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PASS: Peer Assisted Student Success: Our PASS Leader Fran returns with her second blog post. Read on to discover her study tips.

by Craig Martin on 2020-03-04T08:29:04+00:00 | 0 Comments

Having completed a year of my English degree, I’ve developed a few ways of studying and assignment writing that work for me and I’d like to share my top four with you in the form of some tips.

  1. Reading long essays: if you come across overly long chapters in a text book (I generally view critical essays over 12 pages as overly long) don’t attempt to read them in one go, because – even if you’re a fast reader like I am – compared to fiction and other non-fiction books, where long chapters can often be thrilling because you’re intrigued to find out what happens next, long academic chapters can often take hours to read and leave you feeling tired and nursing a headache. Read them in chunks, and take breaks until you’ve finished them
     
  2. Getting chapters read for classes: if you have a module that has required reading each week and you find it hard to keep up, find the chapters, or remember which class/week the reading is for, tabbing the chapters and writing “class [class number] prep” for example, can be beneficial in keeping up with your reading and remembering which chapter(s) corresponds to which module
     
  3. Assignment /project planning: everyone has their own ways of planning their assignments, whether it’s an essay/research paper, a presentation or a project they have a month to work on, but if you have trouble figuring out a way that works for you, here are some of the ways I plan my own:
    • Mind mapping – mind mapping is a great way of getting all of your main ideas out onto paper (or into a Word document or mind mapping programme) with the name of the essay or project at the centre; this step can be really useful when trying to organise your initial thoughts
    • Headered colour coded bullet-pointing – this has helped me a great deal when attempting to expand on my mind mapped ideas; giving each main idea its own header and colour, and bullet-pointing how I want to expand on and explore that idea (in a Word or Google Doc) really helps to organise my thoughts further
    • PowerPoint – I don’t do this often, but sometimes using separate PowerPoint slides to expand on ideas you’ve initially mapped out can also be helpful
       
  4. Assignment writing – I don’t know about my peers, but I can find it difficult to start; bringing a load of words out of thin air, even when I’ve planned out my essay in mind map and bullet-point form because I’m thinking, “where on earth do I start?”. In the past, I’ve tried starting from the beginning with an introduction, or the conclusion/ summary, but I’ve found that this method really doesn’t work for me; instead, I work on the middle section of my essay (in chunks, as is the Fran way), so that I actually know what needs to be put into my intro and conclusion/summary.

 

Fran facilitates PASS sessions for English: IMDENL105: Staging Scandal.

If you are a Staging Scandal L4 learner, pop along to one of her upcoming PASS sessions

 

12/03/2020

 1pm-2pm

W417

19/03/2020

 1pm-2pm

W417

26/03/2020

 1pm-2pm

W417

 

For PASS sessions running on other courses visit our PASS sessions page on LibGuides: https://libguides.uos.ac.uk/pass/sessions 


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