Reading and Writing Resources
Reading Resources:
- Griffith University Information Literacy Toolkit
- California State University at Pomona's Techniques for Skillful Reading
- Dartmouth College's tutorial on Reading Your Textbooks Effectively and Efficiently
- Wikipedia - the most popular and dynamic on-line encyclopedia
- Britannica - the oldest and most authoritative traditional encyclopedia, now on-line
- Becoming a Savvy Scholar - MIT's first-year course which explores the scientific publication cycle, primary vs. secondary sources, and online and in-print bibliographic databases; how to search, find, evaluate, and cite information; indexing and abstracting; using special resources (e.g. patents) and "grey literature" (e.g. technical reports and conference proceedings); conducting Web searches; and constructing literature reviews. Download the course; watch the Flash™ animation tutorials on conducting library research.
- Using a Dictionary - How To... from Australia's North Coast Institute, mate!
- Kwantlen's Library Research tutorials
- Citation Style guidance and handouts from Kwantlen's Library
- BiblioExpress - A free software program that allows you to enter information about a book or article ONCE, and then produce endless citations and bibliographies.
- Bibliographix - A unique combination of reference management and idea outlining.
- Citationmachine.net - Helps you do citations
- Remember, always check with the APA, MLA, Chicago or other appropriate manual when in doubt. But first, check that it is APA, etc. that your instructor requires you to use.
Writing Resources:
- Kwantlen's Writing website - A very comprehensive site from Kwantlen's own English Department, with advice about everything from comma rules and subject-verb agreement to correct styles for MLA and APA citations in research essays.
- Essay-Zone - Your online resource for writing academic papers.
- The University of Victoria's Writer's Guide
- Purdue University's OWL - the "On-line Writing Lab" - One of the oldest and best websites for advice about how to write well. It includes helpful resources for improving both academic and business writing.
- Carleton University's Writing Tutorial Service has a series of on-line resources that will take you through the whole process of writing an academic paper.
- How to Use Microsoft Word - since we don't use feather-quill pens or even typewriters to write our papers anymore, we all need to learn how to use wordprocessing software. Word is widely used, and many of its methods are used by other wordprocessors. So here's a great site for helping us learn how to write on-screen. (For more on how to use office software, see the section on Technological Skills below on this page.
- If you don't have Microsoft Word and the rest of Microsoft Office, try OpenOffice - it's totally free, downloadable, and compatible with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.
Using English for Academic Purposes - the University of Hertfordshire's guide for students in higher education. A very useful site, but don't trip up on the author's acronyms: he uses UEfAP to mean Using English for Academic Purposes, HE to mean Higher Education, EAP to mean English for Academic Purposes, etc. - Academic Grammar for Students of the Arts and Social Sciences - Hong Kong University's site to help students with their academic assignments. Not just grammar: also vocabulary; writing with computers; guidelines for essays, literature reviews, research reports, etc.
- Turbocharger - a guide to using computers in academic writing
- The Paradigm On-Line Writing Assistant
- Punctuation Made Simple
- Paragraph Building Writing Tips
- The Longman Web Dictionary (and see the Reading and Information Skills section below for more dictionary, thesaurus, and other related links)
- The Phrase Bank - Manchester University's site outlining expectations of and appropriate phrasing for writing in an academic environment
