Mission Possible: The Study Skills Pack for Students

Students using the Pack
You can use these handouts and exercises (including the seminars) as part of your independent/ self-directed study, or to bolster your grades. It is a good idea to access the site with friends, particularly where seminar/ group work is suggested. The pages can be viewed on-screen or downloaded. Each exercise has been made as student-friendly as possible, with well-scaffolded guidance notes and many examples to enable you to run with a sheet (or set of sheets) pretty much from scratch.
One important thing to remember: most of the handouts were originally designed for a tutor-led module, so please don't be put off when you encounter notes or instructions directed at tutors. Read those notes, as you may need to take them in. Also, if some handouts seem (at first sight) a little more difficult to do on your own, by all means get the help of a friend or teacher/ tutor. I have included those resources because I want to cater for all levels of aptitude and experience; furthermore, with the Pack thus intact, you have access to all the background material and get a better sense of how the exercises fit together. Of course, you can choose just the pages you want to use. But do bear in mind that, with a little help, the more advanced exercises can be invaluable to core aspects of your study.

 

Contents:

What Kind of Writer are You? 'Five Writers'  

Presentation Skills

Answering the Question / Questioning the Answer

Memory / Study / Processing Notes

Managing Tasks / Making Presentations

Study Skills: a Summary

Miscellaneous Study Tools

The entire Study Skills Pack in PDF format

 

Things to watch out for
Clearly, no format can meet every eventuality; I must leave it to each user to adapt, interpret or rewrite each item according to her specific needs. If for any reason you do get stuck or confused, the advice or input of a tutor or colleague can, of course, really help. It is also understood that whenever my examples refer to a particular author or book (Byron's Don Juan, for instance, or the British Council/ Picador anthology New Writing 12), more pertinent texts of your own choice may be substituted. Please note when printing - some of these files contain a lot of graphics, so don't be disheartened if they take a while to print.

 

Conditions of Use
I am entirely happy for any of these handouts and exercises (or adaptations of them) to be copied and used for educational purposes, subject to the following conditions:

Please ensure each sheet or excerpt retains the copyright notation:
© Mario Petrucci 2005;

No idea, text or image may be reproduced or re-published in saleable form.

Use of ideas or material in articles, journal papers, etc requires the usual courtesy of acknowledgement.