
. 4 Planning an essay: the pre-writing steps
. 5 Planning a report
. Quiz - Week 3
. Week 3 Summary
. Week 4
. 1 How to successfully communicate with other people
. 2 From outline to essay
. 3 Writing an introduction
. 4 Organising paragraphs
. 5 Using the last paragraph to conclude the essay
. Quiz - Week 4
. Week 4 Summary
. Week 5
. 1 Helping your reader to follow your text
. 2 Using familiar information to introduce new information
. 3 Using connectives to link information
. 4 Comparing and contrasting ideas
. 5 Using linking words to express cause and effect
relationships
. 6 Referring to visual information
. Quiz - Week 5
. Week 5 Summary
. Week 6
. 1 Different situations call for different styles
. 2 Academic style
. 3 The main features of academic style
. 4 Using formal vocabulary
. 5 Reporting information from sources
. 6 Hedging
. Quiz - Week 6
. Week 6 Summary
. Week 7
. 1 Learning new academic and specialised words
. 2 Looking up words in an English language dictionary
. 3 Understanding the grammatical information about a word
. 4 Deciding which words to learn
. 5 Recording vocabulary
. Quiz - Week 7
. Week 7 Summary
. Week 8
. 1 Units of language
. 2 Structuring noun groups
. 3 Structuring verb groups
. 4 Structuring simple sentences
. 5 Structuring compound sentences
. 6 Structuring a complex sentence
. Quiz - Week 8
. Week 8 Summary
. Keep on learning
. References
. Acknowledgements Introduction 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.
English: skills for learning is a free course which lasts about 8 weeks,
with approximately 3 hours' study time each week. You can work through the
course at your own pace, so if you have more time one week there is no
problem with pushing on to complete another week's study. You can also take
as long as you want to complete it.
This material is based on an Open University badged course. In order to
gain a badge you must access and enrol on the full course on OpenLearn.
Badges are not accredited by The Open University but they're a great way to
demonstrate your interest in the subject and commitment to your career, and
to provide evidence of continuing professional development. Learning outcomes After studying this course, you should be able to:
. follow an active reading method when reading academic texts and
making notes
. critically read source texts and appropriately use the information
they contain
. make use of vocabulary and grammatical structures to increase formal
expression
. 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. Week 1 A good deal of a student's time is spent reading textbooks, academic books,
journals, encyclopaedias, newspapers, magazines and websites. These are the
sources of information and ideas that are needed to understand a subject.
Watch the introductory video from the author, Anna Calvi, as she introduces
the course and this week:
Video content is not available in this format.
Week 1 introduction
View transcript - Week 1 introduction
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If you decide to go to university, you will have to prepare for exams and
research essays. In order to do this, you will need to be able to read the
most appropriate sources and use some of the theories and information they
contain in your essays. You will learn to do this during the first two
weeks of this course.
This week you start by looking at the different texts that university
students read. You will then learn to follow an active reading method that
will help you read academic texts and make notes in the most effective way.
For some activities this week, and throughout the course, you will need
access to a printer.
By the end of this week, you will be able to:
. identify different texts university students read
. understand the most effective reading strategies
. actively read an academic text
. make useful notes. 1 Getting started: looking at academic and specialist sources [pic]
Figure 1 University students read print and online texts
In this section, you will consider first the texts you are already familiar
with and then the key resources university students need to read when
studying.
These resources provide the information, data, theories and evidence
necessary to explore and write about your subject. For this reason, they
are commonly referred to as 'sources'. These may