Academic Skills Portfolio - Note Taking, Referencing, etc.

This portfolio provides a comprehensive overview of essential academic skills crucial for success in higher education. It begins with an introduction to academic skills, highlighting their importance in critical thinking and effective communication. The main body delves into specific skills, including note-taking techniques, emphasizing the importance of concentration and synthesis of information. It then explores various sources of information, differentiating between reliable and unreliable sources. The portfolio also covers the significance of referencing and paraphrasing, explaining their roles in acknowledging sources and demonstrating understanding. Furthermore, it addresses plagiarism, its ethical implications, and strategies for avoidance. Finally, it discusses presentation skills, outlining factors for effective delivery, such as audience analysis and body language. The portfolio concludes by summarizing the key takeaways and provides a list of relevant references including books and journal articles.

Academic Skills - Portfolio

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY ..................................................................................................................................3
Note taking..................................................................................................................................3
Importance of note taking...........................................................................................................3
Sources of information................................................................................................................4
Referencing.................................................................................................................................4
Significance of Referencing........................................................................................................4
Paraphrasing................................................................................................................................4
Significance of paraphrasing.......................................................................................................5
Plagiarism....................................................................................................................................5
Why to avoid plagiarism.............................................................................................................5
Presentation skills........................................................................................................................5
Factors of effective presentation.................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Academic skills are associated with several skills such as presentation skills, referencing
skills, writing skills and many more. These are required to b held in an individual as these are
reflecting thinking and creative practice of an individual. These skills helps an individual to grab
prominent resources and information in order to obtain with successful participation in debates
and other discussions. These skills are very essential to be held so that effective note taking can
be executed by which proper composition of coherent arguments. In this report various aspects
of academic skills such as referencing skills, note taking, presentation skills are included.
MAIN BODY
Note taking
Note taking is a systematic approach in which informations are being processed by
examining major points in order to take these as reference for future. According to University of
Leeds note making is not limited up to jotting down something what is being heard but this is
regarded as the procedure under which review and connection is being established in order to
synthesise information (Gillies, 2017). The major aspect in note taking is full amount of
concentration so that accurate record can be maintained by an individual which has been
discussed in classroom. These notes are assisting an individual in maintaining effective notes so
that they can study without facing any prominent complexities and barrier as well.
Importance of note taking
 Note taking is beneficial in reducing study and making study period more effective.
 Notes are helping an individual to prepare for various assessment in most advantageous
manner.
 These are boosting individual's knowledge on various topics so that retention skills can
be improvised.
 Note taking is beneficial in focusing and organising various information in prompt
manner linkage between classroom material and text books can easily be established.
 Notes are concise in nature so these are helpful to understand any particular tpoic in
sufficient manner.

Sources of information
Sources of informations are defined as the area from which ideas or information has been
derived. These are regarded as sequence of random variables which are used in order to grab
various information so as to make final report. For collecting information two major sources are
included such as reliable sources and non reliable sources. These are elaborated as under:
Reliable sources of information
These sources of information are defined as those sources which are providing thorough,
well reasoned theory and arguments along with strong and robust evidence. Books, magazines,
articles, newspaper, websites, blogs, Wikipedia are known as prominent reliable sources of
information collection (Zhao and et. al., 2019).
Non reliable sources of information
These sources are not containing full proof information and are not up to date as well.
These sources cannot be used by writers as these creates discrediting of writers status. Personal
blogs, personal websites, self published journals, unauthorised publications are some of the
example of non reliable sources of information collection.
Referencing
Referencing is defined as stating source of the information which has been used in order
to produce work. There are numerous resources which are available at online and offline
platform and these can be used by students to acknowledge another person's ideas and perception
in their own work which is being used by them.
Significance of Referencing
 Referencing allows an individual to acknowledge contribution of other writer which has
been used by them in their own research and study material.
 This is helpful in providing evidence to discussions which is being included in
assignments.
 Referencing is playing essential role in controlling quality measurement of content so that
scientific disciplines can be developed (Pears and Shields, 2019).
Paraphrasing
Paraphrasing is known as performing restatement of words and meanings and changing
them by using another words and terms. This is an art and method which is helping an individual

to write some pertained information in own words which can be understood by them in easy
manner.
Significance of paraphrasing
 This is helpful in exhibiting understanding within read information so that to get
assistance in final project made by an individual.
 This helps in clarifying passage which is necessary for the individuals in order to cover
the same into the papers (Kim, Park and Kwak, 2018).
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is known as the action in which work, idea or practices of some other person
can be used by another person as their own work. This is regarded as stealing of other's work
which is an offensive activity and contains high level of seriousness. On the other hand without
giving appropriate referencing or quotation to source information and using the same is also
considered as plagiarism.
Why to avoid plagiarism
 This is unethical in nature so these should be avoided in order to avoid legal
proceedings.
 Before submission work of individual get checked on Turnitin and on the
presence of plagiarism the student may be penalised.
 This is an act of theft in which credit is not given to the source by student so this
may hamper integrity of individual (Yadav, Rawal and Baxi, 2016).
Presentation skills
Presentation skills are those skills which are required to be held in order to deliver
effective and engaged presentation and to persuade people as well.
Factors of effective presentation
 Audience analysis is one of the major factor which is required to be undertaken by
presenter so that they can deliver effective presentation in front of their audience.
 Communication environment is affecting presentation in specific manner as
communication may enhance listening abilities of audience.

 Body language is the another constraint which is required to be undertaken by an
individual at the time of delivering presentation as this shows their level of confidence
(Van Emden and Becker 2016).
CONCLUSION
From the above report this can be summarised that with the help of proficient academic
skills an individual can grow and sustain in their career. These skills are helping an individual to
brighten their career and deal with complexities which may arise in between. This report
showcased varied skills which are required to be undertaken by an individual while performing
their academic goals.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Gillies, A., 2017. Note-taking for consecutive interpreting: A short course. Taylor & Francis.
Kim, J., Park, S. and Kwak, N., 2018. Paraphrasing complex network: Network compression via
factor transfer. In Advances in neural information processing systems (pp. 2760-2769).
Pears, R. and Shields, G.J., 2019. Cite them right: the essential referencing guide. Macmillan
International Higher Education.
Van Emden, J. and Becker, L., 2016. Presentation skills for students. Macmillan International
Higher Education.
Yadav, S., Rawal, G. and Baxi, M., 2016. Plagiarism-A serious scientific misconduct. Int J
Health Sci Res. 6(2),.pp.364-366.
Zhao and et. al., 2019. Informative image captioning with external sources of information. arXiv
preprint arXiv:1906.08876.