Week 1: Reading skills for university study
Introduction
A good deal of a student’s time is spent reading textbooks, academic books, journals, encyclopaedias, newspapers, magazines and websites. These are the sources of information and ideas that are needed to understand a subject.
Watch the introductory video from the author, Anna Calvi, as she introduces the course and this week:
Transcript
Welcome to Week 1. This week you focus on the reading skills that are needed to make the most of a university education. You will look at the different sources of information university students normally read.
University readings can be long and approaching them can be daunting. You will consider some of the challenges students sometimes face when approaching these readings and learn an active reading method which allows you to break a reading task in to small manageable steps. For some activities you will need access to a printer.
Finally, you will learn a range of techniques to produce well organised notes that can be used when writing an assignment.
If you decide to go to university, you will have to prepare for exams and
This week you start by looking at the different texts that university students read. You will then learn to follow an active reading method that will help you read academic texts and make notes in the most effective way. For some activities this week, and throughout the course, you will need access to a printer.
By the end of this week, you will be able to:
- identify different texts university students read
- understand the most effective reading strategies
- actively read an academic text
- make useful notes.
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 [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] . Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others.