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The Open University

English: skills for learning

The Open University via OpenLearn

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Overview

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.TranscriptEnglish: 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. Enrolling on the course will give you the opportunity to earn an Open University digital badge. 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.Once you are signed in, you can manage your digital badges online from My OpenLearn. In addition, you can download and print your OpenLearn statement of participation – which also displays your Open University badge. This course is accredited by the CPD Standards Office. It can be used to provide evidence of continuing professional development and on successful completion of the course you will be awarded 24 CPD points. Evidence of your CPD achievement is provided on the free Statement of Participation awarded on completion.Anyone wishing to provide evidence of their enrolment on this course is able to do so by sharing their Activity Record on their OpenLearn Profile, which is available before completion of the course and earning of the Statement of Participation. The Open University would really appreciate a few minutes of your time to tell us about yourself and your expectations for the course before you begin, in our optional start-of-course survey. Once you complete the course we would also value your feedback and suggestions for future improvement, in our optional end-of-course survey. Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others.

Syllabus

  • 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

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4.5 rating at OpenLearn based on 135 ratings

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