4.2 Reports Let's look at reports first. Note down in your Learning Journal what you consider to be the purpose of a report. 3 The purpose of writing Let's take a step back and think about why you are writing assignments. As with most tasks, if you have an understanding of why you are doing something and how it fits into the bigger picture, it is easier to define what is required of you and therefore to do a good job. So, what do you see as the reasons for writing assignments? Here are some suggestions: to meet the assessment requirements of my course; to demonstrate my understa 2.1 Your feelings about writing Think for a moment about your reasons for studying this course. Is it perhaps because you don't understand what is expected of you in your assignments, or that you aren't clear about how to improve? What are your feelings about your writing skills? What previous experience have you had (if any) of essay or report writing? 8.4 Carrying out research During this stage you get down to the business of analysing and interpreting the meanings of all your primary and secondary source material (documents, reports, newspaper accounts, books and articles), in the ways outlined in the previous sections of this course. As you do so you will be making notes towards your project report. In this connection, it is very important to write down full references for all the material you use as you read each item. Then you can easily find part 8.2 Formulating a question When you make your own enquiries you draw on your existing knowledge of a discipline or subject area and decide on a specific question to explore; a question that is relevant to some aspect of the subject and which interests you. That means you must have some understanding of what the important questions and issues are in your subject area, and why they are important. In other words, you must have acquired appropriate ‘frameworks for thinking’ within it. That background ensures tha 6.2.4 Evidence ‘from authority’ When you present evidence for your judgements in an essay, you don't only draw that evidence from the text. You also often call on the ‘authority’ of other writers on the subject (critics, academics), drawing on their judgements. You can ‘make sense’ of other people's ideas in books, articles, TV programmes, and so on; and how to weigh up these ideas and use them to help you form your own. As regards your writing, you have to learn how to use this kind of ‘evidence from autho 6.2 Different kinds of ‘evidence’ The terms you use and the ways in which you support your argument depend on the subject you are studying and what kind of text you are talking or writing about. 5.2 The value of the text We now turn to a critical assessment of the poem as a poem; the question is, is it a ‘good’ poem? To that we should add ‘of its kind’. As we saw, we must judge it as a lyric poem – it would be inappropriate to think of it in the same terms as, say, an epic, because the conventions that govern the epic's form (its subject matter, purposes and formal elements) are very different. It is always important to understand what kind of text you are dealing with no 4.3 Analysis and interpretation We have got to the point of recognising that this is a lyric poem, and of thinking that it is probably about a lovers’ meeting. But you cannot reach firmer conclusions about a text's meanings until you have looked at as many aspects of it as you can. I think we need to go back again to the detail of the poem, because the analysis is not full enough yet. For one thing, there is something odd about the poem's syntax. If you look at the verbs in the first verse you'll see that they are a Learning outcomes After studying this course, you should be able to: understand aspects of human culture, past and present analyse various ‘objects’, interpret their meaning and evaluate them. Further reading
*The Good Study Guide by Andrew Northedge, published by The Open University, 1990, ISBN 0 7492 00448. Chapter 4 is entitled ‘Working with numbers’ Other chapters are entitled: ‘Reading and note taking’, ‘Other ways of studying’, ‘What is good writing?’, ‘How to write essays’, ‘Preparing for examinations’.
The Sciences Good Study Guide by Andrew Northedge, Jeff Thomas, Andrew Lane, Alice 4.1.2 When is a line graph not a good format to use? When you have a large amount of data without an obvious link. For example, when your data shows shares of a whole, in which case, you would use a pie chart. 4.1 Reading data from tables Tables are used as a way of describing what you are talking about in a structured format. They tend to be used to present figures, either as a summary or as a starting point for discussion. Tables are also probably the most common way of presenting data in educational courses. Tables have always been compiled by someone. In doing so, the compiler may have selected data and they will have chosen a particular format, either of which may influence the reader. You need to be aware of the co 1 Your worries and concerns with charts, graphs and tables Do you sometimes feel that you do not fully understand the way that numbers are presented in course materials, newspaper articles and other published material? What do you consider are your main worries and concerns about your ability to understand and interpret graphs, charts and tables? Spend a few minutes writing these down before you read on. One student has said: I am never quite sure that I Learning outcomes After studying this course, you should be able to: reflect on existing skills and mathematical history, set up strategies to cope with mathematics and assess which areas need improving understand the following mathematical concepts, through instruction, worked examples and practice activities: reflecting on mathematics; reading articles for mathematical information; making sense of data; interpreting graphs and charts draw on a technical glossary, p Acknowledgements The content acknowledged below is Proprietary (see terms and conditions) and is used under licence. Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this course: Course image: Sebastien Wiertz in Flickr made available under Creati 1.3.7 Summary We can learn to use writing of all sorts as evidence by practising how to interpret it and by becoming aware of the conventions attached to its primary purpose for example as personal testimony, journalism, commercially produced material, such as market research and academic writing as well as material produced specifically through research such as interview data. When approaching a piece of writing: 1.2.4 Stage 2: Find a way in It's easy to be distracted by the surface appearance of a diagram, but we are really interested in the underlying message. This is rather like the distinction made between the content and context reading of photographs. Once you are sure that you know what the main heading means, focus on a particular element and think it through. If it is a bar chart, for instance, pick on one of the bars and tell yourself what it represents, what it is telling you. Is it showing a percentage or a total? Wha Conclusion This free course provided an introduction to studying sociology. It took you through a series of exercises designed to develop your approach to study and learning at a distance and helped to improve your confidence as an independent learner. 7.1 Processing meanings Reading and thinking requires you to begin to process the material you read in preparation for re-presenting it in assessments. Initially, processing happens in your head. Selecting what to identify and extract will start the process off. Summarizing the arguments continues this process and, crucially, gets you started on reproducing ideas in your own words. The next stage is to develop your notes further by thinking more consciously about the material you have read and the points you
Activity 3
Discussion
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