Skills for Success / Academic Skills / Resources Menu
“About” or “Regarding”
This guide has lots of different choices of vocabulary so that you are not always using the same words. It gives examples of how to use them and also shows you a website where you can find out how to use any word or phrase.
Academic Vocabulary
This guide shows you why and how a different style of vocabulary is necessary for writing at university.
Conclusions
What are conclusions for? What should you put in them? How do they fit in to the rest of the text? Get your answers here.
Critical Thinking
Probably the one most important thing to understand about writing at university is critical thinking and how to show this in your writing.
Dissertations and Final-Year Projects
This guide will help you with your project. It’s aimed at postgraduates, but it will also be useful for third year undergraduate projects.
Editing and Proofreading
Go the extra mile and submit a polished piece of work. This guide gives you the most useful tips and techniques for finding and fixing mistakes in your writing.
Essay Planning
Academic essays are different from the everyday types of writing. They have different targets and are planned and organised differently. Here is the essential quick guide to producing an academic essay.
Exams
Exams are still a thing and for a lot of us they are a problem. In this guide find out the top tips for dealing with exams.
This guide will help you to prepare better for your online exam and also help you with all-purpose exam strategies.
Essay Writing for Exams
We have a guide for essays and a guide for exams - now we have added a guide to doing essays in exams.
Incorporating Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism
Academic writing has to build on the work of other people, but you also have to make it clear what’s your work and what isn’t. It looks like a tricky balancing act, but this guide gives you simple techniques to avoid the plagiarism trap.
Introductions
What are introductions for? What should you put in them? How do they fit in to the rest of the text? Get your answers here.
Literature Reviews for Year 3 and Postgraduate Students
What is a literature review? How can I make it critical? What literature do I need to include? How do I organise it? This guide will set you on your way.
Masters / Level 7 Writing
What’s the difference between undergraduate and postgraduate writing? Find out more here.
Notetaking
Do you find your notes are just a copy of the original? Or, are you finding it hard to keep up with the teacher? Maybe you have problems even understanding your notes. Find out some different ways of taking notes that can help you fix these problems.
Paragraphs
Paragraphs are the building blocks of your writing and so it’s pretty important to get them right. What is their usual structure? How do you organise the different paragraphs in your writing so that they flow logically, and how should you link them together so that the reader doesn’t get confused? Find out here.
Presentations
What makes a good presentation? What’s the best way to organise it? How do you keep the audience’s attention? What are some useful phrases that I could use? These points and many more are dealt with in this guide.
Reflective Writing
A general overview of reflective writing.
Reflective Writing for Nursing
Reflective writing with a focus on Nursing
Reflective Writing for PGCE and Education Students
Reflective writing with an emphasis on students of education.
Report Writing
A general introduction to report writing, including the main ways reports differ from essays.
Research Proposals
What are research proposals? What should you put in them? How much detail do you need? Questions like these and many more are answered in this guide.
Writing in your own Words
This guide is all about how to communicate the ideas or information you get from other people. You will learn why you shouldn’t always quote directly and find out how to summarise and paraphrase using your own words.
