Academic Enrichment Services Academic Skills Unit

FAQs

If you cannot find an answer to your question among these FAQs, please email your question to the Academic Skills Unit

Many theses have ‘stand alone’ literatures – they usually are the first chapter in such theses.  That’s why one of the best places to find examples of literature reviews is in the University of Melbourne ePrints Repository (UMER). The ePrints Repository contains all theses published after January 1 2007 and can be found on the library website (link to http://www.lib.unimelb.edu.au/eprints/). Ideally, look for theses related to your own field of research.

If the lecture is recorded using Lectopia, for example, and is therefore available in electronic form, it should be cited or referenced like any other electronic source. The Online Writing Lab (link to             http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/) at Purdue University provides extensive information on citation styles and conventions. However, if the lecture is not electronically recorded then the conventions are not as clear     and it would be best to contact the lecturer in question. It is possible that you     could cite it as you would a personal communication or interview (link to       http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/11/)

There are a number of ways that you can improve these two skills. Firstly, speaking with other students in your classes is both a good way to make friends and also improve speaking skills. Start with simple greetings and questions related to your study: “Hi! What did you think of our last lab experiment?” or “Have you read chapter 5 yet? I thought it was really interesting.” The more you speak with your classmates in English, the better you will develop this skill. You could also try to talk to your neighbours about various topics like the weather, local facilities and attractions and sports. Secondly, make some rules about speaking English. For example, even though many of your friends speak your native language, insist on speaking English when you talk about your studies. That way, you continually reinforce the vocabulary and linguistic structures that describe your field of study. Thirdly, you might look for part-time work in an English speaking workplace – again, this helps you learn and reinforce new words and ways of expressing yourself in English. Fourthly, watch various Australian TV shows and listen to the radio. Most newspapers publish TV and radio guides on a weekly basis so look for things that interest you. Finally, you might want to get involved in a student society or club. There is a Let's Talk club, for example, that is devoted to conversation practice. You can find out more about clubs and societies at http://union.unimelb.edu.au/clubs or check out the clubs run by students in your faculty by contacting your student centre.

The Careers and Employment office at the University of Melbourne has a service that helps you find a tutor (link to             http://www.services.unimelb.edu.au/careers/student/tutoring/index.html) or, for that matter, be a tutor.

Generally speaking, you are discouraged from using the first person pronoun in academic writing because there is a stylistic preference for more impersonal writing. As a result, it is more common to use expressions like ‘This essay discusses’ or ‘The author believes’ and to use the passive voice (i.e. “It will be demonstrated that…’. However, in such academic writing as journals, the use of the first person pronoun seems more stylistically appropriate. For some writing tasks (e.g. reflective essays) you are actually expected to use the first person. To be sure, check with your faculty style guide and your tutor.

The answer depends on the reference or citation style that your faculty or discipline expects of you. Therefore, you will need to consult your faculty style guide and/or a tutor to learn what citation style (e.g. APA, MLA) is expected. Once you have discovered the appropriate citation style, check on the Academic Skills Unit web site or University of Melbourne Library websites for information on how to correctly reference websites in your writing. As a member of an academic community, it is expected that you learn and use the citation style appropriate to your discipline. 

A reasonable rule-of-thumb is that your introduction should comprise between 5% and 10% of your final word count. Therefore, a simplistic answer would be between 150 and 300 words. However, the important thing is that your introduction contains three basic items: background information about the topic of your essay; a clear thesis statement about your argument, discussion or perspective; and an outline of your essay structure.

The short answer is yes. The longer answer is that it depends on how you express that opinion according to the conventions and style of academic writing and , moreover, whether you have sufficient support for your point of view. To effectively express your opinion is important in an argumentative essay and your thesis statement for such an essay should be an expression of your opinion. However, you should not use the first person pronoun to introduce that opinion (see above question) nor should you use an informal or spoken phrase like ‘In my opinion’ or ‘I believe’. A more academically appropriate way of expressing your opinion might be through a phrase like, ‘This essay argues that [insert your opinion here]’. For practical and interactive exercises in these aspects of academic writing, visit the University of Melbourne’s invaluable online resource AIRport.

The short answer is no. This is called proofreading and it is important that you develop independent learning skills like this yourself. Effective proofreading skills will assist you long after you have left university so you must develop them now. Booking an individual tutorial with an Academic Skills Unit advisor through your student centre can help you to identify any grammatical errors that you tend to make. Then it is up to you to look for these tendencies whenever you proofread your own writing. Furthermore, you could attend a free grammar course provided by the Academic Skills Unit. Check our website for details. For more information on proofreading and editing, see the section in the Academic Skills Unit website.

Yes and no. Wikipedia is a convenient and useful website for getting some background information about a topic or concept. In a way, it is like a dictionary and encyclopaedia. However, by its very nature, the website is academically unreliable because the information it supports is unverifiable and may be added by almost anyone regardless of their expertise or knowledge. Therefore, you should never use information that you have found on wikipedia in your academic writing and you should not include it in your reference list but you could use wikipedia as a starting point to get an overview of a topic or to find more suitable references.

There are a number of different structures for lab reports and the first thing you should do is find out what structure your faculty or discipline expects of you. Read the faculty style guide or ask a tutor to make sure you structure your report appropriately. One common structure is IMRAD, which stands for Introduction, Methodology, Results, Analysis, and Discussion. It would be conventional to include your conclusion in the discussion section in which you refer back to the statements you made in your introduction about the relevance and significance of your research and experiments. The Academic Skills Unit website has more information on writing technical reports.

No. You should print out a draft copy of the writing that you want to discuss before the individual tutorial.

No, we can't. Anything that you want to discuss or get feedback on must be directly related to your academic study. This could mean things like oral presentations, setting up a study timetable, writing a literature review, and discussing the structure or referencing or grammar of an essay.

Our individual tutorial service is very popular and thus in high demand. Therefore we only allow one appointment per week for each student.  We also have a guideline of no more than 4 appointments per semester for undergraduate students, and 8 per year for graduates - but this depends on availability and of course your individual needs. We recommend to all students who wish to book an appointment to also look out for workshops and self-access resources that can help with developing your academic skills. To find out more about our workshop program and resources, check out our workshop calendar and the Study Skills flyers and booklets, or ask about the Academic Skills Unit at your student centre.

 

 

top of page