Most people associate studying and academics in general with boredom, drudgery, and difficulty. With this attitude, a good number of them hardly ever study unless they have a test in a few days – or hours.
If you never consciously pay attention to developing your study skills (reading and writing skills), your academic performance is bound to suffer. Even if you do well enough, you’ll always instinctively know that you are not fulfilling your potential.
WHY SHOULD YOU IMPROVE ON YOUR READING AND WRITING?
Learning to read and write well is crucial if you desire to be a well-rounded human being. However, most of us perform so poorly in the class because we ignore to teach ourselves these important skills.
Academic performance is measured by how good we are at:
• Listening and understanding
• Reading and understanding
• Writing what we understand
Therefore, the importance of these skills cannot be overstated. You will have a hard time learning if you never become good at them.
PART 1: HOW TO READ EFFECTIVELY FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES
Reading skills:
At institutions of higher learning, you are required to read a lot of material, often within a short period of time. How can you best get the most out of your reading?
Here are the different kinds of reading and how you can improve on each:
a) Skimming and Scanning
This involves quickly going through a piece of literature to determine whether it will be useful and relevant to your subject.
Step 1: Understand what you are looking for and use it to weed out useless information.
Step 2: Examine the table of contents to determine whether the resource has what you need.
Step 3: If your text doesn’t have a table of contents, go through topics and subtopics and read the first paragraphs of the initial, middle, and final chapters. You may need to do this even when you go through step 2 successfully.
b) Detailed Reading
This involves going through the material word by word to gather information. Writing short notes as you do so will be necessary.
The best way to read in-depth should go like this:
Step 1: Break down the content into smaller manageable bits. Allocate time to each section.
Step 2: Read in a conducive atmosphere and take notes while you read.
PART 2: HOW TO WRITE EFFECTIVELY FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES
Academic Writing Basics:
Learn how to read first! The best writers are also the best readers. Writing is important because it provides you with a means to express your thoughts. You will be required to write essays, answers, and dissertations throughout your college life.
Follow these simple steps to improve your writing skills:
Step 1: Read regularly – to amass the content that you are going to write, you need to go through many sources. As you read, pay attention to how the writer structures their work, chooses their words and punctuates their text. This is the basis by which you will learn new words and polish your grammar. If you want to write a dissertation, you can buy dissertation at UniTutor and learn how the experts do their writing.
Step 2: Write in a clear and concise manner. Avoid being too wordy.
Step 3: Learn how to reference your work – This will be crucial when you are finalizing your writing. Familiarize yourself with the rules of the standard (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.) your tutor uses.
Bonus Tips on Academic Writing
1. Avoid using these words: very, a lot, so, really
2. Avoid contractions: Instead of “don’t”, say “do not.”
3. Use active voice instead of passive voice
Bonus tips YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgkRoYPLhts