1 Chapter 1: Academic Survival Skills
The purpose of this book is to introduce you to strategies and skills that you can use to be successful in college classes.
- Reading College-level Materials. College level materials will include your textbooks, but also scholarly articles and books that are not textbooks. Different kinds of college level materials require different reading skills and approaches, and you will learn them in this book.
- Academic Writing Tasks: Many of your college classes will require you to write academic essays. It is important to note that academic essays are different from other kinds of writing you may have done for high school. They are not the same as book reports, journals or creative writing because they have a structure unique to them. You will learn about that structure in this book.
- Taking Notes on Lectures. Many of your professors of instructors will rely on lectures to give you the information you need to learn in the course. In many cases, your instructor will lecture over material that is not in the book, but will be on the test, so it is important to know how to listen to lectures and take notes on them you can use later when you study. This book will cover strategies for listening to and taking notes on lectures.
- Participating in Discussions and Academic Speaking Tasks: Many of your classes will require you to participate in online or in-person discussions over the materials in the course. Sometimes, the purpose of a discussion is to argue your stand on an issue. Sometimes, it may be to achieve a specific goal—like summarizing the main ideas in a chapter or brainstorm ideas for an upcoming project. For you to be successful in class discussions, you need to understand your instructor’s purpose for having a discussion and then you need to know how to prepare for one.
If you have ever played a sport, sung in a choir, acted in a play or been a dancer, you know what it takes to be a successful student.
That might mean stretching, singing scales, or rehearsing lines.
Next, you work out. This is the longest part of a practice or a rehearsal and it involves actually doing the thing you will need to do in the concert, game or play. You run plays, say your lines or sing the songs you will perform during the concert.
Finally, you cool down—for many rehearsals or practices, a cool down has two parts. One is to get muscles to relax and get the heartrate back to normal, but there is a second purpose to a cool down. Your coach or director will often talk about what went well during that day’s practice, and then he or she will talk to you about what needs to happen to get ready for the performance or the game.
Guess what? Studying follows the same process practices and rehearsals do. The major differences are that you do not have a coach or a director that helps you decide how to study and the other difference is that studying is not public the way rehearsals and practices are. When you study, no one can look at you and