Unit 1 Study Skills

THIS IS A SELF-STUDY UNIT - DO NOT SEND IN FOR ASSESSMENT

At the end of this unit you will:

a) know the importance of planning your study

b) know that there are ways of working which aid your memory

c) have set out a timetable for your course

d) have given yourself the best chance of fulfilling your potential

 Study Skills

Introduction

Though we all spend our formative years studying, most of us are never
taught how to study. Most people leave school with little confidence in their
ability to learn; this percentage could be greatly reduced if they were taught
how to learn.

This is nothing to do with intelligence or 'being clever', it is to do with using

effective techniques.

People learn in different ways so you need to find out what works best for
you. Much of this can be done by looking at ways of learning which you have
used in the past and remembering which worked well for you. The following
questions should prompt you to start looking at ways of learning:

1. What do you find easy to remember?

2. What do you find difficult to remember?

3. What helps you to remember?

4. Do you have your own style of shorthand?

5. Is it easy to read your shorthand later?

6. Do you ever use the notes which you have made?

7. Do you read every word on a page to find a piece of information?

8. Do you study at times best suited for studying?

9. Can you keep yourself motivated?

Hopefully, by the end of this unit you will know how to improve some of your
study skills and maybe you will have acquired new ones. The aim is to make
you study more effectively. This may mean that you reach the end of the
course more quickly and that you gain more knowledge from the course
and/or gain better grades.

Let's first of all consider why you are studying and what your motivation is.

Unit 1 1
Motivation

In order to succeed in any form of voluntary course of study the student

needs strong powers of self-motivation. In the classroom motivation is usually
generated by the teacher and the group; in distance learning there is a need
for the student to generate this motivation for him/herself. It is easy therefore
for studying to become a second priority.

Your reasons for studying will have an effect on your motivation. It is also
possible to say that your reason for doing this course is your motivation.
Let's look at typical reasons why people choose to study.

On the following list, tick as many of the reasons as you can see that you
recognise as yours.

1. I enjoy learning new things.

2. I am interested in ESOL.

3. To prove to myself that I can study.

4. To become qualified and start (or continue) teaching.

5. To move on in my career.

6. My employer says I must become qualified.

7. The government insists that I get qualified to stay in the country in which I
live and work.

If you have another reason, add it to the list.

Numbers 1, 2 & 3 are personal reasons and mean that you are probably
determined to succeed. Success will be its own reward.

In numbers 4 & 5 the reward is what comes later, the studying is not the
reward in itself. If these are your reasons, your aims are probably still quite
important to you, but when the reward is far away your determination may
fade.

Numbers 6 & 7 do not mean that you really want to study, you are being
forced to do so by an outside force.

(Place any additional reasons in one of the three groups.)

Unit 1 2
Which of these reasons are more likely to ensure that you complete the
course successfully?

1, 2 & 3, as well as 6 & 7, are strong motivational factors that may lead to
your completion of the course. The difference between these groups is that
while 1, 2 & 3 are about your inner (or 'intrinsic') motivation, 6 & 7 are about
external ('extrinsic') motivation. The dominance of intrinsic factors means
that you will not only successfully complete the course but will enjoy the
experience and are likely to do your best. The extrinsic forces are also quite
strong (you don't want to be thrown out of your job or the country you are in),
however if they are the only reasons you are taking the course, it will feel like
a heavy load and your performance is likely to be mediocre. A combination of
extrinsic and intrinsic factors ensures the most fulfilling study experience and
guarantees success.

In 4 & 5, extrinsic factors also dominate, however these may turn out to be
the weakest motivators. Unlike 6 & 7, these are the targets you have set for
yourself, and that's why you might question them when the going gets tough.
You might then ask yourself: 'Do I really need it?' Again, in combination with
1, 2 and 3, these motivational factors will be much more powerful.

Successful studying depends to a large extent on your studies being

important to you.
You must make it important to you
You must make it enjoyable
You must make it rewarding
OR your determination will fade and you will become bored with studying.

Whether your motives equate with numbers 1, 2 & 3; 4 & 5; or 6 & 7, you will
need to find an effective way to motivate yourself every day.
What does motivate you?

SELF-CHECK 1:1

Self check tasks are a chance for you to try something, answer questions or
think about a topic on your own - they appear throughout the course and are
an important way of assessing how you are progressing and if you
understand a concept. In future modules (but not in this one), some of the
self-checks will be followed by our comments.

Unit 1 3
In the first column, write a list of things which you find rewarding and enjoyable - try to
cover all the different parts of your life.

In the second column write one or two words to say why the activity is enjoyable.

Leave the third column blank.

Activity Why enjoyable Type of motivation

Look back at your reasons for studying.

As we have mentioned, activities which are their own reward as in 1, 2 & 3 on your
reasons list are driven by intrinsic motivation.

Activities which are not the reward in themselves, and in which the reward is an outcome
of the activity as in 4, 5, 6 and 7 on your reasons list are known as extrinsic motivation.

Now go back to the table and write next to each activity whether there is intrinsic or
extrinsic motivation for the activity or both.

NB Most activities can give intrinsic satisfaction to some people, and extrinsic
satisfaction to others.

Now look at the following chart and rate your motivation.

Studying as an activity in itself

complete lack of -2 -1 0 1 2 completely

motivation motivated

Your long-term goal

complete lack of -2 -1 0 1 2 completely

motivation motivated

Add together your scores.

Unit 1 4
Results Analysis

3/4 - motivation will not be your problem

0-2 - you may need more motivation to keep you going

-1/-2 - you will find it difficult to keep on task

-3/-4 - motivation may be a serious problem for you

Everyone, no matter how motivated, finds times when they feel they cannot
go on. What is it that is most likely to prevent you from carrying on?

SELF-CHECK 1: 2
Take 5 minutes to think about this and list points below:

Unit 1 5
INTESOL students do not always study in the way that they thought they
were going to when they started the course. Look at how motivations and
situations can change.

Case study from Japan (name changed)

Julia started the INTESOL course in September, hoping to finish before the
new school year in April in the country where she was living so she could get
a pay rise. She also felt that although she was teaching, she didn’t have
many classroom skills and that formal study would help.
In October she found out she was pregnant. When morning sickness struck,
she was unable to keep studying so it was Christmas before she got back to
the INTESOL course. By now she realised she would not be able to finish
before April but also that she would be leaving her full-time job at the end of
the academic year in February, so the pressure was off to finish the course.
But she also realised that she would need to work as a freelance English
teacher while the baby was small as her husband’s salary was not high
enough to support the family. Julia went on with the course. She finished in
June TWO DAYS before the baby was born!

She is now working from home and has a group of other mothers who come
in the mornings for conversation lessons and some children from her old
school who come for extra tuition in the evenings.

SELF-CHECK 1:3

Make a list here of motivation issues that may have affected Julia.

Unit 1 6
If your determination is fading and needs a boost you may like to consider
the following tips:

1. Make a card or poster with the qualification you are working towards with
large letters on it. Put this on your work desk or on the wall.

2. Talk to people who have been successful in this field or talk to a fellow
TESOL student through our service.

3. Work to a daily plan, but every so often focus on your long-term goal.
Aim to make some progress every day, if only a little. If you do not
manage to work one day because of something unexpected, however,
do not get depressed but make time on another day.

4. Phone INTESOL for a chat or email your tutor to ask about the 'knotty
problem' that is stopping your progress.

5. Put your short-term study goals in words to someone else.

6. Give yourself rewards at short intervals, ie at the end of each unit or if

you are really in trouble, every 1 or 2 tasks.

7. Set yourself deadlines for completing modules (for example: 'one more
module before I fly off to France for Easter'). It feels great when you
finish on time.

8. Talk to a partner or family about your problem so that you can have time
and support to get back on track.

Now you have some ideas to help when you are becoming demotivated, let's
look at your organisational skills.

Unit 1 7
Planning and organising study time

SELF-CHECK 1:4

Take a piece of paper.

a) Write down three or four sentences describing a time when you think you successfully
managed your time to get something done.

b) Write three or four sentences about a time that you didn’t.

What helped you in a) and what stopped you in b)?

Success in any course depends on the candidate's commitment to work and

the organisation of his/her study time, but never more so than in a distance
training course.

Distance training is not an easy option or a quick and painless way of gaining
a qualification. Distance training can be very hard work. The strain can be
lessened by good planning.
Time is a challenge whatever your sphere of life. It is difficult to fit in any
studying when your day is filled with work, domestic duties and personal
responsibilities. Advances in the world of technology have made life easier in
this respect but there are still only 24 hours in a day, and sleep has to be
fitted in somewhere. The only way to succeed and fit everything in is by being
a good manager of time. It may be hard work and you may need to change
the habits of a lifetime but the end result will be worth all the effort.

Student teachers on this course come from many different backgrounds.

Some are teachers already, some are full-time students, many come from
totally different careers or are unemployed. Home and family commitments
are also varied. Some live alone, some have a family.

This course is therefore being studied by a vast range of prospective

teachers of ESOL from unemployed, single people living alone to those with
full-time jobs and young, dependent children. The amount of study time
available to people in each of these groups varies considerably.
No matter whether you have a lot of free time or very little, planning is
essential.

Unit 1 8
Studying cannot be fitted in between breakfast and going out to work, or
between your two favourite TV programmes. It must be taken seriously and
given its own time and space in your day.

Timetabling your study is a task that can be described both as very simple
and as very hard. Simple because anyone can draw up a timetable and fill in
the blank boxes. But can you stick to this timetable?

A few years ago one of our tutors found herself doing a distance Masters
course at the same time as tutoring for INTESOL. Here are her feelings on
distance learning!

Read what she says and go on to fill in the timetabling activities on the next
few pages.

I suppose the profile of a distance student is trouble from the start; someone who has
commitments that they can’t give up in order to do a full time course. Someone who has to work
and study at the same time for financial reasons. We are looking at a lot of outside interference
here. Remember, a supportive tutor can’t hang up someone’s washing or play in their volleyball
team for them, and the time when every Distance participant is provided with a free household
robot to take care of the chores as part of the course is unfortunately a long way off. The course I
am doing myself is supposedly ‘going well’. Even so, I have just had one month so busy that I
didn’t even touch the folders. My kids spent last week home with the flu, peering over my shoulder
every time I tried to pick up a file and hey presto, a go-slow again.

Realistic not idealistic

As a tutor and participant at the same time, I think a lot of the dropping out stems from the
unrealistic view we all have of our own time management. If you are thinking of signing up for a
distance course in the near future, start off with some realistic maths. Realistic, not ‘idealistic’, that
is. Very often, people start by seeing how many hours of study the course requires. Then they play
an imaginative game with their working week and pretend that they have exactly those hours to
spare. Try doing it the other way round. Start with working hours. Then add preparation hours. Go
on to ‘chatting to colleagues’ time, travelling time and photocopying time. There’s time spent
talking to mum on the phone, or reading the paper and days you wake up late or feel irresistibly
sleepy after lunch. And what about those skiing weeks and beach holidays?

Probably you will end up with about one hour of ‘real’ free time. Build on that, cancel some
commitments and get your schedule set up before you embark on a course. Enlist the help of
family and friends and give them advance warning that you may be socially ‘gone for some time’.
If you encounter much resistance or can only raise your total free time to 2.5 hours a week, then
the course will take you longer than you imagine.

Copyright HO

Unit 1 9
This is where it becomes hard. Don't be wildly optimistic and then fail. Look
first at what is realistic for you. Being honest with yourself is a good place to
start.
Divide your day into time spent on your usual daily activities such as working,
sleeping and personal life. How many hours do you spend on each during a
typical week? Write the number of hours at the intersection between the day
of the week and the activities. First complete the key under the chart. Then
complete the chart for YOU.

A B C D E F G H
SUNDAY
MONDAY
TUESDAY
WEDNESDAY
THURSDAY
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
Key to activities

A = personal duties E=
B = work F=
C = sleep G=
D= H=

How much time do you have left on each day?

If your free hours total per week is 10 hours, you are being unrealistic to
believe that you can complete the course in 12 weeks.

Complete the following:

Course requirement in number of hours 150/180

Your hours available per week ..............

Your course will take

...........…

If it is necessary to you to finish your course in fewer weeks, you have to

decide if it is feasible for you to increase your study time by lessening the
time spent on some other activity. That is, any except sleep. Don't try to

Unit 1 10
cheat your body by shortening your sleep hours! Tiredness will build up and
will slow down your work, so more time will be lost than gained.

Now that you are being realistic you can begin timetabling. Look at the blank
timetable on the next page. Complete it as follows:

1. Shade in fixed activities such as work, sleep etc.

2. Mark at least one and up to two as days of rest. (Remember you are
being realistic and you may need this break)

3. Now timetable your planned study hours in the gaps.

4. You should always have some gaps left over for unplanned events,
especially if you have a demanding and flexible-hours job and/or a family
to look after!

Unit 1 11
Timetable

SUNDAY

.................................................................................................................

.................................................................................................................

.................................................................................................................

MONDAY

.................................................................................................................

................................................................................................................

................................................................................................................

TUESDAY

.................................................................................................................

.................................................................................................................

................................................................................................................

WEDNESDAY

...............................................................................................................

.................................................................................................................

..............................................................................................................

Unit 1 12
THURSDAY

................................................................................................................

................................................................................................................

................................................................................................................

FRIDAY

.................................................................................................................

................................................................................................................

................................................................................................................

SATURDAY

.................................................................................................................

.................................................................................................................

.................................................................................................................

Unit 1 13
How long should a study period be?

There are no right answers here, much depends on your commitments and
the type of person you are. However, there is a basic fact which may help:

Short lengths of time such as 10 minutes are not usually any use.
You will not normally retain information studied in a period stuck
between other activities.

If you work for a long period of time, remember to make short breaks every 1
hour or so to keep your mind fresh. During the break just relax, you may do
something around the house, but don't switch to another intellectual activity.
Take a nap if you can.

Now that you have organised your time, you must ensure that you make the
most of each of your study periods.

Making notes

A great deal of your time will be spent reading course materials, the course
handbook and supplementary materials. You will also spend time on the
internet. In order to retain the information gained from reading, most people
will need to write some of it down. This usually means making notes. The
notes will include your understanding of the information you have read and
also your personal reflections on the new information.

Why do you need to make notes? There are many reasons. Here are just a
few of them:

1. The actual process of writing the notes helps you to remember them. As
you decide what to write, you critically think about the input and select the
key facts and ideas. Putting them in your own words reinforces
understanding.

2. You can link information from various sources – eg something you've

read in the course confirmed by something you've read elsewhere. Thus, a
more comprehensive view of the subject is created in your mind.

3. By adding personal reflections, you can link new information with your
own knowledge and experience as well as previously learned facts.

4. Self-written aids give a stronger message simply because they are

your own.
5. You can write a simple reminder of points which you find easy. Concepts

Unit 1 14
you find more difficult can be noted in more detail. This alone may help you
understand.

The way you make your notes can be quite a personal thing and there is
really no right and wrong way. Try different methods and decide which is best
for you. Some people like to scribble all over a text with a pencil and find
online study hard because they cannot do this. In this case print out texts or
transfer useful sections and quotes into a Word document as a form of note-
making.

How much should you actually write?

Writing out everything you read in a slightly different way or a slightly shorter
version is not good practice. These notes are virtually useless to you. There
are principles for good note-making which you should follow. First look at
what you are doing when you are making notes:

1. Helping yourself to understand

2. Helping yourself to recall

3. Linking current studies with previous knowledge

4. Highlighting points in your studies

In order to achieve the above your notes should:

1. Make the most important things stand out from the rest

2. Break down the materials into small, manageable parts

3. Link previous and present learning. Cross-referencing is very important

4. Give your notes some recognisable structure

Note on plagiarism and referencing

Whatever you do, make absolutely certain that you record the source of
your information. Then when you come to writing essays in the modules you
can reference clearly.

Failing to reference information is plagiarism. If your submission includes

pieces of text written by someone else, without proper referencing, then your

Unit 1 15
work will be sent back to you. So you can save time from the beginning by
noting down what comes from where! This is particularly important (and easy
to forget!) in the case of web-based information.

If you use a direct quotation, put it in quotation marks and write its source
afterwards.

If you rephrase someone's ideas closely to the way they were originally
written, you need to include a reference anyway, but this time without
quotation marks.
At the end of your answer, you need to list all the references in an
alphabetical order.
The following source sums up the rules of referencing:
https://libguides.mq.edu.au/referencing/Harvard

Concept maps

See if you can organise the information learned in a section of the course into
a concept map.

This is one way of showing the structure behind the subject.

It shows relationships between small parts of your studies, and their link with
previously learned units.

For example, here is a concept map for a reading skills course:

Unit 1 16
 Reading Skills

extensive speed reading reading for intensive

reading a purpose reading

grammar micro
studies skills
reading
in class
reading
outside skimming scanning
class use of adjuncts vocab
studies
reading for detail

inference

logical
relationships

SELF-CHECK 1:5

On an A4 piece of paper, draw your own concept map for ‘managing study time’. What
needs to be taken into consideration?

Unit 1 17
Nuclear notes

These are similar to concept maps in that they are in diagrammatic form, but
they are used for one topic which forms the nucleus, here the central bubble,
from which lines are drawn to each major point.

Look at the simple example for a topic on housing:

wiring

plumbing

works

brickwork architecture

building design

HOUSING

flats
Govt. intervention

houses
bungalows
Council benefits

However you decide to make notes you need to keep the following points in
mind:

1. Space your notes well

2. Use highlighters and colours
3. Use headings
4. Use diagrams
5. Add memorable examples
6. Use mnemonics (see below)
7. Add humour - it helps you remember!

Unit 1 18
Mnemonics

Mnemonics are memory aids, especially those associated with the capital
letter of each word.
Two which many of us were taught at school are:-
Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain
reminding us of the colours of the rainbow.

Every Good Boy Deserves Favours

reminding musicians of the notes on the stave.

Using the web

Here are some ways you can use the internet for research on this course:

- looking up more information on a key concept (eg error correction)

- getting ideas for lessons
- checking a definition of a key word such as 'functional'

Think of the web as a bookshelf. When you click on a page it is equivalent to

taking a book off a shelf. Remember our earlier notes on referencing and
plagiarism. Think about these things:

 If you copy a short section or a key idea, you must show where it
comes from.
 Anyone can put up stuff on the web. It is not always accurate or useful,
so double check ideas and opinions. Treat materials with caution.
On the other hand, it takes a reputation and considerable influence to
get a TEFL book published!
 You won't learn anything by pressing cut and paste.
 You may be a person that likes concept maps, scribbly notes and
books. If so, don't be a slave to the computer - move away from it for
part of your study time.

SELF-CHECK 1:6

Read the following passage from a review of three different dictionaries.

Test your note-making skills!

Unit 1 19
What headings could you take notes under?
What key words would you need to investigate?
What key sentence would you underline?
What concept map could you make of this topic?
What mnemonic would help you (or your students) remember the key terms used?

The dictionaries were: Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners, Cambridge
Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (CALD) and Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English.

Blind date with a dictionary

Dictionaries have recently become much more important in language learning. For a
long time, let’s face it, they were volumes of shameless little one word translations
that students surreptitiously looked at under the desk or employed in their homework
to produce interesting sentences like: ’He had been intercoursing with the man’s
daughter for 9 months before he asked for his permission to marry her’ (this from a
student in Japan).

I think it is the concept of learner independence and discovery techniques that have
really made this the age of the learner dictionary. Knowledge can come from
anywhere, not only the teacher, and that includes reference materials, including
dictionaries. For a new native speaker teacher, an EFL dictionary is a real eye
opener as the content is very different from a dictionary written for native speakers.
For a non-native speaker teacher who wants to remain a step ahead of his/her
students on the language front they are invaluable. And students love them.

So how are we to decide what dictionary to buy? My three dictionaries all have great
features and are serious pieces of scholarship. One of the first comments I have to
make is that dictionaries at the beginning of the 21 st century are a really good read.
These dictionaries use different coloured print and have pictures. They give all sorts
of idioms, including those you may never have heard of, from far-flung English
speaking nations across the world. They have grammar sections, and quizzes on
their CD ROMs. One way to find out about how a dictionary works is to ask yourself
some questions and set yourself to discover different kinds of information in its
pages. Here are a few of the questions I asked myself.

I wondered if students were likely to produce the wrong word at the wrong time,
embarrassing themselves and those around them if they used the dictionaries. My
test word here was ‘gob’ as in ‘Shut your gob!’ (I heard it on the TV). Were the
connotations and situational restraints on the word usefully explained? It is
fascinating to see what each dictionary presents on the word. CALD tells us that it is
UK slang, but does not use the ‘offensive’ label which is available in its key. ‘Shut
your gob!’ (the phrase I heard) is not listed, but ‘Keep your gob shut’ is there with an
example. Macmillan gives the phrase a ‘very informal’ label - ‘used among people
who know each other well’, which rather takes away the force.
Longman on the other hand are sure that ‘gob’ is an ‘impolite’ word for mouth.
(‘Impolite’ is not listed as a term in their key so I am not sure what area it covers.) My
‘Shut your gob!’ phrase is listed under the ‘gob’ entry. Personally, gob is not a word I
would like to hear the students using very much, so I suppose I would go along with
Longman’s on that one.

If you are trying to pin down a word with a multitude of meanings, how easy is it to
find the one you want? Do you have to wade through pages of entries? My test word

Unit 1 20
 here was ‘edge’ - the verb. (It cropped up in a book my son was reading in the
phrase ‘As he edged up to her’.) Here, I think the new dictionaries really show their
strength. Longman has very user friendly ‘signposts’ to guide you to an area of
meaning, with a skilful use of red and blue text. Finding my ‘edge’ took 15 seconds.
Macmillan lists areas of meaning in a small box under the headword, but only for the
most common. ‘Edge’ the verb does not appear under ‘edge’ the noun and so finding
it took a little longer, 25 seconds. The examples in both cases were very clear and
close to my son’s text example. Cambridge was a little more obscure here, with
‘edge’ appearing further down the entry. When I found the entry, traffic was edging
along, not a person. So the search was not as satisfactory in this random case. I was
however given a rough synonym for ‘edge’ in ‘move’ in a small box at the beginning
of the entry which could be useful.

More and more dictionaries are being used for class activities and the best
dictionaries can actually get students reading more, just by leading them on and into
the text of these huge books. I looked at whether the dictionaries were actually fun to
use or not. They were. CALD has an impressively large picture bank. There are
obvious groupings like ‘animals’ and commonly found flowers, but also picture pages
of the inside of a car and the outside of a car and I found myself investigating ‘noses’
(also grouped together under ‘n’ in the main dictionary), one of many thematic
groupings. Macmillan also has an impressive display of pictures, though I did wonder
about the value of having a full-sized illustration of a tomato or a banana, a vegetable
page would be enough I think. Both had very interactive picture pages, with
definitions to be called up to go with the pictures. Longman was much less fun in this
respect, with no photo of a camel but a small one of an elephant embedded within
the entry. The pictures within the dictionary are very good though, the bicycle and the
panthers on the same page come to mind. Longman drew me in with quizzes on
culture, with which I idled away a few hours as well as the more common exercises
on grammar and vocabulary. Theirs was, though, the most difficult screen to
manipulate in terms of box sizes and positions. All three CDs, by the way, employ the
very handy ‘pop-up’ function where the dictionary screen can move to a corner and
be referred to during personal writing. All three were extremely professional and
worked flawlessly.
Copyright HO

Reading techniques

When you are reading the set course materials you will probably want and
need to read everything. When you are reading supplementary materials
however, you are unlikely to need to read all of it. It is more likely that you will
be searching for materials to back up your argument or exemplify or expand
on your points. In these cases you will need particular reading techniques
which you in turn will need to teach foreign students.

You will probably use a combination of skimming and scanning. To identify

whether an article relates to your area of interest, you will need to look at the
heading and subheadings, and look quickly through the text to find out what it

Unit 1 21
is generally about. This is called skimming. By skimming you may identify, for
instance, that the article is about error correction, it contains some practical
advice and is written in a comprehensible language (not too academic). So
you decide to work with it. Next, you need to know whether there is any
information on correcting in accuracy-based activities vs correcting in
fluency-based activities. What you do then is scan the article, ie read through
it more carefully looking for words such as 'accuracy', 'fluency', 'correctness',
'speed' and once found, reading around them.

You will eventually be teaching the sub-skills of skimming and scanning to

your overseas students. Unit 3 Module 2 of this course gives more
information on types of reading and reading sub-skills.

Remember, as a teacher you will need to get used to adapting, editing and
analysing texts to use with your students. Start practising!

SELF-CHECK 1:7

Try these tasks on materials that you have lying around your house:

 Pick out key points from a newspaper article.

 Analyse how a leaflet that arrives at your house sets about persuading you to
donate to a charity or do something else.

 Look at how instructions are laid out in a user manual and follow some of
them to do something new with your TV.

 Look at how a website presents information, eg a ‘What’s On?’ page.

This can be done in any language if you are not surrounded by English.

Unit 1 22
How this course works

Distance learning does not mean that you are cut off from your trainers and
cannot communicate with them. It is a two-way process. Your trainer will
communicate with you and you may wish to communicate back to him/her.

When you have completed a module, send it to the designated trainer.

He/she will mark the tasks and return them to you with a grade and
comments designed to help you. Read the comments as they may be useful
for the next module. If your work comes back to you with a U grade, this does
not mean that you are failing, it means that with the help given you can
achieve more. You may have misunderstood a question or not written quite
enough on a certain topic. Your tutor will direct you to resubmit your work. If
you do the changes well you can still achieve high grades.
This is a form of teaching and learning that is part of the course.

Please make sure that you submit only those tasks which are marked as
TASK. Self-check exercises are for you and must not be submitted.

Since there are only self-checks in this first Unit, none of them have to be
returned to be marked; you are however strongly recommended to read the
Unit carefully and to complete the exercises for yourself.

Copyright INTESOL Worldwide 2015

Unit 1 23