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English: skills for learning
English: skills for learning

Start this free course now. Just create an account and sign in. Enrol and complete the course for a free statement of participation or digital badge if available.

English: skills for learning

Introduction and guidance

English: skills for learning is a free badged course which lasts 8 weeks, with approximately 3 hours' study time each week. You can work through the course at your own pace, so if you have more time one week there is no problem with pushing on to complete another week’s study.

This course is for anybody who is thinking of studying for a university degree and would like to develop the English reading and writing skills needed to succeed. During the first two weeks you will be introduced to academic reading and some effective reading and note-making strategies. In the following three weeks, you will develop your essay writing skills. You will then spend two weeks on academic style and vocabulary building strategies. Finally, in the last week, you will focus on sentence structure and punctuation.

You’ll use plenty of real-life examples to help with this and get plenty of opportunities to practise your new understanding and skills.

Part of this practice will be the weekly interactive quizzes, of which Weeks 4 and 8 will provide you an opportunity to earn a badge to demonstrate your new skills. You can read more on how to study the course and about badges in the next sections.

After completing this course you will be able to:

  • follow an active reading method to help you read academic texts and make notes
  • critically read source texts and appropriately use the information they contain in your writing
  • link ideas in your writing so that your readers can easily understand your ideas
  • make use of vocabulary and grammatical structures to express yourself more formally
  • make the most of online dictionaries and look at ways to record new words for future use
  • understand how to organise and punctuate sentences to increase clarity.

Moving around the course

The easiest way to navigate around the course is through the 'My course progress' page. You can get back there at any time by clicking on 'Go to course progress' in the menu bar. From the quizzes click on 'Return to English: skills for learning'.

It's also good practice, if you access a link from within a course page, including links to the quizzes, to open it in new window or tab. That way you can easily return to where you've come from without having to use the back button on your browser.