We hope that one result of studying this unit is that you will feel more confident about using your academic skills. In this unit, these skills include:
However, referring to these skills as ‘academic? creates the risk that they are only seen as useful for a unit of study. In this sense they might be seen as part of a surface or perhaps a strategic approach to learning. Yet all the academic skills that are listed above can be useful in other situations. For example, when you read something like a cookery book or a newspaper article, it is likely that you are reading to understand the main points about how to cook something or about a topic in the news.
There are also situations in real life where you might have to take notes or summarise key points. This occurs in many areas of work, for example, where it is useful to keep notes about decisions reached at a meeting. To make these notes, you have to select which parts of the discussion are recorded. Although you may have to use written communication in many areas of your life, it is probably true that writing in an academic style is perhaps the most ‘specialised? of these academic skills. For example, the assignments for a unit of study are not exactly the same as other sorts of writing. They have their own rules which may include, for example, the need for an introductory paragraph in an essay.
This activity is an opportunity to reflect on some of the academic skills that you have used while studying this section. In order to do this you need to select an activity from this section. Draw up a chart similar to the one below.
| Activity from Section 3 | What academic skills did I use? | Are there any other ways I could use this skill? |
|---|---|---|
| Activity 32 ? The value of learning theories | I read this a couple of times to really try and understand the key points. | My daughter?s school has just been inspected. I want to read the inspection report to understand why the school did not do very well. |
| I made notes about what I thought was important. | I might need to make some notes on the report to explain it to my partner. |
We hope that doing this activity will help reinforce the idea that so-called academic skills can be useful in other situations too. Developing these skills is not very different from the situation faced by anyone who takes up a new interest. Thinking back to the dance club example, if you had learned how to dance salsa and then took up the tango, then you would have to learn in what ways the tango is different from salsa and in what ways the same. So do not be afraid about getting it slightly wrong to start with. After all, ‘trial and error? can be a good way to learn, as long as you can see some value in making the errors and have the chance to move on from them. It is also better when it is accompanied (as it is in this unit) by some support.
Obviously, as my family grew, I had to start to think about how many people were involved in our house and how much I was cooking for ? like, budgeting. How much ingredients I would need to get, things like that. Budgeting, a monthly budget, paying the bills and things like that. And still having money left over to go and enjoy ourselves as well at the end of the month, which we tend to do. I had to be in a routine in order to make sure that the food was ready on time. Now that routine is the same kind of thing that you need to have when you are studying because you need to set yourself a timetable in order to finish your assignments and get them in on time. Well before I went back into studying I thought that my life skills and academic skills were completely different, but when I did go to learning I found that what I had learnt through life I could apply to my academic learning to help me succeed in what I was doing.
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