Procedures

This section will include some tips that will help improve your learning experiences.

See  MLA guidelines when submitting papers: MLA guidelines

The most important aspect is motivation. In  A Theory of Human Motivation (1943), Abraham Maslow proposed a Hierarchy of Needs that can be applied in educational and working environments.

Learning styles

Did you know that there are different types of learners.

1. The Aural Learner: Are you good at retelling stories you have heard? Do you find it helps to talk to someone when you have a problem? Can you listen to a lecture and remember large parts of it? Do you remember names and telephone numbers? Aural learners do well in pairwork, group work and discussions -formal and informal. They are also popular colleagues because people can talk to them about their problems and they know how to listen.
2. The Visual Learner: Do you think in pictures? When you want to remember something, do you look up at a movie screen in your head? Do you remember faces? Visual learners are good at reading research because they convert the text into pictures as they read. In lectures they might need some visual support. Visual learners like to write neatly and present a good layout of ideas in exams and assignments.
3. The Kinaesthetic Learner: Do you learn by doing things -touching them? Do you get restless in lectures because you want to move around? Do you use a lot of hand gestures when talking? Do you remember events clearly? Kinaesthetic learners do well in role play, where they can act out a scene. They also perform well on any course that involves doing projects.

We generally employ a combination of all three learning styles.

Looking for Information:

• Identify which books/journals/websites to use
• Select relevant parts of a text
• Evaluate sources

Using sources:

• Acknowledge soures of information
• synthesise information from more than one source
• write a bibliography correctly

Taking notes:

• To record information, help you concentrate ad memorize things, use them as the basis of a summary or in an essay.
• Choose a note-taking style that suits you, e.g. mind mapping or linear.
• Think about your purpose before you write, be clear and make “connections” between ideas.
• Use your own words as much as possible so that you can understand them better later; be proactive as this will also make them more meaningful.
• You may also annotate photocopied sheets or handouts or highlight them
• Be selective & only note down information thatwill be useful for your purposes (a project you need to write etc.)
• Use abbreviations and leave plenty of space in case you might want to add information later.

Tips for summarising:

• a) note down key points;
• b) organise the points;
• c) write your summary using these points.

Gathering information from the Internet

• Use search engines
• Learn to discriminate websites.
  • .edu refers to education websites (schools or universities)
  • .ac refers to academic websites (always linked to universities)
  • .gov refers to government websites, linked to official organisations
• You need to be cautious when using personal websites, unless you have a good knowledge of the author
• Blogs are websites that allow private opinions and commentaries. These can be institutional blogs or personal blogs. Institutional sites offer reliable information
• Wikis are websites co-authored by several authors and open to anyone who wants to add information; hence their authority can be questioned
• As with printed sources, when referencing an Internet source with a text you need the author’s surname and date when the page was last updated (if visible) and when you visited it last. Some pages have no single author but an organization.
  • title of the text
  • writer or writers (personal or institutional; it is important to find out who is responsible for the website so as to guaranty the quality of the information; in personal websites you might want to check the writer’s credentials)
  • date/currency of the information (when was the website last updated?; has it been reviewed appropriately?…)
  • content (what is the text about? How useful it is?; make sure it is relevant to your understanding of the topic)
  • accuracy (are there references to other sources to support ideas? are there links to other websites?)
  • audience (who is the intended reader? Has the article been written for academics, or at least for readers with a strong interest in the topic? or is it for the general reader (i.e a newspaper article)?; you can tell from the supoorting organisation and by the style of the language (formal, neutral, informal)

Gathering information from lectures: which involve the following features

• situation: state a hypothesis, present a theory, etc.; the scope of the lecture is usually limited; a preview of the content or structure of the lecture is offered; references to research in the subject (specific reading material) is generally offered too, together with background information.
• the lecturer refers to what students should/should not write down, indicating that they are referring back to previous lectures and remind students of the content of those lectures; the lecturer will also indicate his/her own interest in the subject (for example, any research he/she has done).
• problem: introduce different approaches to the subject; suggest alternative methods of doing something and discuss the benefits and drawbacks of the methods
• solution: look at the results, see how the theory works in practice
• implications of the solution
• evaluation of solution

Digresions: When lecturers make digressions listeners need to recognize them and decide if they are important or not; there are a number of reasons why lecturers might use them

• to give a short definition of a new technical term
• to give reference to a book on the topic
• to coment on the point they are making
• to give a general information about the course
• to give a personal anecdote to illustrate a point

Reading for academic purposes: the required strategies are:

• overviewing a text before starting to read it in order to decide its particular value
• reading for a specific purpose: reading selectively in order to identify words and ideas that might provide relevant information
• writing into reading as a way of better understanding the text
• identifying topic sentences in a text and recognising the supporting sentences
• text-mapping as a means of helping you undertand what you have read
• make use of graphs, figures, tables, etc. to help your undertanding of a text
• reading parts of a text more carefully to fully make use of it according to your purpose
• summarising useful information that you have found in a text

It is important to develop a flexible reading style and mastering the following different ways of reading dependng on the particular academic purpose. Remember that the more you read, the better you will read. Regular independent reading outside the classroom is essential.

Skimming is looking at a text very quickly in order to:

• identify the topic
• the main idea(s) of the text
• decide if the text is useful for your purposes
• look at the title, section headings, abstract provided by the writer, look at the index, read the first and last paragraphs in more detail; notice leading sentences in each paragraphs (paragraph leaders)

Predicting: using what you already know about the topic (brainstorming) and your previewing (skimming) of the text (past information) and what you want to learn about the topic (future information) in order to guess the kind of information you will need to extract from the text (present information).

Scanning: finding words (symbols, figures, etc.) that have a particular importance. You focus on small parts of the text at a time and look only for key words.

Search reading: quickly finding ideas which are important for you, ignoring the rest of the text (in skimming you read in more detail).

Careful reading: in order to understand the meaning of each word in the text or in the part of text that you are most interested in. You might do this in order to undertand details and also to infer meaning that has not been directly stated (see below).

Inferring: obtaining meaning from the text that the writer has not explicitly stated. Sometimes the writers has an implicit reader in mind and expect him /her to fill in informational gaps in the text. Sometimes it is the audience itself (the reader) who might want to infer the writer’s purpose. For more information read the following summary:ReadingStrategies

Dealing with unfamiliar words (sentences and paragraphs): first you need to decide if , for the purposes of your project/essay, it is necessary to undertand a certain word, in which case you can ignore it (many words do not form part of your “active vocabulary” and you don’t need to know their meaning in order to undertand the text as a whole). Alternatively the context in which the word is located may allow you to guess its meaning. If neither of these applies, you may have to look up the word in a dictionary. You should never use the dictionary in excess for it may prevent you from reading the text at a reasonable speed. However, words that appear repetitively in a text might have a special relevance. You might infer their meaning from their repetitions in different contexts (vocabulary acquisition).

Text analysis: it is helful to undertand the way a text is organised at a global level (structural organisation: title, abstract, introduction/background, method, results, conclusions, references/bibliography), at a local level (paragraph cohesion, semantic fields used, rhetorical devices, etc.).

Planning/writing

• Brainstorm ideas
• Plan written work
• Organise a text
• Link ideas effectively
• Summarise ideas
• Paraphrase ideas
• Write a conclusion
• Critically edit written work
  Avoid plagiarism

Writing

The reasons why students carry out extended academic writing activities may include:

• to develop and express their ideas;
• to provide evidence to support their ideas;
• to dispute or support existing theories;
• to display knowledge.

The type of writing required by students will be determined by the purpose of the writing. University students are often required to write notes from written sources, or when attending a lecture, seminar or tutorial. Students may also annotate lecture handouts, either by highlighting key points or writing notes/comments in the margins of the text. They are frequently asked to write essays which might be as short as 600 words or extended essays (sometimes called projects) which typical length is 3,000 words. Sometimes students are asked to write reports on project the have been working on during their course. Towards the end of their grade studies they will be expected to write a thesis. For a Master’s-level degree or a PhD (study period of minimum 5 years) this is called a dissertation.

Extended writing involves the following steps: 1) gathering information from various sources, 2) organising this information so that it appropriately answers the needs of the task that the writer has to complete; 3) planning the text; 4) drafting and redrafting the text until it communicates de information and ideas fully and clearly. In certain academic disciplines such as Education, Sociology, Audience Studies, Applied Linguistics etc., students may be required to write a case study (for instance the study of oral speech or written language used by a person or a group, an ethnography, etc.). Students are expected to take responsibility for projects, case studies, thesis or dissertations. In other words, they should work independently to a large extent, editing their work, submitting a first draft to the instructor, and redrafting the project after the tutor has given him/her feedback. The final product is almost less important that the process (redrafting and revising the content of your text in order to improve it) for it gives you the opportunity to practice academic skills and conventions (you will be given core texts to consult and you will have the opportunity to carry out some independent research, selecting relevant information, learning to avoid plagiarism -from Latin “theft”,also called “cheating” it is a form of academic miscondut which means copying sections -words, diagrams, ideas, images, etc., from another writer’s material in the pretence that they are your own-, and acknowledging the origin of your information).

Stages in writing:

• read the first draft;
• edit the draft (plan the contents in detail establishing a clear focus; make a rough outline plan of your ideas; decide objectively whether your ideas have been expressed clearly);
• think of a working title for the project;
• rearch for relevant information;
• write down the details of your sources (subject area/title/author/date of publication/intended reader/abstract & summary/why would you recommend this publication;
• make sure your text contains the following parts:
  • working title: a title that you initially think of in order to establish a focus for your research and writing; as part of the process of developing ideas, you might decide a final title that might differ from the working one
  • title page with your name;
  • abstract, a short summary of the whole project that appears at the beginning of pieces of academic writing to offer a brief overview of the contents of the article or presentation. There is usually a word limit (100-150 words is appropriate) and it does not include findings or conclusions. It should follow the following structure:
  • • a general statement
    • essential background information
    • an investigation into a particular topic or subject area
    • the implementation of the investigation in a real-world situation
• contents page (index);
• introduction with
  • background information (state of affairs)
  • justification of your choice of topic focus
  • outline of the structure of your project;
• main text with headings and subheadings, quotations and source-references in the text & figures and tables if necessary & thesis statement (your viewpoint or perspective); make sure you try to link the introduction and conclusion to the main body of the tex; make sure you use the correct font size for headings
• conclusion
  • summarizing the main ideas,
  • ommenting on these ideas;
  • explaining your purpose in writing the paper/project
  • predictions for future developments of the topic;
  • mentioning further research that might be required
  • limitations of the work covered by you;
• bibliography
  • Author’s surname+author’s initials+date of publication+title of article+in+editor’s surname+initial+other editors (eds.)+title of book+place of publication+name of publisher;

Arrange a tutorial with your instructor (within his/her appointment schedule) and show him/her the first draft of your project (average tutorial time oscillates from a few minutes to around 20 min. ; you should come prepared, having reflected on the questions you want to discuss and bring a notebook for note-taking to annotate information while it is still fresh in your head.

One of the most common problems with projects is that they tend to be too descriptive. Project writers should use information and ideas framed in their own terms.  This means that your reader expects to read about your point of view, although you need ot support it with evidence (primary and secondary sources) so that you strengthen your viewpoint and therefore provide a more compelling argument. Thus, it is important to develop the skill of selective reading and think critically about the content of sources. Once you have developed a viewpoint about the topic you should select the most appropriate sources to support it.

When incorporating evidence into your academic writing you can

a) use  direct quotations (the exact words of the writer in inverted comas or indented text for large quotations; you must acknowledge the writer in parenthetical citation-brackets-MLA style);

b) paraphrase or summarise the writer’s ideas in your own words as much as possible (you must also acknowledge the writer using parenthetical citation-brackets-MLA style).

Personal study skills:

• Work independently
• Manage time and meet deadlines
• Knowledge of Internet search engines
• Knowledge of word processing (Word, etc.,)
• Powerpoint for oral presentations

A poster presentation is a visual display where the student/s prepares a visual display outlining the work he/she has been involved in. A poster presentation will normally be displayed during a student conference and it should have the following features:

• strong visual impact
• clear  and comprehensive
• easy for the audience to follow
• content should be arranged in 3, 4, 5 columns; a brief introduction 3-5 sentences will appear in column 1 at the upper left; conclusion appear in the last column at the lower right. Method and results will fill the remaining space.

Oral Presentations

Oral presentations are usually the last part of the process of project or case study writing (see below). They consist in the transference of the information presenting it to other classmates or instructors in a clear, concise way. Oral presentations can be given by an individual students, or they can be group presentations.

Discussion

There are different types of group discurssions that can encourage student participation (see the following summary: DiscussionStudentParticipation. A practical example of connectness in discussions are “literature circles”, discussion groups such as the ones we develop in class. The following video presents the basic functioning of one of these discussion circles. They help provide interconnection between people on a given topic:

Another practical example of “interconnections” is to write a comparison essay between two or more literary works (or between literature and another artistic form such as music, painting, etc.). Watch the following video which provides some interesting clues: