Study Skills

Hi there!

Welcome to the Study Skills section of this blog. As you may see from the size of the scroll icon, this page is quite big. Therefore, to make it easier to navigate, we have included a list of the content. Click on the titles and it will bring you to that section. Can’t find what you need? That’s probably because it is in another section! Thanks for reading.

1. Timetabling (Tips on making a timetable, tips on timetable chart, sample timetable, blank timetable)

2. Academic Writing (how it differs from school)

3. Note Taking (Tips on the different ways to take notes in college)

4. Research Skills (research skills flow chart)

5. Essay Writing (Tips on writing an essay)

6. Referencing (How to reference with flow chart)

7. Exams (tips for college exams)

8. Essay Writing Tips (infographic for those who thought the first one was too long. It has more pictures and less info)

Timetabling

It is important to factor in all aspects of life while making a timetable.

•  Be realistic. Do not just focus on classes that you have to attend, think about suitable times to study. Do you study better in the morning/at night? How much study is necessary to achieve the grades you want? How much time do you need to set aside for each assignment?
•  Include extra-curricular activities such as sports and exercise each day. Most importantly allow yourself plenty of free time during the week. It is vital to find a balance between work and leisure in order to get the most out of your time at University.
• Sometimes finding a happy medium is hard for students, but if you go to all your lectures and tutorials and spend a few hours a week doing some revision then you deserve some time off to either socialise or just simply relax.
•  A timetable will add structure to your day and help avoid missing out on crucial deadlines or classes and most importantly it will allow you to feel organised as your whole day is already planned out.

Want your own blank timetable? Click here  for your own version!

Academic Writing

Academic writing in university is very different to secondary school. You are expected to be able to form your own argument rather than learn off essay. You have to know how to form your argument based off of other people’s work and know how to reference properly. You are also expected to have a much higher standard of work compared to secondary school. This can take some practice but you will get used to it in the end. Meanwhile, here are some other sections to help you make the transition between writing in secondary school and writing in college.

Note Taking

It can sometimes feel like lecturers are going through the slides a mile a minute, so it is hard to know when to take notes. It can also be difficult to know how to take notes. Here is a list of things to take account of when note taking.

•  Some people learn better listening to their lecturers than writing things down, so if this is the case and you know the notes will be on moodle, it might be best just listening, or writing only very crucial things or certain words to remind you what the lecturer said.
•  Your grammar doesn’t have to be perfect because it is only you reading your notes, so you can use shortened words.
• You don’t have to take down everything, only the important bits. Some lecturers will stress the more important parts, but otherwise you have to judge it for yourself.
•  Using headings and spacing things out can help you make better sense of your notes later.
•  You can use your laptop to take notes if you find it easier to type, however some lecturers may not allow it, but they will generally say it at the beginning of the module if that is the case.
•  If you’re typing up notes, make sure you save them often so you don’t lose valuable work.
• Lastly, file your notes away in a folder, or somewhere where you will be able to access them easily when you need them.

TIP: Office 365, where you have your student email, has one note which is useful for taking notes and is free with your student account

Research Skills

Here is a useful and interactive step-by-step flow chart guide that will help you distinguish your research needs and essentials as well as introduce you to Maynooth University’s various research facilities and tools:

Can’t see it? Click here for the PDF Version!

Essay Writing

When you first get an essay question it can seem like a huge task. It can seem overwhelming and your first instinct may be to put it off and not think about it. However, doing this will mean that you have loads to do and not a lot of time to do it in. This section is here to help you tackle essay questions in just 8 easy steps.

Before you read the guide, remember that you must have a beginning, middle and end to your essay. Each paragraph must be a way to further enhance your points and to do this it is helpful to keep referring to your thesis statement.  Keep this in mind throughout the essay process.

1. First of all, check the deadline date. In an ideal world you should aim to have your assignment finished a couple of days before the actual deadline to allow you time to revise. So try to work back from the submission date deadline.
2. Next, you might have a long list of questions and you only have to answer one. Make sure to read each question carefully and pick the one that you can understand, and make sure it interests you. Don’t do the question that you think will be short but doesn’t interest you, because you will end up putting it off.
3. When you have picked your question, read and re-read Highlight the important parts, any key words, and make sure you know what is being asked of you. Sometimes questions have two parts that you need to address, so make sure you know to address both parts.
4. So you have your question, what next? Well, a lot of assignments you do in college will require you to do research If this is the case for your assignment, we have a handy guide to research for you to check out, which you can check out here!
5. Your research is done, now it is time to start thinking about writing the essay. Make a plan. This will help you to get ideas for your essay, and it will also help you to stick to your argument and prevent you from going on unnecessary tangents. There are lots of different ways to make a plan. Some people like to brainstorm, others like to make lists. You can also make a storyboard to plan out what you intend to say in each paragraph.
6. Now you know exactly what you want to say, so start off by writing your first paragraph, which will include your thesis statement. This is just a sentence or two which lets the reader know the main point that you are going to be arguing. Your first paragraph may also outline your arguments in the order that you make them, which make your assignment easier to follow for both you and the examiner.
7. You have your first paragraph, so it is time to write your first draft. It shouldn’t be too hard once you know exactly what you are going to write, the main thing is to get writing it. Don’t waste time reading over what you have written, you can do that once you have finished your draft. If necessary, break the writing into parts, take a break or even leave it for a day if you have the time. There’s no point burning yourself out, because your writing will suffer as a result.
8. Your first draft is done, now it is time to read over what you have written and check for any mistakes. Read the draft out loud and pause at full stops and commas to make sure that your sentence makes sense. If necessary get another person to read over it, even if it is someone who is not in the same course as you. They may be able to see something that you haven’t. The writing centre is a good resource here, because they have people who will take the time to read over what you have written. Another useful thing to do is leave the essay for a few days if possible. It is a lot easier to pick out mistakes with a fresh mind after not thinking about the essay for a while. Keep making changes to your work as necessary until you feel like you have a good essay.
9. Finally, you must make sure to reference any material you have mentioned in your work that belongs to someone else. You should have all the information about your sources from the research stage, so all you have to do is make sure they are correctly referenced. Each discipline may have their own referencing system, and probably have a guide to referencing on moodle. Read that carefully. If not, then the website Owl Purdue is a good website for learning how to reference. Referencing may seem daunting, but it is actually a good way to pick up marks, because all you are doing is stating what sources you got information from. If you need referencing help then check our guide to referencing here.

Now you know the steps, you are ready to write your essay. So what are you waiting for? Go and do your essay, and check back on this guide if needed.

Tl;dr?  Scroll to the bottom of this page for a summed up, nicer looking version of this.

Or Click Me for a shortcut to there.

Referencing

Writing an essay in secondary school was boring, tiring and those three to four pages seemed to take forever. You’d recite material your teacher had just said before you left class, you would open your textbook and change a few words in a sentence and interpret it into the essay because you knew your teacher would never catch you, am I right? We’ve all been there, and believe me I’m not trying to scare you but as soon as you come to University you can say goodbye to your teachers notes and those textbooks, unless of course you make reference to them. But what is referencing?

Referencing can be defined as acknowledging the source of which you obtained the information you used in your essay to back up your argument, sounds great doesn’t it? I like to define it simply as a pain in the *beep*. However, it is probably the most vital piece of information that you will get upon your entrance to third level education; without it you may as well stick the letter F on all your work. Without referencing, your work is what is known as plagiarised, which is an act of copying or closely imitating another person’s work or even their ideas without acknowledging them. This is illegal. You can be sued for all your millions of euros for copyright! Don’t assume that your lecturer or corrector won’t catch you out, because all they must do these days is run it through a computer programme which will highlight every single word you copied without properly referencing. Even that Wiki page that you chose not to include because it is engraved into your head that you shouldn’t have been using it in the first place!

So, you’re probably thinking at this stage that this sounds easy, right? I just write the name of the person who I got this information from on the page don’t I? No, what in University could possibly be that simple. There are several variations of referencing and the one you use will depend on the course you are pursuing. There are different stages to ensuring your referencing is completed; you need both an in-text citation, and a bibliography at the end of every essay, which gets a page dedicated to itself. An in-text citation usually consists of more details such as the page number to allow the reader to easily access the information or idea (but don’t worry you’ll see this in my examples). You must also cite quotes, this is quite similar to the leaving cert where you had inverted comas, but now you must also need to include where you got the quote from. Always remember the three golden rules, 1. If I read the information I am writing from somewhere else, I must reference it now before I forget later. 2. I must include all the information about the source which my specific system requires or else it is plagiarism. 3. It provides a trail for your corrector to verify your evidence, so even if you didn’t use the authors exact work chances are one of your arguments stemmed from their ideas, you must include these in your bibliography. By following those three simple steps I have been able to avoid plagiarism since the first week of University and I hope you can too; after all the Maynooth University stance on plagiarism can have serious consequences from financial penalties, or even expulsion, and we’re here for a good time not a short time.

APA/MLA website – https://depts.washington.edu/trio/quest/citation/apa_mla_citation_game/

Harvard website- https://ilrb.cf.ac.uk/citingreferences/tutorial/index.html

Exams

Exams can be the most feared aspect of school and college and can be a massive reason as to why people drop-out but there is no need to fear as they are easier than they’re made out to be. Before college, the biggest exam most people have completed is the leaving cert! Although the leaving cert and college exams have many similarities, they are ultimately very different. Similarities can be seen in the sense that the layout of the exam is the same (sitting in a large room for a couple of hours in silence) also, you’re allowed to leave whenever you’re finished once it’s after a half hour and before the last ten minutes. However, the main differences are that you have a lot less exams, often only two or three! Another main difference is that you will already have a lot of the marks before the exam due to continuous assessment (assignments, tutorials ect.). After the first exam, the nerves will go, just like any other exam. Fears and anxieties are a normal part of any exam, however the library run numerous amounts of workshops to help combat these fears. A list of these workshops can be found here: http://nuim.libguides.com/ld.php?content_id=25113088

Another key difference is that college exams are not a build-up of years of work, you can only be examined on what you did throughout the previous semester which is only 12 – 13 weeks of work!

When it is almost time for your exams, (the first exams begin in January) you must check your exam timetable on the Maynooth website to make sure you won’t be late or miss the exam. When the day of the exam comes around, you know where your exam hall is the day before the exam to avoid any time wasting or complacency, this link will give you a map of every exam hall: https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/sites/default/files/assets/document//Exam%20Hall%20Map.pdf.

The next step is when is starts getting confusing! In each exam centre, there will be lots of pages stuck on the wall (just look for the big group of people to find these pages!). On one of these pages will be your name, your student number, and your exam room. Within each exam centre are multiple exam rooms, this is to divide up the couple of hundred students into smaller groups to make it easier to supervise. Generally, you will be taken into your exam room five minutes before the exam is scheduled to start. It is also important to note: JACKETS ARE NOT ALLOWED IN THE EXAM HALL! Once in the room, the supervisor will give a rundown of the rules and regulations and you will be given your papers.

A key aspect of studying for your college exams is that it is all about independent research and study. Unlike the leaving cert, you will not have anyone running around after you, telling you what you must study and what you don’t have to study. Moodle will be the best source of information as the exams are written by your lecturer and the notes on Moodle are also by the lecturer. Attending the lectures will give you a major advantage going into the exam, however just attending them is not enough, you must be paying attention to the lecturer and taking short hand notes to be able to take in all the information fully. Also, it is key to read the readings given by your tutor or lecturer because otherwise, what they are talking about in the lecture may seem completely irrelevant. Looking up past exam papers will also be a major help to you in your exams, here is a link to video that will instruct you to find past exam papers online:

In general, they main points in succeeding in your exams are; attend lectures and pay attention, complete assignments on time, pay close attention to Moodle, don’t give up even if you are struggling to keep on top of things! Although settling into university life can be challenging enough without the exams, don’t let the exams get you down. It isn’t the end of the world if you fail as you can repeat them in August, however, it does cost a lot of money! That shouldn’t be an issue though as by following this guide, it should help you keep a little bit more on top of things and help remove some of the fears and doubts you had in your mind!

Essay Writing