W101 Skills – 1

The online Open University law module W101 has some skills lessons built in, interspersed at intervals to aid the student in recognising and developing the necessary skills that are so important, both as a student and future lawyer. Some of the skills may seem obvious, some not so much. For example, the learning outcomes for Skills 1 are:

Learning outcomes

After studying this unit you should be able to:

• review your progress so far
• develop the skills of reading, note-taking and summarising
• know how to find your way around a statute
• know how to find your way around a case.

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So, reading, note-taking and summarising may seem to be very obvious skills… but, these are not just the pleasurable, ‘normal’ way we might read the latest John Grisham novel, or the daily newspaper. For academic purposes, these skills have to be developed and used in an effective manner. They are part of your cognitive development. You, the student, need to learn how to identify what is relevant, what is not, how to identify facts and apply principles to those facts.

About the hardest part of your development (at least it was for me) is the self-analysis, the idea of being totally honest with yourself, and avoid making excuses. Did you use your time effectively? Were you able to do more hours of study than you actually did? Did you really have to eat that last muffin? Okay, I threw that in to see if you were paying attention.

Activity 1:

This activity gets you to think about the first weeks of study on W101 and ask yourself some questions. You may wish to make some notes as you respond to these questions:

• What did you find to be the easiest aspect of your study so far?
• What did you find to be the hardest aspect of your study so far?
• Which aspects of your study did you do well at?
• Which aspects of your study need improving?
• What can you do to improve and develop your learning?
• Was your time management efficient and can you do anything to improve it for the future?

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An average person is ready to be honest about their strengths, but can you face up to your weaknesses? You will encounter a lot of this when you have to give feedback on your assignments and it will be uncomfortable, to say the least. Can you be completely honest with yourself, and your tutor, in answering the above questions? You can do a personal SWOT Analysis to determine your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities (for improvement) and threats (to your improvement).

Reading Skills:

There are different ways to read. The type of reading we do depends on the material we are reading and the purpose for which we are reading.

• Reading for gist – if we are reading to understand what the text is about, or to see if it is relevant for our needs, we may skim read, and this applies to a newspaper, a report or an academic article. We may also scan the text to get the general idea and to identify exactly what we need to know.

• Reading to gain a full understanding – if we are reading in order to gain a full understanding of something technical or complex, we tend to take our time. We may read the text through once quickly, to get the general idea, and then go back over it more carefully. We may take notes of the things we find difficult to understand, which we think are important, which we need to clarify later, or which we disagree with.

• Reading to reformulate – this type of reading aims to identify the main points of a text to enable you to make your own notes. This is important as it enables you to condense a lot of material.

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A useful strategy in reading is known as SQ3R… Survey-Question-Read-Recite (or Recall)-Review. Click on the link for a PDF summary and description.

Effective Note-taking:

A person reading for academic study is advised to take notes, not only to help in digesting the material, but also to help summarise and clarify the ideas. “Taking notes forces you to think about the ideas in the text as you read it, because you have to decide what to write down and how to phrase it. As you write down the notes you are pressed into finding some sense in the words in the text. If you read without taking notes, no matter how good your memory is, you will find that the ideas gradually drift away from you.” It also helps if you rewrite in your own words so that avoiding plagiarism becomes automatic.

There are several different techniques for note-taking:

• Marking or annotating the text was signalled as a key activity when reading and it forms the beginning of note-taking – it highlights the relevant sections so that they are easier to find.
• Linear notes: this is the most common form of note-taking. It involves writing in sequence the points that you want to note. The aim is to pick out the relevant points.
• Mind maps: when making a mind map, you generally put the central topic in the middle of the page and then arrange the different aspects of the topic around it. However, you can give free rein to your creativity with mind maps. There are no hard and fast rules. Mind maps give you a clear visual representation of the relationship between points or ideas and many people find that the effort that they put into constructing a mind map is enough to fix the information in their memory.

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One mistake students make when making annotations is to underline or mark almost everything on the page. However, the OU has a nifty little guide here on note-taking. It’s part of an on-going skills section on the OU website. Learning to identify and annotate what is important and necessary is an essential skill.

To be continued…