Academic English Drop In Workshops

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Academic English Drop In Workshops
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Academic English Drop In Workshops

• Week 1
• Listening for key points
• Note-taking system
• Critical Reading

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Listening

• What are the main problems you face when
  listening to a lecturer?
• Do you have the same problems when listening to
  audio visual materials?
• How do you think you can improve?

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Listening practice 1

• Listen to the short lecture
• After listening, write a couple of sentences
  about what you heard
• Compare with your partner
• How did you remember?
• What was your system?

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Its important to

• Listen with a purpose
• Eg are you listening for ideas that relate to a
  particular theory?
• Are you listening for ideas for your assignments?
• Do you know about the topic before you listen?
• This will activate your knowledge of the topic
• Subject outline
• Review notes from week before
• Introduction
• In class
• Be on time
• Sit near front
• Ask lecturer to repeat if you dont understand

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• Listen selectively
• Only key words/points
• Imagine telling someone about it after you listen
• Listen for main ideas
• If you feel like youve missed something
• Ask for it to be repeated
• Move on
• DONT TRY TO LISTEN AND RELY ON YOUR MEMORY LATER
  YOU MUST TAKE NOTES.

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Note-taking in lectures

• What are some of the problems you have with
  note-taking?

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Note-taking in lectures

• Be selective!
• Main points key words short phrases
• For more detail abbreviate common words
  eliminate vowels in words or use word beginnings
• Develop individual short-hand system
• Organise a note framework

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Possible short-hand symbols

• When taking notes quickly use some shorthand
  symbols to help you write quicker e.g.
• w with
• th that/those/then any th word
• and
• 2 to / 4 for
• B be/being
• U you
• Altho not acdmc if u can mke notes using abbr
  sytm it will sve u time in class u will slwly b
  able 2 mke notes whilst ur lctr is tlking th
  systm is bit lke txt mssg on mbile phne use it 4
  ur note mking only thou nt 4 ur essays!

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Listening Practice 2

• Prepare for content
• Plan a framework if you can
• Listen
• Take notes
• bullet points key words, main ideas
• details use abbreviation

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Now what do you do with your notes?

• Review
• Summarise in your own words
• Try it with your partner use listening exercise
  2.

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Reading

• Are you a confident reader?
• What are the main problems you have with the
  reading you have to do at university?

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Reading

• Academic material is not meant to be simply read.
• It is meant to be ransacked and pillaged for
  essential content.
• Be selective
• Set a realistic time frame for any reading task.
• Never read without specific questions you want to
  answer.
• Look for the table of contents index summary,
  conclusion, subheadings graphs and tables
  abstracts etc.
• Read only as much as you need to get the
  information you are after.
• Dont waste time reading irrelevant material
• (http//www.canberra.edu.au/studyskills/readingX.
  htm)

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What should I read ..?

• Scan through to see if it may be relevant
• the title, headings and subheading
• Turn the title and subheadings into questions
• Ask yourself
• What else do I know about this?
• What is unclear to me at this stage?
• What more do I want to know about this?
• the non-verbal information (graphs, illustrations
  etc.)
• the abstract (summary at the beginning)
• the introduction
• the conclusion
• the reference list (to see the company the author
  keeps)

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What should I read ..?

• As you know, Skimming is the process of quickly
  locating specific information from a large
  quantity of written material.
• To skim text
• Allow your eyes to move quickly over a page until
  you find a relevant section or point.
• Look for key words or names or references. When
  you locate information requiring attention, slow
  down to read the relevant section more
  thoroughly.
• It is not a substitiute for thorough reading
  however!

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Skim reading exercise .. Read in 2 mins then
make notes for a general understanding of the
article

• Why women live longer
• Despite the overall increase in life expectancy
  in Australia over the past century, women still
  live significantly longer than men. In fact, in
  1900 men could expect to live to 49 and women to
  52, a difference of three years, while now the
  figures are 74 and 79 respectively which shows
  that the age gap has increased to five years.
• Various reasons have been suggested for this
  situation, such as the possibility that men may
  die earlier because they generally take more
  risks and involve themselves in riskier
  behaviours. However, a team of British scientists
  have recently found another more likely answer,
  that of differences in the immune system, which
  protects the body from disease. The thymus is the
  organ which produces T cells which actually
  combat illnesses. Although both sexes suffer from
  deterioration of the thymus as they age, women
  appear to have more T cells in their bodies than
  men of the same age. It is this, scientists
  believe, that gives women better protection from
  potentially fatal diseases such as influenza and
  pneumonia.

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• What was the article about?
• Give 3 examples of facts found in the article
• What is the thymus?
• What is the current life expectancy of men and
  women?
• What reasons are given for why women live longer
  than men?
• Does this article sound reliable?
• Is there any bias in the article do you think?
• Is this article reliable and worthy of
  referencing?

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Read

• Look for answers to your questions
• Note all the underlined, italicised and bold
  words or phrases
• Reduce your speed for difficult questions
• Note Speed reading is not the key for effective
  reading. Sometimes you need to read slowly in
  order to think about what you are reading.
  Selective reading is the key.
• Stop and reread parts that are not clear.
• Read one short article, or one section of a
  longer article, at a time and then
• Summarise in your own words what you have read.

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When you are note-taking

• What is the main message?
• Does the title tell you?
• If your purpose is to note the main point of the
  text, the notes you make may be as brief as one
  sentence. In relation to your text as a whole,
  write down your answer to the question
• 'What message is the author trying to get
  across?'
• Eg. In Why Women Live Longer text .?

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What are the main ideas?

• If your text has headings
• Use the headings and sub-headings to identify key
  points and sort out the sequence of ideas.
• Look at the first heading. What point is the
  author making about this? Write down the answer
  to this question.
• If you turn headings into questions and then find
  the answer to each question, that will help you
  note the main ideas of your text.
• Pay attention to any words that the author has
  emphasised by printing them in bold,in colour or
  in italics or by distinguishing them in some
  other way.
• If your text has no headings
• Skim read, particularly the first sentence of
  each paragraph, to identify the various sections
  of your text Locate cues such as The major
  cause..., Another important factor..., One
  result..., to help you identify key sections.
  Insert your own headings and sub-headings into
  your text and use these as a basic outline of the
  main ideas.

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Marking the text

• Possible ways of marking the text include
• highlighting or underlining key words or
  important points (be very selective)
• writing summary notes, comments or questions in
  the margin or other white spaces
• using or other symbols to mark significant
  sections of text
• using colour-coding (eg vertical line with felt
  pens) to identify particular aspects of the text
• sticking Post-it markers or other bookmarks
  onto relevant pages

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What should be in your notes?

• Bibliographic details!
• Key words
• Paraphrases, summaries (in your own words),
  quotations
• Notes regarding the authors attitude
• Notes regarding your evaluation agree, disagree
  and question, question, question!
• Identify arguments and evidence to support them.

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But .............

• Try not to use copious note taking as a way of
  avoiding understanding complex material. Make
  sure you DO fully understand what you read!

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Note-taking example (from Trzeciak, J. Mackay,
S. 1994, Study Skills for Academic Writing,
Prentice Hall, Hemel Hempstead, p.22)
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A note-taking template
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Review your notes

• You need to review your notes to remember them
  and put them into the perspective of the essay.
• Reviewing tells you if you have answered the
  question, chosen relevant and supporting
  arguments and identifies any weak areas and
  poorly understood concepts.
• Look through your notes
• Ask yourself questions based on your notes.
• Try to answer your questions.
• Decide what you think about the writers
  position.

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Useful website for note-taking

• www.unisanet.unisa.edu.au/learningconnection/stude
  nt/learningAdvisors/notemaking.asp
• www.englishcompanion.com/Tools/notemaking.html
• www.coun.uvic.ca/learn/notemake.html

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Critical Reading

• From Collins Cobuild Advanced Learners
  Dictionary English Dictionary, 4th edn.,2003,
  Harper Collins, Glasgow.
• Meaning 4 To be critical of someone or something
  means to criticize them.
• This is NOT the meaning intended in the phrase
  critical reading.
• Meaning 5 A critical approach to something
  involves examining and judging it carefully.
• This IS the meaning intended in the phrase
  critical reading.

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Critical Reading

• Non-critical reading recognises and restates what
  is written on the page.
• Critical reading
• recognises and restates what is written on the
  page
• reflects on the context of the text
• reflects on the purpose of the text
• reflects on the achievement of the text
• makes an evaluation of the significance of the
  text

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Questions to ask yourself ...

• What are the authors credentials?
• area of expertise
• number of citations
• institutional connections
• When was the text published?
• or the website updated
• Is the text a primary, secondary or tertiary
  source?
• How does this text relate to others?

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Questions to ask yourself

• How much of the content is fact and how much
  opinion?
• Is the argument supported by evidence? What kind
  of evidence?
• How is the argument developed?
• Is the language objective or emotive?
• Do you agree with the opinions stated?

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Questions to ask about websites

• authority
• Who is/are the author(s) and are they reliable?
• accuracy
• Do the facts fit with what you already know?
• Are there references?
• objectivity
• What is the purpose of the web page? To inform?
  To persuade? To sell?
• currency
• Has a date been provided? How recent is it? Are
  the links still active?
• utility
• Is the web page relevant to your needs?
• presentation
• Is the site well designed and easy to read? Is it
  free from grammar and spelling mistakes?
• Adapted from http//www.library.jcu.edu.au/Library
  Guides/eval/shtml

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Website for evaluating web sources

• www.library.uq.edu.au/internet/inteval.html

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• Text A
• Sydney is an ideal city for young university
  students in which to study. Australias largest
  city with a population of over several million is
  the perfect place in which to live and study.
  Cheap, comfortable accommodation is always
  available, and transport is provided by clean and
  reliable state transport authorities offering
  excellent train, bus and ferry routes linking the
  whole city. A further advantage is the friendly
  local population who are well-known for their
  amenable manner and friendly, relaxed attitude to
  life as well as their friendliness to strangers.
  Overall, it can be said that Sydney is an
  unrivalled city in the world, in which to study
  at university.

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• Discuss with your partner
• Q Who wrote the text in your opinion?
• Q Do they have any particular agenda do you
  think?
• Q How reliable is this text?
• Q When was the text written?
• Q Is this information current?

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Searching for main arguments ..

• read the introduction to search for the thesis
  point or main argument presented
• scan by topic sentences, i.e. the sentence which
  makes the point of the paragraph and which is
  usually the first sentence of the paragraph.

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• The thesis statement. What is it?
• The role of the introduction is to give
  background to the topic and to put forward the
  writer's thesis statement (or main argument).
• This thesis statement can often be found towards
  the end of the introduction.
• The thesis point is usually reiterated in the
  conclusion as well.
• To gain a good idea of the argument being put
  forward and the main evidence being presented you
  should read both the introduction and the
  conclusion first.
• This will give you a framework for reading the
  rest of the content .

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• Task Identify the thesis statement in this short
  paragraph

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• A further strategy is to read topic sentences of
  each paragraph.
• This can be particularly effective for difficult
  articles or heavy academic texts.

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• Task Identify the topic sentences in this short
  passage
• The stress or accent pattern within a word is
  intimately related to the sounds in it,
  especially to the vowel sounds. In English,
  vowels are longer, louder, and often higher in
  pitch when they are in stressed (accented)
  syllables than when they are in unstressed
  syllables. In addition, if adding an ending to a
  word causes the stress to shift from one syllable
  to another, some of the vowels in the word may
  change more drastically and actually become
  different phonemes. These changes are often not
  reflected in spelling. For example, when the word
  declare is used to make the word declaration, the
  stress changes the first syllable gains a little
  stress, the second syllable loses its stress
  while the strongest stress goes to the third
  syllable.
• In constructing sentences and sentence meanings,
  stress has many uses the most familiar is
  probably contrastive or emphatic stress, as when
  one says "I want the black book, not the green
  book" with the strongest stresses on black and
  green. Compare this sentence with "I want the
  black book, not the black notebook" in the
  latter the strongest stresses are on the first
  book and on note.

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Speed reading

• Q Is it better to be a fast speed reader or a
  slow reader?
• A You have to be both!
• Sometimes you read fast to quickly scan and skim.
  Other times, you MUST slow down to gain a deeper
  understanding and perspective.
• How to check your current speed
• Find something familiar to read
• Set an alarm for 10 minutes
• Read for 10 minutes at a speed where you can
  understand everything that you are reading.
• Once the 10 minutes are finished, count how many
  words you have read.
• Divide this number by 10, to find out how many
  words youve read in one minute.
• Do this using different texts. If you read fewer
  than 200-250 words per minute, even on clear and
  interesting material, it will be worth trying to
  increase your reading speed to above 250 word
  per min.

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What do good readers do?

• Dont leave things to the last minute Dont read
  when they are too tired
• Establish a studious atmosphere where they can
  concentrate
• Analyse and skim materials before reading
  in-depth
• Read abstracts, intros and conclusions first
• Always check the meaning of new words
• Highlight text selectively use copious
  post-it notes
• Take good notes following a logical system
• Read slowly and carefully when they need to
• Summarise what theyve read
• Look for thesis statements topic sentences for
  clues
• Keep accurate bibliographic reference details as
  they go along
• Look for answers to their questions and
• Question what they are reading
• Ask for help if they need it

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What if I dont understand an article?

• Leave the text for 24 hours
• Review again
• Try to identify thesis statement and topic
  sentences
• Re-read the abstract/ intro concl.
• Ask friend/lecturer for help
• Find a dumbed-down version of same thing/ theory/
  principle
• Give up- move on!

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Useful websites for critical reading

• http//www.education.monash.edu.au/students/curren
  t/resources/readingacademic.html
• www.criticalreading.com
• www.dlsweb.rmit.edu.au/lsu/content/1_StudySkills/s
  tudy_prdf/critical_reading.pdf
• www.serices.unimelb.edu.au/llsu/resources/reading

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MaryAnn.McDonald_at_uts.edu.auwww.elssa.uts.edu.a
uMaterials sourced from Liz Craven and Jonny
Wells
thank you