Overview
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Develop the English reading and writing skills needed for university success.
Syllabus
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- Introduction and guidance
- Introduction and guidance
- What is a badged course?
- How to get a badge
- Acknowledgements
- Week1Week 1: Reading skills for university study
- Introduction
- 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 the 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
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Week2Week 2: Using ideas and information from your readings in your writing
- Introduction
- 1 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 5Rs 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
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Week3Week 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
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Week4Week 4: Writing well-organised essays
- Introduction
- 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
- 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
- Acknowledgements
- Week5Week 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
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Week6Week 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
- 1.3 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
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Week7Week 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
- References
- Acknowledgements
- Week8Week 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
- Tell us what you think
- References
- Acknowledgements
