Name: Halimatul Saadiah Binti Haji Abdul Hamid. Reg.

No: 12T0095 Introduction to university study CU-0201 Date of submission: Monday, 1st October, 2012

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Week 1, July 30, 2012. I was a little late to enter 0201s first class so I did skipped some earlier part of the class but I manage to understand the module more or less. Ms. Akmarul first introduced us to, perhaps, 0201s rules of engagement like being punctual, keeping our phone silent and what not. My thought at that time, being in this adult environment was very nerve-wrecking and how great the responsibility of handling myself as Ms. Akmarul said that shell be treating us like adults. I didnt realise that I have aged. From that I learned that I was able to grow up a little, especially holding a greater a responsibility for myself without really depending on others. Honestly at first I didnt have the confidence to go through any of the courses that I once decided to withdraw. But then I am thankful that this module helps me to drive myself more. I realise for a very long time that I am not an efficient student and that my method of study was rather below average. Luckily in 0201s first lecture we were introduced to one of the key factors for a better method of study; time management. Ms. Akmarul showed us some sort of questionnaire with numbers ranging from numbers 1-5 supposedly to rate ourselves and we were to add all the numbers and in the end I found out that I am an average planner in other words not-so-good of a planner. I learnt a lot from this tutorial on how to manage my time, to prioritize the work that comes first and avoiding myself from slacking, in other words, I can detect where I am lacking and through this I can manage my time more efficiently. I noticed that I am not an organised person that at the end of the day I tend to rush into things. But the first tutorial of 0201 showed some example of how to do our own planner and though at first having a planner takes time to adjust into my lifestyle this helps me into becoming more organised and now I am very good at keeping track of my schedule.

Week 3, August 13, 2012 Again, I arrived a few minutes late due to the unavoidable traffic congestion but skip that part, I ended up being almost ten minutes late coming to the lecture and apparently the topic for that day was to show us some examples of learning strategies. Lucky for me, I didnt miss much. First of all we were introduced to effective and practical learning style. All I could think about was how difficult these strategies are going to be applied in my lifestyle because the way I have been studying for all this time has been very diverse. I was never conscious of my learning pattern to be precise well, not until I discovered from that days lesson that I fell under the category of unconscious learning that is unaware of learning by taking in small information and to use it consciously later.
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Also, I found out that I work better with small details for example lessons that requires on small information and slowly using those information to get a bigger picture, in a way to make it less confusing. It was then I realise why I had face some problems on my A level subject before. It is like instead of beating about the bush being straight to the point is my forte. Apparently on this topic I learned a lot about myself and particularly I notice that I am an indecisive person therefore I couldnt find which method of learning I prefer thus in the end, from this tutorial, combining method of learning works the best for me. The next topic that was covered was on research skills and honestly I have never done thorough research on anything and that just means that I am not a good researcher. I am a simple thinker and simply accepting any informations I lay my eyes on and this just shows how bad of a researcher I am. But in the end of the day, I have learnt my mistake and now I have to improve on the things that I lack especially on my study pattern. Week 5, August 27, 2012 On this day we first continued with the lecture from the past two weeks that is on research skills and from this lesson I found out that I read less educational materials and spend much of my time reading fictional novels (I need to use less time on reading these sorts of materials). I learnt what literature research is all about and it actually asks you to have deep research on materials (written source, etc), I re-learned on what hypothesis is all about and what not. Making hypothesis in particular is not a favourite of mine simply because it requires critical thinking on what are we trying to derive from the research that we are doing. But no matter how I dislike it, hypothesis is actually like a compass for us to develop the research. It seems that I still need to work on this. We went to a new topic next and it was on reflective learning. I didnt understand how being reflective helps a student to study more effectively but after considering the content of the slides shown by Mr. Aswandi especially when one of the slides said to change our motivation and change our attitude clicked my mind; it is only when a person reflects on his/her flaws then he/she can be a better person. Also, now I understand how certificate works. It is actually a way to show the things you like and interested in and for me it is my liking towards language especially in English. Come to think of it, my certificates are mostly English based. Thus I find out that my strength is in language and perhaps with words. I used to have no clear future of what I am going to become but looking at the things that helps me to reflect and actually judge myself, now I have a little less image of the path I am going to choose next, my motivation so to speak.
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Week 6, September 3rd, 2012 I enjoyed this class the most and it was mostly because the lecturer on that day was quirky and fun (just saying). The topic we covered was strategies for note-taking on how we shouldnt be writing in long and winding sentence and what not. What I did after the lecture was looking back at my past notes and I see that I tend to copy and paste the exact words from where I got the information and resulting in my own self destruct; I couldnt retrieve the main points of that certain information. I swear from that day onwards Ill only jot down the main points from whatever information I got. As a person that really is into colours I usually get bored by simply reading from the black and white notes given to me by my previous teachers and I often use highlighters and I am glad to know that it is actually another brilliant way to understand a lesson not only by taking down notes. One thing that made me think at that time was to pay attention. A study on students attention has shown that attention span doesnt go for a very long time so how in the world are we suppose to always pay attention during class? I think this is the only thing that bothers me still. Week 7, September 10, 2012 Communication skill. It is something that I dread for most of my education life. Why? It is because when it comes to communication in the education sector, it always requires you to talk. Frankly, standing in front of a mass is not what I look forward to in this lesson. This requires skill to manipulate the crowd who is listening or perhaps reading whatever it is you are claiming. I in particular am not good with people. How was I supposed to expect people to listen to my claims if I were to make a wrong impression? How can I create a hook so that people will listen to what I am about to say? The answer to that is confidence which is another important aspect I lack. Fortunately with the coming presentation we were asked to assign ourselves into groups of two so perhaps I may be able to prepare myself to be a little confident. In a way this sort of tutorial helps to increase our self esteem more or less and the fact that it makes us read and understand the things we are about to sell or entertain to our listeners. The fact that we have to clearly convey the message to the listeners is actually challenging our usage of vocabulary and I think that it helps to develop our speech skill at the same time. We were also asked to search for the features of academic writing as our independent study task: Research on features of academic writing and four types of academic writing.
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Features of academic writing are firstly, it must be clearly structured where it gives direction in your work and help readers to understand your work. Secondly, it must be logically developed; having clear central idea and finally leads to a conclusion. Thirdly is that it must be written analytically which means to elaborate, giving reasons, contrasting, comparing etc. The fourth will be citations and references where it is a must since academic writing is based on sources. The fifth will be academic writing must be clear and not ambiguous and lastly the language used in academic writing is formal. [External reference: Newscastle University. (2009). Writing development centre. Retrieved September 10, 2012 from http://www.ncl.ac.uk/students/wdc/learning/academic/] The four types of academic writing are expository writing that is an explanation on short theme, idea or issue, persuasive writing is to persuade the readers to agree on your point of view, analytical writing requires deep analysis for example poems, play etc and lastly argumentative writing is to argue a certain claim and to prove that your claim is more truthful than the others. [External reference: (2008). Four types of essay: expository, persuasive, analytical, and argumentative. Retrieved September 10, 2012 from http://accesssocialstudies.cappelendamm.no/c319365/artikkel/vis.html?tid=382115] Week 8, September 17, 2012 Unfortunately for us, even though we were on our semester break we werent having any actually. It was the eighth week for 0201 and the topic we covered was thinking and problem solving skills. The atmosphere was rather bleak when I came since we were hoping we would be having a break from all of the surprises we went through so far since we entered the Unibridging program. So thinking and problem solving skill is simply being able to think very critically. One thing I remember from the lecture is having a mind of a detective and that it being able to critically see into things others might have missed. To no avail, it is indeed a very special skill I have yet to develop. Thus, from this lecture I understand that conclusions are often hidden and are not necessarily at the end and that we must be able to read between the lines and also not simply accept any info without analysing. Week 9. September 24th, 2012 [Presentation week]. I was very anxious. Very, very anxious in fact I feel like I couldnt stand straight without showing how shaky I was. My partner in crime and I spent days and hours searching for suitable and interesting topic to talk about and eventually we ended up having a presentation to entertain our fellow colleagues about Japan. One thing we learn from this experience is that we should prepare a topic earlier because honestly we finished the presentation only a week before this day. Whats worst was that we were the third group to present!

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In the end, we went through the presentation despite our lack of enthusiasm (I think). I manage to answer the questions asked by my colleagues and from this I actually learned that if you actually like that certain topic and thoroughly understand the matter than you will be fine though out the presentation. Through my experience in this course, I manage to spot in which area I lack and that this course slowly improves my self esteem (being able to talk aloud in front of my colleagues) and me being used to an adult atmosphere and what not. Other things that could have been done though, I think, is to have an interesting activity outdoor for example, doing research so that we as students can understand better on how educational research is being done and what not. Just saying.

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