Module description
This module aims to provide you with the skills you need to express yourself through speaking and writing within a variety of academic contexts in the hard sciences and more mathematically-based social sciences. It also aims to develop your reading and listening skills within those same contexts. Term 1 is formative, meaning that you receive grades, but those grades do not count toward your final grade. Rather the emphasis is on feedback and becoming skilled at using the feedback to become better prepared for the summative assessment in Terms 2 and 3 where the grades do count toward your final grade. The course will focus particularly on understanding where your strengths and weaknesses lie, reflecting on and redrafting your work using feedback, and working effectively under pressure. Moreover, the course will develop your ability to understand and make effective use of academic articles, books and lectures while avoiding plagiarism. It will also teach you to structure and write critical essays, and to give academic presentations.
Assessment details
You are assessed through a combination of an essay (40%), a presenation (20%), listening (15%), reading (15%) and writing exercises (10%)
Educational aims & objectives
- Develop your ability to write critically, fluently and accurately for a variety of academic contexts appropriate to the hard sciences and more mathematically-based social sciences.
- Increase your ability to read and listen critically and selectively in order to inform academic writing and speaking.
- Help you learn to communicate appropriately and effectively in a variety of academic contexts, including seminars, presentations and tutorials.
- Help ensure that you can understand and use a wide range of academic vocabulary and grammar relevant to the hard sciences and more mathematically-based social sciences.
- Further your ability to learn creatively, independently, responsibly and reflectively.
Learning outcomes
By the end of the module, you will:
- Have demonstrated an increased ability to write effectively in coursework and under timed conditions.
- Feel better prepared for and more confident about the writing and speaking tasks you will encounter on your undergraduate programme.
- Have demonstrated an increased ability to understand and make use of a variety of spoken and written academic sources.
- Have greater confidence in communicating in the range of situations you will encounter on your undergraduate programme.
- Feel more capable of successfully managing your own learning.