Bloomsbury Study Skills – serie

Writing essays, reports, presentations, papers or dissertations makes up a substantial element of most undergraduate and taught postgraduate degree courses. Anything that makes the process easier and more effective can make a big difference to your success as a student.Taking the reader through the writing process, from understanding the task, through researching, reading and planning, to drafting and composing, reviewing and finalising their copy, the book contains many self-study exercises that will help to develop confidence, technique and clarity of purpose as a writer, whether a first year social science student or a final year scientist or engineer. The book adopts an empowering approach – encouraging the student to find out what they need to know in order to be a successful writer in their discipline. Much more than a set of hints and tips, this book provides an all-encompassing approach to becoming a confident academic writer.New for this edition:- a new section on managing your physical and mental state-advice on a wider range of assignment types, including recorded presentations, such as vlogs, and blogs-introduction to a wider range of strategies that students can employ while composing their work, including material to help students maintain their focus and concentration

Clearly illustrated with examples of written work and useful interactive exercises, this guide will encourage independent learning, helping arts and humanities students to develop effective study habits and learn successful strategies for reading and writing about theoretical texts.

A practical guide allowing mature students to build on their strengths and overcome challenges. Includes worked examples, exercises and space for recording strategies and successes. Covers areas such as lectures, seminars, reading and note-taking, presentations, writing, exams, time management, finance and careers.

Skills for finding information are essential for academic study and beyond. This illustrated guide provides practical advice on how to source and use the right resources. It includes guidance on how to carry out a literature review as well as the skills needed for finding and evaluating information.

This is an easy to use guide on how to complete the various types of assessment normally encountered in undergraduate law programmes. Encouraging students to apply the skills they have learnt, it covers a wide range of tasks including essay writing, giving presentations and moots, taking exams and completing dissertations.

Through its use of conversational and supportive tones, this popular guide puts readers at ease, assisting the transition to academic study. With clear explanations, summaries and exercises, it is an invaluable companion for the mature student. This third edition has much new content including a new chapter on writing a dissertation proposal.

Provides an easy-to-follow set of strategies and techniques that build to a plan for achieving your best possible exam performance. It gives practical step-by-step guidance in long-term planning for optimal performance through to last minute revision strategies. This fully updated, two-colour edition includes two brand new chapters.

Are you a Chinese-speaking student starting a course at an English-speaking college or university? Then The Study Skills Handbook is your passport to success! Available for the first time in simplified Chinese, this international bestseller helps you to develop the skills you need to prepare for higher level study, obtain a good degree, build your confidence and plan for your future career.Written by Stella Cottrell, the UK's leading study skills expert, the book allows you to find your unique formula for success. You will learn how to:- Identify your learning style and choose methods that work best for you- Develop core study skills in academic writing, critical thinking, exam revision, time management, group work and more- Make learning easier and faster- Improve your performance and get better gradesFeaturing lots of practical, no-nonsense advice, The Study Skills Handbook is your essential companion for succeeding at a western institution.

Shows students how to make their writing effective and grammatically correct. Organised into mini units and easy to read, it deals with everyday tasks and problems. This second edition adds further guidance on common questions raised by students, for example 'When does one use italics and/or underlining?'

Aimed at students wishing to improve their writing skills, this guide deals with the key basics of grammar, punctuation and spelling while also showing students how to construct a sentence, how to build a paragraph and how to structure an essay. This third edition includes an expanded 'Spot the Mistake' section.

This is a practical guide for those studying business and management-related subjects at undergraduate level. Written in an engaging and clear style, the book helps students prepare effectively for assignments, presentations, examinations and dissertations, encompassing both business studies and the real workings of business.

Intended for the full range of students who are studying on Masters courses and MBAs, this book has been written to accompany them during one of the most challenging times in their lives and covers the essential elements they will need to be able to work successfully.

Studying Psychology is designed to provide students with skills and strategies for writing essays, undertaking psychological research and using statistics in psychology. This second edition contains a number of new extended sections including updating research, extending research methods and statistics methods.

Aimed at providing non-native English speakers with the skills needed to study overseas at an English-speaking University, this practical handbook prepares students to live abroad, understand university culture, and to improve their English. It is built around activities that give hands-on practice to make overseas university study a success.

Including new material on blogs, wikis, podcasts and e-portfolios, the second edition reflects the increasing number of e-learning courses. This practical, flexible text helps students enhance and develop their existing skills whether they are a distance learner, or at an institution which has e-learning integrated into their programmes.

Alongside Shakespeare, the great English dramatists of the Renaissance are Marlowe, Webster and Jonson. In this new guide, Chris Coles shows you how to approach the plays of these three major playwrights and how you can build your own critical response to their complex and demanding plays.If you are studying any of these three dramatists, then this is likely to prove the one critical book you will need. Chris Coles starts with the basic problem of understanding what a play is about, and then shows you how to discuss such matters as themes, language, characters and staging. The plays he discuses are Doctor Faustus, Edward II, The Duchess of Malfi, The White Devil, Volpone and The Alchemist. A final chapter provides very full guidance on how to write an essay and how to answer examination questions. The whole book offers good advice which is certain to improve not only your examination performance but also your enjoyment of Renaissance Drama.

This practical reference for university and senior high school students shows how to read, understand and analyze poetry. Included are sections on narrative poetry and writing essays.

This book provides a clear method of study which encourages students to construct their own interpretation of any of Dicken's novels. It helps students to identify a novel's major thematic concerns and interests and to argue a case purely from the evidence of the text. But it also moves beyond a straighforwardly thematic analysis to consider how a novel is put together and how it works. This in turn provides students with a way of identifying the distinctiveness of Dickens's fiction and with a way of structuring an intelligent critical response to any of his novels.

In this book Tony Curtis, himself an award-winning poet, offers clear and positive help to students who are faced by a modern poem which puzzles and frightens them. How do we proceed to construct a critical response to a poem which may not rhyme, may not have metrical regularity, may not be written in verses or even have conventional punctuation? This book deals imaginatively and originally with such problems. It also provides helpful critical readings of many of the major poems of the post-war years, by poets such as Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Dylan Thomas, Philip Larkin, Seamus Heaney, R S Thomas, Dannie Abse and William Carlos Williams.

Forster's novels have always given great pleasure to the general reader but they do present particular problems for those who wish to study them in a more systematic way. The elusiveness of Forster's irony, the complexity of his symbolism and the formal ambiguities in structure that are such a marked feature in all his novels, make any analysis surprisingly challenging. In this book, Nigel Messenger shows you how to set about this task.

We can all say whether or not we like this or that TV programme, but how can you set about analysing it and formulating an informed critical response to it? What sort of things do you need to know? How can you discuss practical topics like lighting, camera work and editing, together with your insights into class, gender and politics? This invaluable book will tell you how. There are chapters on each of the major forms of TV output, as well as advice on researching, preparing and presenting a project, suggestions to help students expand their reading and knowledge of the subject, a detailed glossary of technical terms and phrases and a short, useful index.

This guide to James Joyce's major novels presents a refreshing approach to understanding the work of this challenging and enigmatic giant of twentieth-century literature. Taking the student through a careful, step-by-step analysis of each text, John Blades demonstrates a practical and lively method of critical analysis.

Practical criticism underlies everything students of English literature do. It is a way of reading the text closely, but with a grasp of the larger issues involved. This book is a practical, step-by-step guide which shows the student how to gain a sense of what a poem or passage of prose or drama is about, how to analyse it and how to build a successful essay. Easy to read and uncluttered by technical vocabulary, it will prove an invaluable resource for any student.

How to Study a Novel has long been established as the one book about the novel that every student of literature at school or university needs to read. In a series of clearly written, eminently practical chapters, John Peck takes the reader through a set of logical steps that show him how to respond to, interpret and develop his own view of a novel and how to present that response in an effective essay. This thoroughly revised and expanded Second Edition has three new chapters taking this process one step further, showing how to make use of the new critical thinking that has swept through literary criticism in recent years.

This book - for a decade the most highly regarded general introduction to Shakespeare - offers students a clear and practical method of approaching a Shakespeare play. This major new edition has been thoroughly revised and expanded to include five new chapters that illustrate the nature and impact of the new approaches to Shakespeare that have swept through literary studies in recent years: structuralism, poststructuralism, deconstruction, feminism, new historicism and cultural materialism.

However much students enjoy their reading of a Jane Austen novel, many find it difficult to know how to organise their critical responses. This book shows students how to develop a firm grasp of Jane Austen's characters, themes and techniques, as well as such central topics as the use of irony in the novels, and their style and moral patterning. In the newly revised and expanded edition of this successful book, Vivien Jones looks at all of Jane Austen's novels, and demonstrates how to analyse both their overall structure and concerns as well as individual passages. A completely new chapter looks at current critical debates about Austen's achievement and the final chapter gives practical advice on writing an essay.

In this fresh edition of his tried-and-tested guide, Rob Pope continues to help students get to grips with Chaucer - all the way through from the first tentative encounters with the language to sophisticated critical and historical engagement with Chaucer's narrative art in context. All the commonly studied tales are featured, and each is approached through a series of clear and well-defined steps. In addition to guidance on 'translating' and interpreting Chaucer, there are new sections reviewing key terms and arguments in contemporary critical debates. This is a practical, authoritative and enjoyable handbook that brings the study of Chaucer right up-to-date.

Studying Economics provides a thorough, yet digestible and friendly introduction to this often daunting subject. The complex components of economic theory and practice are broken down and explained using a logical approach, supported by working examples, tables and graphs. Introducing differing mainstream approaches to economic study, from Marxian to feminist to environmental, this book puts Economics into a context which is easy for any student to understand.Explaining why and how we should study Economics, the book contains invaluable information on course content, learning techniques, revision, writing essays and dissertations, and examination assessment.

Students nowadays don't just need subject knowledge - they need to communicate well, by writing clear, well-structured reports and by presenting their information in a professional way to an audience.This friendly, readable book guides science and technology students through all the communication involved in a typical course, from the first assignment to the final project report or dissertation. Detailed help and support is given, with lots of examples and practical advice, including how to apply for a job and succeed at an interview. Above all, this book will give its readers confidence that they can communicate effectively and get credit for their writing and speaking skills.