Pen And Paper

You hear a lot these days about being “paperless”. Yes, it’s better for the environment not to have paper copies of absolutely everything, but paper still has its uses.

Take assignment writing. Assignments usually have to be submitted either electronically or as word processed printouts. It is unlikely your tutors will ever see your handwriting as few courses require handwritten material to be handed in. But this doesn’t mean you can retire your pen completely. American study skills writer Cal Newport has written about the virtues of using pen and paper to help you think about your work and plan.

His take on pen and paper is that it frees you from distractions. Most computers come with wireless internet access so you are never more than a couple of clicks away from wasting valuable time on Facebook, online games, or any of the millions of distractions you can find online. But with a pen and paper these distractions are inaccessible. For Newport the act of using a pen and paper to write about your ideas can be more easily combined with getting away from the usual routine – without needing a power source for your computer (even the best laptop batteries will die after a few hours) you have the freedom to go somewhere which you might find suits you better than the library or your own bedroom. Whilst Newport’s suggestion of “the dunes overlooking a windswept springtime beach” might be a little hard to find in Salford, the park on campus on a nice warm day can be pleasant and not too noisy.

Pen and paper works well with revision for exams. Writing down your thoughts can help with ordering them. It also means you can arrange things in ways which are more intuitive for you than laying them out in the rigid columns which form the default settings in Word. Spidergrams and Mind Maps are great ways to revise, and you can use pen and paper to create revision flashcards.

But even just for assignments and dissertations the use of pen and paper to help lay out your ideas can help. You are under no obligation to write your notes in any particular style. You can use your own words rather than the academic language you will need to use in the assignments themselves. You can draw pictures, use different colour pens (a personal favourite) and even fold your paper into unusual shapes. Maybe you can find other uses for the paper whilst you are thinking about your assignment (http://www.origami-fun.com/) – why spend your work breaks (which you should always take, whether using computers or pen and paper) staring at photos of yourself when you could spend it trying to master the dragon’s head. Also, there’s no obligation to write your notes and thoughts on a flat piece of paper, you’ll certainly find your notes are more distinctive if you’ve written them on an origami frog.


An origami frog with the Gibbs reflection cycle helpfully written on its back.

Pen and paper might seem obsolete, but they offer an opportunity to approach working environments, organising ideas, and even breaks, from a new angle. It might give you some new ideas.

Some Help With Written English - David Crystal’s Language Blog

The linguist David Crystal has a very interesting blog where he writes about a range of linguistic matters and about his work in the area.

Some of the entries are worth reading for those wondering how parts of the English language work, or how to get to grips with academic English.

Here are some of the posts (up to December 2010) which you might find interesting or useful.


“On ful(l)” - There is some variation in British and American spellings as to whether to put one “l” or two at the end of words like “enrol/enroll” or “distil/distill”. This post covers the British way of spelling and a brief history.

“On commas” and “On commas, again” - Confused about commas and where they go? These posts should help clear up some of the mystery surrounding these little marks.

“On whatever will be will… be” - A post on constructing verb phrases in the future tense, the difference between “What will be my husband’s name?” and “What will my husband’s name be?”.

“On whilst” - Should you use “while” or “whilst”? Does it matter?

“On possessive apostrophes” - A brief history of the possessive apostrophe. You might benefit from seeing its history and how it came to be used in English, so you can understand how to use it correctly.


“On semi-colons” - Where do they come from and are they useful? This briefly covers both questions.


“On boilt” - There’s no such word as “boilt” in English even though there is “spoilt”. This post doesn’t answer why this might be the case, but it does give a handy little rule of thumb for knowing when to use words where there are both “-ed” and “-t” endings, like “dreamed” and “dreamt”.

The SQ3R Reading Method

You will find that you will have to read a lot of sources at university. Fortunately you will not have to read them in the same way as you would read a book for pleasure – you don’t have to read the whole book, or read every word or sentence. One of the main skills you will learn at university is how to read selectively, i.e. finding the bits of books, articles, websites, etc, that you need and ignoring the irrelevant parts.


There are plenty of strategies for reading, this post is about the SQ3R method.

SQ3R stands for Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review. Each word corresponds to a step in the process.

Firstly you should Survey the chapter/book/article/etc which you are about to read. Look for clues as to what it’s about, titles, headings and subheadings, visual elements like pictures and graphs plus their captions, footnotes (if you see it references other sources you have found useful then it might also be useful), etc. At this stage it is also a good idea to skim read the introduction and the conclusion as these should tell you what the piece discusses and concludes.

The next step is to Question the piece. Ask yourself questions about the piece. Why are you reading this piece? Has your tutor asked you to do so, and if so why? Did you find it yourself, and if so how? Did another source recommend it? From step one, Surveying the piece, have you formulated any questions? You can use the headings or other points of interest to construct questions – if you find one section has the heading ‘Cognitive behavioural therapy’ then you can create the question “What is cognitive behavioural therapy, and how is it useful to my work?”. These Questions can form the basis of your note taking as they give you a framework to work with as well as helping you concentrate your efforts on answering relevant questions.

The next step is to Read. Thinking about the Questions you have set yourself, read the parts of your piece which you think will answer them. Use the cues from the Surveying step to work out where to Read, but use this step in the process to Read the piece more carefully, ensuring you can answer your questions. Re-Read any section which proves difficult or unclear.



After you have Read the piece you must Recite what you have Read. This is a very important step as it is here that you begin to reinforce what you have learned. Summarize the answers to your Questions. You can do this verbally at first, but it is recommended that you write down your summaries in the form of notes. Use your own words as much as possible as this will help you to understand what you are writing, rather than simply copying it out which will not aid learning. Arrange your notes in ways which will help you remember – different people have different ways of approaching this, so use a style which you know will help you.

Finally you must Review your work. This means going back to the notes you have made in order to refresh your memory of the piece. Do this at regular intervals as the more your Review your work, the more you will remember in the long term. As a general guideline Review your notes the day after you have made them, and a couple of days after that, then do so regularly for as long as you need to remember the information. Reviewing the notes does not have to be a passive activity, you can turn your notes into flashcards (see our post on this topic from last month), or a spidergram (something else we covered recently), anything to make you engage with the information, rather than simply reading over it. You could even do something as simple as try and explain it to a friend.

Pecha Kucha and Presentations

Pecha Kucha, or ペチャクチャin the original Japanese, is a presentation style which places limitations on the presenter which they must overcome in order to give a good presentation. The rules of Pecha Kucha are simple, each presenter has to give a presentation consisting of 20 slides, each of which will be displayed for just 20 seconds. This means the presenter has to complete their presentation in 6 minutes 40 seconds.

Pecha Kucha events take place all over the world (if you are interested check out the website http://www.pecha-kucha.org/ ) and are often used as an opportunity for designers or people in creative industries to show their work, but it is not just limited to creative areas. Notable British celebrities like comedian Johnny Vegas, actress Joanna Lumley and journalist Jon Snow have taken part in Pecha Kucha nights.



University presentations usually won’t be in Pecha Kucha style (although sometimes they are, your tutor will tell you what they expect), but you can still use Pecha Kucha to help with your work. The essence of Pecha Kucha is brevity and directness, you must say what you need to say in a very short amount of time. How does this help with presentations at university? It’s quite easy when writing a presentation for your lecturer and/or class to panic and try to include everything you know about the topic, whether it is necessary or not. This can result in slides packed with too much information and scripts containing far more words than you can say in your allotted time. The results are sprawling presentations which lack focus.

Whilst writing your presentation try and adapt it to fit into a Pecha Kucha style. 20 slides, each on screen for 20 seconds. 6 minutes 40 seconds. Can you get your presentation to fit into this time? Is 20 seconds long enough to read your slides?

Working to tight limits like this will help you focus. A slide that cannot be read in a 20 second Pecha Kucha slot will not work in a general presentation either, crowded slides which take a long time to read will cause the audience to stop reading and maybe even lose interest completely if there are a lot of them. Slides are there to aid your talk, not overload the audience with information. Pecha Kucha’s limited time on each slide shows up perfectly how overcrowded slides can fail.


From http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/.

The time limit will also help your speech. The purpose of the limited time to speak is not to encourage the speaker to talk faster, but to use fewer words. It is very easy in all assignments to ‘waffle’, to say things over and over in slightly different ways, to go off on tangents, and to use too many words in an attempt to make your piece sound more ‘academic’. When you only have 6 minutes 40 seconds to say everything you need to say, you will find you will need to concentrate on what you want to say, to say it as simply and effectively as possible. Precise, direct language is the best sort to use in presentations. Flowery, convoluted or irrelevant language will only hinder your audience’s understanding of your presentation.

These lessons, all of which can be learnt by writing a Pecha Kucha presentation, will help make your presentation better. You can also get together with some coursemates to have a Pecha Kucha event where you all give your Pecha Kucha presentations. They can give you feedback on your presentation and you can practice talking in front of a crowd. As the presentation is only 6 minutes 40 seconds long it will seem less daunting than a 10 or 20 minute talk, and should help you overcome any nerves you might have.

Matt Might's 'Illustrated Guide To A PhD'

Matt Might (http://matt.might.net) produced a nice little guide to PhD studies to give his students a sense of perspective.

Here's Matt's version and here's the UK English 'translation' which applies Matt's diagrams to our own education system.

Spidergrams

Having trouble organising your ideas? Spidergrams or spider diagrams are an efficient and useful tool for putting your ideas down on paper and planning assignments, creating a web of ideas and phrases which you can use to plan what you will say and when.

For instance, if you want to decide where to go on holiday you can use a spidergram.


Click to expand

How to make a spidergram

A spidergram is meant to fit on a relatively small space. Try to use one piece of paper, two if absolutely necessary. You are trying to present your ideas in a compact form, save the in depth detail for the assignment itself. However you should not make your spidergram too small either, space it out so you can read each branch of the web, and see what it is connected to. It can get confusing if you cannot see which points link to each other, or cannot read a point

Start with the subject. Place it in the middle of the diagram (in this case the question of where to go on holiday). It is a good idea to indicate which is the central ‘bubble’ – maybe highlight it or use a different shape/lettering/etc. From here all your ideas will flow, and they are connected to the central subject.

Each branch of the web represents a different main point. Around the central point write your secondary points. If there are further points to be made have them branching off from the secondary ideas. In the example above the secondary points are examples of countries the writer is considering going to on holiday. The branches coming off the points marked “Spain” and “Thailand” are thoughts which the writer has related specifically to those countries.

Each point needs to contain just enough information to tell you what the point is about. Summarise what you want to say. Too many words and the spidergram won’t be useful as there will be too many words on it. Smaller branches are used as examples to support the ideas and points in bigger branches.

When doing a spidergram for your assignments make sure that you know where any information you use comes from. You could have small branches coming off each example to note where it came from, or you can include the reference location in the text on each branch. Do whatever makes most sense for you.



Click to expand

In summary:
- Use a whole piece of paper - leave yourself lots of space for you ideas.
- Put the subject/question in the centre.
- Put each main point on a new branch - the examples and related thoughts will form branches coming off each main point.
- Summarise - don't write too much.
- Make sure you know where you got all your points and examples from, you don't want to have to search through all your notes to find lost information.
- Leave space to add notes later, you might forget to add a piece of information when you make the spidergram and you don't want to end up having to redraw the whole thing just to add a new idea or example.

Referencing Extra #1 - Radio Shows & Podcasts

The first step to successful referencing is to read our Study Basics guide to the Harvard Referencing System. However due to space we were not able to include every single possible source you might reference for an assignment. This is the first in a series of posts covering some of those sources which aren't in the Study Basics guide. If there are any other sources you are unsure how to reference please leave a comment below or email us at studyskills@salford.ac.uk.

Referencing Radio Programmes



Referencing a radio programme can take several forms. It is important to give as much information as possible so the reader can find the exact quote. There are several different styles for referencing a radio show, below is the one we recommend but if your lecturer wants you to reference it differently please use their recommended style.

The author should be the person who says the lines you are referencing, not the person whose radio show it is (if the show is eponymous or has a regular presenter). Use the following format:

Author name (year) ‘Name of Programme’, Radio station. Date of broadcast. Time of broadcast.

For example this could appear as:

Peacock, L. (2009) ‘Today’, BBC Radio 4. 15 May 2009. 6.00hrs.

The speaker was called L. Peacock. This is not the name of the regular presenters of Today, it is the name of the guest who spoke on the subject we are interested in. We have also formatted the time in the 24 hour clock, although if you like you could say “6am” as long as you are consistent throughout the piece.

However this reference isn’t as helpful as it could be. It doesn’t say when in the programme the quotation was said. It also leaves it up to the tutor to find the programme if they want to check. This is a limitation tutors are familiar with, but check with them first if it is ok for you to reference material in this way.

Some radio programmes find their way online in the form of “Listen again” features, or podcasts. If you were to hear the above radio programme on a “Listen again” (played using the website’s internal media player and not available to download and play through another device such as an mp3 player) feature then you will have to state this in your reference:

Author name (year) ‘Name of Programme’, Radio station. Date of broadcast. Time of broadcast (exact time). Website address [date accessed].

Referencing an online version of a radio show requires more information, but it also allows you to be more accurate – you can rewind the programme and note the exact time of the material you are using, but you must still include the original broadcast time. Some shows might be broadcast twice a day so always be specific about which edition you have listened to. Additionally, when including the time of the relevant material make sure to indicate how long the show is (in this case of the example below you are listening at the end of the first half hour of a three hour show). If you listen in this way you must include the website address and the date you accessed it, as you would with any website reference. You must also make sure you indicate that you have used an online listening service. In our example we listened to a Radio 4 programme but we used the BBC iPlayer to listen to it, not a radio. Make sure both these pieces of information are included, instead of BBC Radio 4 as the radio station put BBC iPlayer: Radio 4.

Peacock, L. (2009) ‘Today’, BBC iPlayer: BBC Radio 4. 15 May 2009. 6.00hrs (27.50-29.20/3:00:00). http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/ [accessed 17 May 2010].

Some radio programmes are available as a podcast, a file which you can download from the programme’s website or a podcast store, and listen to on an mp3 player or other media player. If you listen to the material in this format you must reference this in a similar manner to the “Listen again” version above, but make it clear you listened to a podcast.

Peacock, L. (2009) ‘Today’, BBC Radio 4, BBC Podcasts. 15 May 2009. 6.00hrs (27.50-29.20/3:00:00). http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/ [accessed 17 May 2010].