https://studiegids.vu.nl/en/courses/2024-2025/L_AAPMALGAC1The goal of this course is to prepare you for working in an academic environment, which requires a number of different skills. Its focus is on information skills (searching for information and evaluating its relevance in an academic context), and reading and writing skills (including citing and referencing).This course is divided into 5 modules, each of which deals with a particular academic skill. In the first module attention is paid to the characteristics of scholarly publications and the way you can search for such publications with LiBSearch, the search interface of the University Library’s publication database. You will also learn about the most important digital bibliographies for your discipline. In the second module, the focus is on searching for information on the internet and, related to that, the evaluation criteria for establishing the usefulness of the information you have found in an academic context. The third module discusses the way you have to deal with your sources (paraphrasing, citing and referencing). Apart from knowing how to do this in general terms, this requires the application of discipline specific rules, which will be introduced in this course and reviewed with practical exercises. The fourth module is about critical reading: you will learn which quality standards apply to argumentation in scholarly texts and how to evaluate the quality of arguments. The final module deals with academic writing. After a general introduction to the characteristics of an academic text the course focuses on a number of specific aspects of this text type, such as its general structure, the research question and how it is articulated, paragraph structure, language use and tone of voice. You will also be introduced to an efficient way to approach a writing task.Distance learning (independent study), driven by an online course in Canvas. Consultation with the teacher is possible via Canvas.Five test assignments, for all of which you have to get a passing grade.All teaching materials will be made available via Canvas.Pre-Master’s students preparing for a master’s programme in Literary studies (specialisation English Literature in a Visual Culture), Linguistics (specialisation Text Mining) or Communication and Information Studies (specialisation Multimodal Communication and specialisation Dialogue, Health and Society).Premaster’s students of the Faculty of Humanities do not need to register for courses themselves (the education office takes care of this). You will be registered in August for the first semester courses and around December for the second semester courses.For one of the course assignments you have to use the bibliographical database program EndNote. This program is available on VU pc’s. In Canvas you can find information about how to use EndNote from home.