STUDY SKILLS

Taking Lecture Notes

There are many different ways of learning but these recommendations on taking notes should apply to most people. Use an A4 pad of lined notepaper. Write the name of the lecturer, the date and the topic at the beginning of each lecture, and number the pages to avoid confusion should the pages become out of order. Dont try to take down everything the lecturer says; listen carefully, pick out the salient points and note these down leaving plenty of space for later additions. Underline section headings. Pay particular attention to any material that the lecturer emphasises, this is likely to be important. As soon as possible after the lecture look through and edit your notes adding extra details where necessary. Compare the material with that in the relevant sections of your textbook, adding or correcting your notes as required. You should leave your notes filed away ready to be used for tutorial work or for revision before the examination. If you unavoidably miss a lecture you should get the framework of the lecture from a fellow student. Examination questions are set on the assumption that you have attended all the lectures, practical sessions and tutorials.

Organisation of Practical Reports

Think carefully about a brief and informative title. Written reports of practicals and projects should normally include four sections:

Introduction
This should state the aims of the study, and set out any hypotheses that are to be tested by the experimental work. It may be appropriate to outline the theoretical or historical background to the problem. The introduction should be both concise and informative.

Method
For most practicals only a brief description of the method is required. It is not necessary to copy out all the details from the practical schedule. Summarise the essential steps, and make any additional notes for your own future reference. Where appropriate it may be worth outlining briefly the reasons for the choice of method. Where experimental materials are used a brief description of the origin and nature of these materials should be given.

Results
This section must be separate from the Discussion. The aim is to present the factual results of your investigations clearly, simply, and succinctly. It must be clear which parts of the work are fact and which are the author's interpretation and speculation: the Results should restrict themselves to fact. Further, any factual results also require a written exposition; while tables and figures (graphs and other diagrams) are extremely helpful in presenting results, they are not sufficient in themselves. The detailed information they contain must be synthesised - and a summary of the salient points written into the text of the results, so that the reader can extract the relevant material without ploughing through tables of raw data. Include informative titles or legends on graphs and tables. In some cases the full data may be presented as an appendix. Where statistical analysis is appropriate, and suitable techniques are available, it should be included in this section.

Discussion
This section should provide answers to the questions in the Introduction, and state the extent to which the results agree with any prior hypothesis. In the Results section you gave an outline of the important features of your data; now you should present your interpretation of the significance of these results. Aspects which might be considered are: What fundamental principles do they exemplify? To what extent is the hypothesis validated? Can the theory be modified to account for these results, or is it necessary to postulate another? How do the results compare with previous published work? If they are different, then what is the significance of these differences? Were the experimental and statistical procedures adequate to answer the questions posed in the Introduction?

Notes on the Presentation of Reports

In long reports it is helpful to subdivide the various sections using appropriate headings. A well-presented index to these headings assists the reader to see at a glance the structure of the report. Your report should begin with a title and a date. Do not forget to write your name at the top of the work, and number each page. Figures should be presented only because they assist the reader in understanding the results. If they are included in the report then they should be referred to in the text. Where possible these figures should be located close to the point in the text where they are mentioned. Avoid the temptation to plot graphs of everything against everything, and then make no reference at all to them. It is a waste of time and effort to include both summary tables and graphs containing precisely the same information. Figures and tables should be clearly annotated, numbered and given a heading. Graphs and histograms serve distinct and separate functions. The points on a graph represent individual events. The lines between points give the probable relationship between the two variables. Where one of the variables is divided into discrete classes (e.g. years, height, classes etc.), and the measurement of the other variable gives the total level within the class, then a histogram is usually more appropriate. Do not extrapolate graph lines beyond the limits of the data. The scientific names of animals, plants and bacteria should be underlined or written in italics. The generic name should start with a capital letter, and the specific name with a small one, even when it is derived from a persons name e.g. Homo sapiens, Sorbus wilmottiana, Escherichia coli. Any references cited should be appended after the discussion, following the style of a scientific journal. (see essay writing section)

Further Notes on Writing Reports

One of the most difficult aspects of writing reports is the problem of where to start. I have found the approach used here helpful.

Decide for whom it is written. It should be written for someone with less knowledge and understanding than yourself. Write the Introduction. This should provide enough background to understand the AIMS of the project. The main aims should be written (briefly) at the start so that the Results and Discussion sections can be written with reference to this. The general background material can be written later. Decide your pictures (Diagrams, Figures and Tables). Ideally, most of the report could be summarised in these pictures. Prepare pictures in rough (they can be done for top copy later). These will form the framework of the report. Figures should have

legends which make the principle of the experiment understandable without reference to text. Experimental details are not necessary. Symbols for points on figures should be the same for the same things in all figures. For example whenever glucose is used then always use a circle (etc).

Compile your methods. This can be done by ensuring that the Figures, Tables etc that you have just completed can be understood or repeated by another person. Methods that you have developed yourself should be put in the Results section. In undergraduate reports state briefly the principle of the method and give reference for details. Results section. Prepare a list of subheadings (often the same as Figure and Table headings). Start each section with a brief statement of what it is aiming to investigate. Describe your pictures then state any obvious conclusion. Include any discussion that is required in order to understand the next part of the results section. Summary. This should be prepared as a short, simple list of conclusions. Always state clearly any failures. For example if the stated aim of the work was to confirm a particular proposal then always start by saying that it was or was not confirmed. It is not possible to hide, so come clean. Discussion. This should tie together key results and relate these to the stated aims of the work. Finish with suggestions of the direction any future work should take. It is acceptable to include reasons for failure as well as reasons for success. References. As a courtesy and in the interests of good scholarship it is a good idea to include the first description of important facts or phenomena, and a recent review that summarises everything else. In the text use Smith & Brown (1980a,b; 1987). Or Smith et al. (1980). In bibliography include all names, date, journal, volume, first and last page numbers. The title is optional. The most useful reference lists include titles. Abbreviations. List on a separate page. Do not invent too many of these; it makes difficult reading. Acknowledgements. This is an opportunity to be kind or cruel. Always include comments on help provided and especially if any shared results are used (this is acceptable but should always be mentioned).

How to Write Essays

Structure
Essays should be clearly structured into sections. Contrary to what you may have been told at school or college, we prefer you to use headings. Include figures and tables, as long as they help your arguments; these should have numbers and legends and the text should refer to them as Figure 1, Table 5, etc. After an informative title, you should start with a brief introduction which sets out clearly the approach you are going to take. The middle of your essay should be clearly structured. We suggest you leave a space between paragraphs to make the organisation more clear visually. Each paragraph should contain one point or argument made clearly and concisely. Try and make the relation between adjacent paragraphs explicit (e.g. Having looked at the role of messenger RNA in protein synthesis, I now turn to the role of a different type of RNA, namely transfer RNA). This is particularly important at major turning points in your essay - e.g. where you turn from looking at arguments in favour of some hypothesis to arguments against it; or where you turn from exposition of a

theory to criticism. You must make it clear to the examiner that you realise that there is now a major change in the direction of your argument. Wherever possible, give examples to illustrate the points you are making. Finally, your essay should end with a brief conclusion which summarises the approach you have taken, the points you have made, and the extent to which you have succeeded in showing what you set out to show.

Organisation
This is one of the most important factors in the assessment of essays: the examiner wants to see that you understand and appreciate the logical relations between ideas, and that you have thought out and planned everything you say in advance. Never begin paragraphs with woolly, imprecise introductions like Another interesting point about red blood cells is .... Ask yourself: Why is the point interesting? What relation does it have to the point you made in the preceding paragraph, or the one you are going to make in the following paragraph? Does this point add further support to, or contradict, other points in your essay and are you aware of this? For the sake of clarity of organisation, avoid the backwards and forwards style where points in favour of a particular theory or hypothesis are randomly interspersed amongst points against it. It is often better to keep all the points in favour together in one part of your essay, and all the points against together in a separate part of the essay.

Balance
Be aware of both sides of the question - points in favour of, and weaknesses in, whatever set of ideas you are discussing. Uncritical regurgitation of the points made in Xs book (or parts of it) will not gain you any credit. Do not spend three pages making one point, and half a page making another: you should be able to make any point concisely in no more than two thirds of a page: any argument which is so contorted that it needs to be spread over two or three pages is best avoided, since it will probably confuse the examiner, and produce an imbalance in your essay.

Conciseness
Present your ideas clearly, and concisely; we fix upper lengths for essays and dissertations, not lower bounds. A good essay can often be ruined simply because someone felt the mis-placed urge to pad it out with another 500 words.

Citation
Any good essay should contain ample reference to published literature. An examiner wants to see some evidence that you have read widely in the area concerned and are familiar with the relevant theoretical issues and controversies. Particularly important is to show some sign that you have read the major primary literature (i.e. seminal works in the original form written by the author); citing secondary sources (e.g. Y's handy one-page summary of that theory you could never be bothered to try and understand) is no substitute for the real thing. However, avoid quoting excessive chunks out of books and papers. Such quotations cannot qualify as original work on your part (and verges on plagiarism), and if they contain technical terminology the examiner may suspect that you have copied out the passage because you do not understand it. It is a far better test of whether you understand a theory to attempt to paraphrase it in your own style, avoiding needless jargon but retaining key technical terms. If you do cite someone elses theory or idea, make sure you attribute it to the author and, ideally, cite the page of the book or journal which you got it from. Failing to attribute the ideas of others to an appropriate source

can lead to charges of deception; attributing the idea to the relevant source will gain you credit. Citing arguments from a wide variety of sources can gain even more credit, so long as you have shown signs that you have read them. Be professional in the way you set out references in your essay; that is, use the author-date system widely adopted in the scientific literature: this suggests a familiarity with the literature and its conventions which will move you up a few points in the examiners estimation. At the end of your essay, you then have a section entitled References in which you put each work cited in your text (note that this means you exclude works you have read but not cited). List books and papers alphabetically by author, giving: authors surnames, followed by initials publication date (where you have cited more than one work written by the same author in a given year, use the system l980a, l980b, l980c) title (titles of books underlined or in italics) if the item is a journal article, title of journal (underlined or in italics), its volume and page numbers. if the item is a book, its publisher and place of publication if the item is a chapter in an edited book, the editors, title of book (underlined or in italics), publisher and place of publication, page numbers.

Examples:

1. Green SM, Malik T, Giles IG and Drabble WT (1996) The purB gene of Escherichia coli K12
is located in an operon. Microbiology 142, 3912-3230.

2. Kuby, J. 1997. Immunology, 3rd ed. W.H. Freeman, New York.