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 Topic 1: Optimising your learning and studying style

Introduction

In Topic 1 you will learn about the following:

1. How to achieve SUCCESS

1a. Find your most effective study techniques
1b. Your first research project
2. Managing and planning your time
2a. Self management
2b. Time management
2c. Your Time Management Wheel
2d. Your Study Timetable
3. Introduction to referencing and plagiarism
3a. The ‘Student Checklist’ and ‘Companion to the Checklist’
4. What is paraphrasing? – An introduction
5. How to think and write reflectively
5a. Using ‘What? So what? Now what?’ reflective model

Welcome to the unit Fundamentals of Academic Writing. This unit is all about preparing you to write and research
at university. It is very important for you to become used to what is expected of you in your writing, and this unit
will give you the opportunity to learn, practise, and improve. Writing assessments at university requires you to
learn the “language” of academia. This is similar to learning any language - once you understand the rules of the
language, you will be able to write many of the different types of assessments required in your university degree.

In this unit, Fundamentals of Academic Writing, you will be learning many skills to help you with these different
types of university assessments, and in particular, you will learn to write an argumentative essay.
As you work through these topic documents, you will be asked to write your thoughts and answers when you are
prompted. Writing answers will help you to understand what you have learned, and will give you the best chance
of remembering the information. Some sections also allow you to check your answers; simply highlight the
coloured box and change the font colour to black in order to reveal possible answers. You do not have to print this
document, just type your answers straight into each topic document.

1. How to ACHIEVE SUCCESS

Have you thought about the best way to study this course? In your previous studies, did you develop effective
study techniques? Can you identify anything you have done in your past studies that might not work for you now?
(This is the process of reflecting, and you will learn more about this skill as it will help you continually improve your
skills).

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To be successful in this course and achieve your goal of passing, it is vital that you develop effective study habits.
Luckily, many academics have been researching in this area for a long time, and there is a lot of information that
can help you develop study skills that will give you the best chance of doing well at university.

1a. Find your most effective study techniques

It is important that you find ways to improve your study techniques, and to ensure you devote the required time to
your learning. If you do this right now, you will not only save yourself a lot of time and effort in your studies, but
you will be ensuring that all of your study time is effective. Each person has different needs, different demands on
their time, and different ways of learning materials. For example, some students find it best to read information
over and over again, whilst others may prefer to make notes, or to record information so they can listen to it.
Remember: the study habits of your friends may work well for them, but may not work for you.

1b. Your first research project

Take the time now to spend time researching effective study habits. Search the internet for articles about how to
study more effectively. Hint: avoid “popular” websites (such as sites that allow anybody to upload information),
and instead, search for information written by academics or others who understand the topic you are investigating.
In this instance, you could search for university websites dealing with effective study habits. A good place to start is
Deakin University’s article titled 13 Simple Ways to Study More Effectively:

http://this.deakin.edu.au/study/13-simple-ways-to-study-more- effectively

Remember to take notes as you watch videos or read articles about how to study effectively. Keep updating your
notes as you progress with your studies so that you are constantly building your skills.

2. MANAGING AND PLANNING YOUR TIME

A lot of university study now is moving to online. Learning in an online environment might be a new experience for
you and may require you to revisit not just the ways in which you learn, but also how you manage your time. Some
educational researchers have found that learning to manage time is one of the most significant challenges students
new to university experience. In fact, attention to time management has been shown to influence whether or not
students persist with their studies, and how successful they are.

While the online environment offers the benefits of flexibility, enabling students to study when and where they
choose, it can pose some challenges when students do not develop the discipline to engage with their study
regularly, or when they fail to manage the expected time commitment. In this Academic Writing unit, all of your
topic documents, assessments, and announcements for the whole course are online. Therefore, it is essential that
you develop your online study skills.

As you interact with the topic resources, materials and tasks, consider the following questions:

 How much time am I setting aside for study?

 How can I improve myself and time management?

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The Virginia Adult Learning Resource Centre suggests helpful tips on how to be a Good Online Learner. Five
important tips they supply are:
1. Develop a study plan.
2. Set up a learning space.
3. Get support from your family and friends.
4. Differentiate between and prioritise your time for offline and online activities.
5. Monitor your progress and 'keep up'!
Source: http://www.valrc.org/learning/index.html

2a. Self-management
Self-management and time-management are essential skills for successful study.  How you manage all areas of
your life will impact upon whether or not you achieve your goals.

As a university student, it is expected that you will take the responsibility to manage your own studies in order to
be academically successful. This means that exercising self-management is a choice that you will need to make so
that you give yourself the best chance of passing all your units. This is one of the biggest lessons you need to learn
now!

To become expert at self-management in your studies, you need to start by looking at your Time Management.
You have control over how much of your time is spent on all of the things that are important to you. The goal with
your study is to the aim be as efficient and productive as you can possibly be.  This involves many related skills,
including:
 Planning your time;
 Allocating the right amount of time to each activity;
 Setting goals, and ensuring you meet those goals;
 Monitoring how your time is being used, and making changes whenever necessary;
 Organising your work hours – it is important to decide on a realistic plan for studying;
 Scheduling – you need to make a schedule (or timetable) to show you how much time you have, and
therefore how you will fit in all of your activities;
 Prioritising – it is important to work out the activities that need more attention, and place these at the
forefront when organising your timetable.

As a student, you are expected to develop the skill of being an Independent Learner. This means that you are
responsible for everything to do with your studies. It is your job to make sure you work through your topic
documents, spend the required time studying the materials, and ensuring you meet all deadlines. You have the
freedom to manage all aspects of your study experience, but this comes with certain responsibilities.  You must
develop the skills to manage all areas of your life, be motivated to succeed, and use time wisely.

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Your learning challenge in Topic 1 is to look at how you manage yourself and your time, and to adopt improvement
strategies to gain a balanced approach to study. It is vital that you organise yourself so that you are able to devote
the expected amount of time on your studies.

2b. Time Management

A common challenge to good time management is the inability to prioritise tasks. For example, you might decide to
study, and then a friend asks you out and you decide to abandon your studies. Students frequently experience this
problem, as well as the challenge of facing competing priorities such as having to complete two or more
assignments in the same week. Therefore, it is important to plan your time before you begin your studies, to
ensure you have the time to do everything required to pass.

To manage your time effectively, you need to develop the skills to manage multiple tasks simultaneously, including
the capacity to accommodate tasks that come up unexpectedly, or when things take longer than first anticipated.
These issues can seriously impact upon whether you successfully meet assignment deadlines and achieve your
study goals. In addition, you need to develop appropriate skills for your future career, and many businesses will
expect you to be able to manage conflicting priorities and meet deadlines.

OPTIONAL ACTIVITY
If you are interested in an online tool that calculates the use of your time, you can visit the following
website and look through the resources designed to help you plan your timetable:

https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/academics/advising/Section5ExploratoryandGateway/time.htm

3. Introduction to REFERENCING and PLAGIARISM

When you study at university, you will be reading a lot of research written by other expert authors and will be
required to write essays, reports, and other types of assessments. When you write your assessments, even though
you are using the ideas of other authors, you must still use your own words to express those ideas. In addition, you
must acknowledge that the original ideas came from another author. This act of acknowledging where your ideas
came from is called ‘referencing’. Every university student must learn how to reference correctly. If you don’t
reference correctly, you are seen as having committed a form of cheating called “plagiarism.”

Plagiarism is part of Academic Integrity, and is treated very seriously in universities. In every unit of study, and
every course you undertake, it is expected you will avoid plagiarism. At this stage, however, you may not have a
great deal of knowledge about plagiarism and how to avoid it. Throughout this unit you will learn about it, and in
particular learn how to avoid it. The skills you gain from this practise will be used in your final essay where it is
expected you will have a sound understanding of plagiarism and how to avoid it. You are also expected to
correctly reference all work in assessments 1 and 2. You will learn more about this as the course progresses, but it
is important to make a start now.

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 3a. The ‘Student Checklist’ and ‘Companion to the Checklist’

Curtin offers a great deal of support to you in order to help you understand academic integrity, referencing
correctly, and avoiding plagiarism. It is vital that you take time now to think about how you will work through all of
the information and learn all there is to know about how to avoid plagiarism. You can see that there is a great deal
to learn, and if you don’t take the time to work consistently on all of the provided resources, you may end up
receiving a plagiarism record, or worse.

IMPORTANT - download these documents:

Download 1: Student Checklist to Prevent Plagiarism

All of your assessments will be checked for plagiarism. Therefore, you must learn how to
acknowledge, or reference your research correctly. Curtin has a checklist that you need to use for
every assessment you complete. Visit the student section of the Curtin Academic Integrity website
and download the Student Checklist to Prevent Plagiarism:
https://students.curtin.edu.au/essentials/rights/academic-integrity/
(the document is on the right side of the page; you may need to scroll down)

Every time you do an assessment, use the checklist to ensure your writing is free of plagiarism.
NOTE: you must use the Student Checklist when completing all of your assessments.

As you now understand, even if you are not aware of having copied information, you are still considered to have
plagiarised and you are still subject to all university penalties. We want to ensure you understand every element in
the ‘Student Checklist to Prevent Plagiarism’ so that you can avoid any kind of plagiarism. Therefore, we have
provided a ‘UniReady Companion to the Checklist’ to help you.

Download 2: UniReady Companion to the Checklist

This document is designed to be used in conjunction with the ‘Student checklist to prevent
plagiarism’ that you have already downloaded. You will see that each point in the ‘Companion’ is
the same as each point in the ‘Student Checklist’, but the Companion has extra information to
further help you understand the Checklist and to help you avoid plagiarism.
Note: you can download your copy of the UniReady Companion to the Checklist from the Topic 1
area in Weekly Content on Blackboard.

4. What is PARAPHRASING? An introduction

An important part of learning to avoid plagiarism is to use the technique called ‘paraphrasing’, and this basically
means writing information from articles in your own words rather than using the words of the authors. In this
course you will use paraphrasing all the time, therefore it is imperative that you learn how to paraphrase correctly
right now.
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When you paraphrase, you need to maintain the meaning of the original author, but you must use your own
words, and you must write in your own style. Here are 3 things to avoid when you are paraphrasing:

 avoid using the original words of the author

 avoid expressing the ideas in the same order as the author
 avoid simply substituting a few of your own words here and there.

When paraphrasing, remember to read your research material carefully so that you fully understand the
information, and then paraphrase the information without looking back at the original. If you can do this, then you
are demonstrating that you know and understand the information.

The ‘paraphrase readiness test’

Before you start paraphrasing information in your assessment, give yourself the paraphrase test:
1. Read and re-read the information you want to include in your assessment.
2. Try to paraphrase the information, and do not look at the research at all. As you paraphrase the
information, imagine that you are explaining the information to another person who knows nothing about
it.

If you need to keep looking back at the research when you try to paraphrase, it shows that you do not yet
understand the ideas. In this situation it would be important to read the information a few more times to make
sure you understand it before you try paraphrasing again.

Now that you have been introduce ed to the skill of paraphrasing, you can consolidate your
knowledge by visiting the University of Technology Sydney’s website:
https://www.uts.edu.au/current-students/support/helps/self-help-resources/academic-skills/how-
paraphrase-effectively#:~:text=Paraphrasing%20means%20using%20the%20ideas,written%20in%20a
%20cohesive%20style

Work through the following sections:

1. Steps for paraphrasing effectively
2. Common errors when paraphrasing.

Make sure you click on each of the downward blue arrows to read information about each step in
the above 2 sections. These drop-down sections have examples that will help you understand
how to paraphrase correctly.

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Universities always emphasise the need for students to understand how to paraphrase, due to the possibility of
serious consequences if another author’s words are copied too closely. The University of South Australia confirms
the importance of correct paraphrasing in the following quote:

Paraphrasing is not simply taking what someone has written and changing a few words to make it your
own. It is about translating another person's ideas into your own words and in reduced form. You must
change the words a lot so they are no longer similar to the original. Even if you use an in-text reference
to show where the idea came from, a lecturer may decide that what you have written is plagiarism if
your wording is still too close to its source (University of South Australia, 2019, para. 1).

5. How to think and write reflectively

“Reflection” has many meanings in the English language. However, in the context of writing in academic style, it
refers to the process of looking back over past events (in this case, your own learning), thinking about and
exploring what happened, and making changes based on your new understanding. The reflective process is used to
help you make constant improvements to your skills. Some university degrees use reflection more than others in
the learning process, but it is a skill that you need to develop as part of becoming a life-long learner.

Note: a vital part of reflection is to make changes based on what you have learned about yourself. Reflection alone
is not particularly effective. The important aspect is the changes made as a result of your reflection. You have
probably used reflective thought in your life on many occasions without realising it!

Southampton Solent University describes reflection and reflective writing in the following way:
To think and write reflectively you have to:
 Experience something
 Think about what happened
 Learn from the experience
(Southampton Solent University, 2012)

STUDY HINT:
Note: you will use your reflective writing skills in assessment 1 for this unit. You should also
continuously reflect on what you learn and how your learning is progressing, and you should keep
updating your approach to accommodate your new insights. This is how you will become a
successful university student.
You need to work hard on learning about, and developing, your reflective writing skills.

To assist you in developing your reflective skills, you will be given a reflective model (or framework ) to help you
develop your reflective skills. This model will also help you to write your reflective answer for Assessment 1. There
are many different models used in reflective writing, and you may learn about other models in other units and in
your future degree. However, for the purposes of learning how to write reflectively and building the required skills
in this unit, we will use the What? So what? Now what? Model.

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 4a. Using the ‘What? So what? Now what?’ reflective model

The “What? So what? Now what?” model will guide you as you develop your reflective skills. You will use the
model to look at an experience, and analyse what happened, what went wrong, and how you can improve your
skills so that you work more effectively.

Deakin University explains the What? So what? Now what? reflective model very clearly. Click on
this link to access the information:
https://www.deakin.edu.au/students/studying/study-support/academic-skills/reflective-writing

The information is divided into 4 sections. You will only need to look at the first 3 sections as follows:
1. Reflective Writing - Read all about reflective writing in the above link
2. Language Features – learn about the style of language you need to use in a reflection. This
section has some excellent example phrases , and you should use those phrases as a guide
when writing your reflection in your first assessment.
3. What? So what? Now what? model – this is a model that will guide you in building your
reflective writing skills. When writing your reflection for assessment 1, refer to this section of
the website to help you construct your answer

Read the above information as many times as you need to in order to understand it.

You will see that when writing in reflective style, you should write in first person viewpoint. In other words,
because you are writing about your personal experiences and your personal views, you will write things like “I
started to notice that…”, “I was aware that…”, “I felt…” and so forth. Take note that the example of reflective
writing on the website provides prompt questions to help you to analyse your feelings and your personal
experiences. The answers to the prompt questions will help you to find new and more effective ways of doing
things during your university studies. In addition, it will help you to write a high quality reflection for assessment 1!

Study Hint
Take particular notice of the difference between first person, and third person viewpoint. Reflective writing
style uses first person writing style, because you are discussing your own thoughts, feelings and opinions.
Therefore, your reflective writing will use phrases such as “I found that”, “I feel”, “I believe” and similar
types of terminology.
Even though you will use first person viewpoint for reflective writing, in almost all other styles of academic
writing you must use third person viewpoint, and everything you write will be based on research from
verified sources.

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Topic 1 Summary

After completing Topic 1, you should now understand the following:

1. How to achieve success:

You discovered the importance of identifying your most effective method of studying, and you
undertook your first research project.

2. Managing and planning your time

You were introduced to the idea of becoming and independent learner, managing yourself, and
planning your time. Think about how you spend your time, and think about the adjustments you may
need to be make in order to complete your study commitments to the level expected in a University
setting. Ensure you complete your Time Management Wheel and your Study Timetable in the first
week of the course. Keep reflecting on your ability to adhere to your timetable, and make changes
when necessary so that you can ensure the successful completion of your studies.

3. Introduction to referencing and plagiarism

This is one of the most important issues in university study, and you will hear a lot more about it as
the course progresses. For now, you have been given a short introduction to referencing and
plagiarism; remember to take note of everything you learn in relation to this topic. Make sure that
you download the 2 documents described in Section 3 of this topic document.

4. What is “paraphrasing”?
You were introduced to the skill of “paraphrasing”, and now understand the important of developing
your skill in this area. Make sure you work hard on learning how to paraphrase correctly, as this will be
something you need to do throughout your studies at university.

5. How to think and write reflectively

Using the ‘What? So what? Now what?’ reflective model, you have learned about reflecting on your
experiences, and using your reflective skills to identify what went well, what didn’t go well, and what
needs fixing. You will write a reflection in your first assessment for Fundamentals of Academic Writing,
and will use this skill in other units in your study career as well.

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 References

Deakin University. (2017). 13 Simple ways to study more effectively. https://this.deakin.edu.au/study/13-

simple-ways-to-study-more-effectively

Deakin University (2021). Reflective Writing.

https://www.deakin.edu.au/students/studying/study-support/academic-skills/reflective-writing

Ferris State University. (2011). Time management calculator: “Where does my time go?”.
https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/academics/advising/Section5ExploratoryandGateway/time.htm

University of Technology Sydney (2021). How to paraphrase correctly. https://www.uts.edu.au/current-

students/support/helps/self-help-resources/academic-skills/how-paraphrase-
effectively#:~:text=Paraphrasing%20means%20using%20the%20ideas,written%20in%20a%20cohesive
%20style

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