How to approach your

assignment:
Developing Academic Skills

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 Important Academic Skills

 Identify relevant academic sources

 Use the academic sources to achieve in-

depth critical analysis

 Communicate your results in an appropriate

academic format

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Identify relevant academic sources

 The sources that you identify should be:

 Credible

 Relevant

 Up to date

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 Credible Sources

 Papers from academic journals

 Academic books

 Reports from national and international

organisations

 Other sources should be used with

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Sources that should not be used in
academic assignments
 Wikipedia

 Random internet sources

 News paper articles expressing views

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 In depth critical analysis and
evaluation
 Your role is to identify results, data, research
findings, etc from your sources and present it
into your assignment in order to cover the
topic comprehensively
 Usually, the more sources you integrate into
your discussion the better the critical
analysis you achieve
 Relying on limited number of sources usually
leads to descriptive approach (ie keep on
reproducing the evidence you have
the
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 Present your findings in an
appropriate academic format
 Your assignment should consist at a
minimum from:

 Front page
 Introduction
 Main discussion
 Conclusions
 Reference list / Bibliography

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 Introduction

 The typical structure of an introduction

consist of:
 Opening statement(s) introducing the reader to the
broader field
 The absolutely necessary information to introduce
the reader to the topic
 The specific research question that you are dealing
with (ie The aim of the research is …)
 You can conclude the introduction with one or two
sentences providing a mental map to the reader
about the forthcoming sections
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 Main discussion

 Normally the main discussion is structured

around the emerging themes from the
relevant literature
 It is absolutely necessary to substantiate /
justify your claims, research findings, data
through the citation of the relevant sources
 Normally, we start from the general and move
on to the specific as our discussion evolves
 Paragraphs and subsections are helpful for
the reader but don’t over do it (ie too many the
small paragraphs) UNIVERSITY
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 Conclusions

 In the conclusions we provide an overall

response to the research question that we
have clearly articulated in the introduction
 Also, we can include recommendations for
policy makers (if any)
 Don’t introduce new information including
citations in the conclusions sections. These
should all be integrated in the main
discussion
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 Reference list

 You should consistently utilize a referencing

system (eg Harvard referencing system)

 All citations in text should be listed in the

reference list in the end and all sources listed
in the reference list should be cited in text

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 Supporting clips

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugGtzW0
u_YI&feature=youtu.be
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q8dp01f
bg8&feature=youtu.be
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yp0JnWj
92g&feature=youtu.be

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