Week 2: Using ideas and information from your readings in your writing
Introduction
During Week 1 you learned a range of reading strategies and practised recording the ideas and information taken from your reading. This week you will consider ways to critically read source texts and appropriately use the information they contain in your writing.
Transcript
Welcome to Week 2. In Week 1 you looked at the different kinds of materials that are used at university and practice an active reading method. You may now ask: what do students do with these theories they have learned from their readings?
Well, the answer is, they use them to make sense of the world in a different and more informed way and that’s what can really be gained from a university education.
Students aim to demonstrate this new skill through their assignments. Assignment questions ask students to carry out written tasks using the insights from their readings. In other words assignments ask students to apply what they have learned and use it to support their discussions, justify the conclusions and of course display their knowledge.
So the next step consists of including in an assignment, information and ideas taken from readings. In order to achieve this it is important to develop two skills. First of all the ability to look critically at a reading and to select the most appropriate information, ideas and data. And secondly, to include these in an assignment correctly. So this week is about critical reading and techniques such as writing summaries, quotations, and acknowledging sources.
By the end of this week, you will be able to:
- start to critically process what you read
- recognise how to reproduce information from sources
- understand the importance of acknowledging your sources.