This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2016 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

AMU1017 - Academic literacies

6 points, SCA Band 1, 0.125 EFTSL

Undergraduate - Unit

Refer to the specific census and withdrawal dates for the semester(s) in which this unit is offered.

Faculty

Arts

Organisational Unit

School of Arts and Social Sciences, Malaysia

Coordinator(s)

Ms Melissa Wong Yuet Fun

Offered

Malaysia

Second semester 2016 (Day)
October intake 2016 (Day)

Synopsis

This unit draws from various disciplines to contextualise students' development of discipline-specific skills and approaches to knowledge construction and interrogation essential for successful study at university. It examines and develops reading, writing, thinking, communication and research skills through discipline-specific perspectives in the sciences, humanities and social sciences. Through an exploration of basic rhetorical principles and developmental patterns of a range of academic literacy forms, emphasis is given to the discourse practices and research skills necessary for disciplinary expertise. Underpinning the development of these key skills is the recognition that students need to be enabled to participate in academic discourses as active contributors to knowledge construction, contestation, application and communication, and not mere recipients. Lectures will focus on key areas of academic literacies while exploring differences or similarities between perspectives and genres in the various disciplines. By engaging in the rigorous academic process of critical reading, writing, revision, presentation, and discussion together with academic support and feedback, tutorials enable students to gradually participate in the construction, debate and interrogation of academic knowledge.

Outcomes

Upon successful completion of the unit, students should be able to:

Demonstrate the ability to access, evaluate, interpret and use information appropriately from a variety of sources, especially within their disciplines;
Employ skills and strategies for reading a variety of discipline-specific texts: textbooks, reports, research articles and others;
Engage in critical and reflective thinking to respond to and construct academic discourses;
Manage group dynamics and work effectively in teams to solve problems and generate desired outcomes;
Make appropriate choices regarding context, purpose, rhetoric structure, strategies, form and style to communicate effectively for different audiences and academic communities;
Revise and refine work in line with academic conventions, clarity and correctness;
Demonstrate a degree of independence and integration of skills to produce a research paper in their discipline area.

Assessment

Within semester assessment: 100%

Workload requirements

Minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 144 hours per semester typically comprising a mixture of scheduled learning activities and independent study. A unit requires on average three/four hours of scheduled activities per week. Scheduled activities may include a combination of teacher directed learning, peer directed learning and online engagement.