Developing Academic and Employability Skills

Introduction

Reflective writing involves description as well as analysis of facts learned and it helps students to have clarified thoughts, identify important aspects, determine areas that they are needs more assistance to improve and assist in working out strategies for solving experienced issues. It leads students to contextualise and personalise their own efficiency and learning ability. Thus, reflective writing creates critical thinking opportunity for the student and in turn, helps them to learn chances to be made in future to perform better. In this report, the way the module helped me in developing my academic and employability skill is to be reflected, demonstrating the importance of education dissertation help in this process.

Academic Skills

Academic skills are study approaches that are applied by the students to learn. It is required by the students so that they can be confident to find and keep jobs which offer them opportunity to grow in career based on their achieved education through use of the skills (Sala and Gobet, 2017). The academic disclosure abilities are the skills for developing effective communication with teachers and students in debates, presentation and discussion within the academic year (Zhang et al. 2015). In term 1, my skill of academic disclosure was found to be strong by the teachers within the class. This is evident as whenever I experienced doubts during my studies in the class I immediately communicated with the teachers for providing proper clarification so that I can understand the concept in detailed manner.

The effective comprehensive and composition skills are required in academics for the students so that they are able to understand academic texts clearly as well as execute proper academic writing (Rosman et al. 2018). However, in term 1, I think that I have failed to adopt the skills properly as my teacher has provided the feedback that I was unable to comprehend and compose all the important information to be summarised effectively from the text regarding Aldi’s success. It is evident as my teacher has pointed out that I missed mentioning facts like "30% cheaper" in summarisation regarding Aldi’s success. The other instance which proved my lack of comprehension skill was when I marked paraphrase 1 in Ex.2 to be acceptable whereas it as actually unacceptable since the meaning of the original text was changed. Thus, this proves my failure that I am unable to comprehend if proper ideas have been presented in the paraphrased text from the original content.

Paraphrasing skills are required to be performed effectively in academics. This is because without proper paraphrasing skill the student would execute plagiarism which is academic offence resulting them to get penalised or receive strict actions (Cortes-Vera et al. 2017). In this term, I found that I was academically poor in paraphrasing skills. It is evident from the instance where my teacher mentioned that I used same phrases related to text which has been asked to be paraphrased leading to create chances of plagiarism. In order to properly paraphrase the content, first rule is to use different vocabularies and phrases similar to the ones that have been mentioned in the text so that the meaning of the text after paraphrasing remains the same but is considered not to be copied (Rogerson and McCarthy, 2017).

The key to effective paraphrasing is changing structure of the sentences in original text in such as way so that the meaning and facts remain intact but the presentation is made in a different way (Thompson et al. 2017). However, I think that I have this skill for paraphrasing at moderate level which is evident as the feedback from the teacher informs I was partly successful to change the structure of the sentences to paraphrase but was not effective to make satisfactory changes. Moreover, I lack effective paraphrasing skill as in two cases in Ex.2 I was marked wrong by the teacher where I provided the reason for which text to be accepted in paraphrasing from the original one.

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The summarization skill is to express most valuable facts regarding someone or something in clear and short form so that the main ideas can be understood without reading the entire text (Wette and Furneaux, 2018). In this term, I found that I have effective summarisation skill as I was able to mention the topic sentence while summarising content regarding Aldi’s success. The topic sentence in summarising any text is important as it helps the writer to present the key ideas of the facts that have been previously read by them (Yelland, 2016). Thus, presenting the topic sentence helped me at first to lead the teacher to inform why Aldi was successful in their business. In summarising any content, one requires to have the skill to identify supporting fact and disregard any improper information to be used in the writing (McGeown et al. 2015). The fact was effectively understood by me but I was partly successful to apply it while summarising the content regarding Aldi’s success. It is evident as the teacher has pointed out that I missed mentioning the fact of "30% cheaper" in the summary. Thus, it indicates that have to improve my summarisation skill so that I can be able to identify all vital information and avoid only improper facts.

In context of summarisations skill, I identified that I was able to categorise facts and simply present them to be easily understood by readers. This is evident as the teacher provided the feedback that the summary was overall quite good and satisfies most of the expectation of the teacher who acted as the reader in this case. I was able to categorise and label facts as before summarising I divided the topic into different parts and made short notes based on which I wrote the content. This helped me to mention key points in the summary in turn leading to develop a compact content with valuable information.

Employability Skills

The first academic term not only helped me to develop different academic skills but also assisted me to improve my employability skills. One of the important employability skills is problem-solving which means creating solution for the issues identified at work. In order to have effective problem-solving skill, one needs to identify the problem as well as understand interest of others who are related to the problem, list possible option, evaluate them, evaluate and select the right option, document agreement for its implementation and finally implement it (De Fruyt et al. 2015). I think that I lack effective problem-solving skill because though I have been able to identify that I face problem with paraphrasing skills but I have not been able to develop proper solution to resolve it successfully to improve my skill. The importance of having effective problem-solving skill is that the individual is able to manage any issues faced at work to ensure progress to reach the determined work gaols to be accomplished (Jackson, 2015). Thus, lacking problem-solving skill will lead me as an employee unable to cope with issues at work, in turn, making me incapable to progress and reach my work goals properly.

The presence of effective oral as written communication skills are essential employability skills because proper interaction at work helps to resolves confusion as well share ideas between one another helping the person to reach their work with less hindrance (Moore and Morton, 2017). In this term, I found that I have effective oral as well as written communication skill. This is evident as the teacher has always mentioned that whenever I faced confusion with my studies in class I was able to successfully communicate with them orally to resolve the issues for understanding the content in a better way. However, I feel that I face issues with making successful written communication skill because the academic review informs that I have been unable to successfully comprehend and compose all information that was taught in the class. Thus, it informs that I thought have the strength of oral communication skill but I still need to work on my written communication so that I can be able to compose better written content by understanding verbal information.

The adaptability skill is important nature of employability skill according to which the employees need to be willing to change for being able to suit in any condition (Coetzee et al. 2015). I think I have effective adaptability skills because during the academic term I always showed willingness to adapt to any changes made in the class during teaching to effectively learn the content taught. The presence of this skill is going to make me an effective employee in future as I can change or adjust as per the requirement of work environment as well as needs of the organisation without hindrance to successfully execute my tasks. The collaboration skill is required to execute successful teamwork as is an essential employability skill (Jackson, 2015). I was able to collaborate in my class with my friends to execute any teamwork provided by the teacher through the sharing of ideas and skills. However, at times I get into dispute with my teammates due to differences in our thinking. In order to have effective collaboration skill, the individual required to be able to use experience, knowledge and skill of other team members as well as avoid and resolve disputes within team (Tran, 2016). Thus, according to the fact I have moderate collaboration skills because I do have the strength to share ideas and task but I do not have the ability to work together without disputes that is a key part of the skill.

The resource management skill is required in employment so that tangible and intangible resources required to execute the task is available (Messum et al. 2017). According to my concept, I lack resource management skill because I cannot determine specific materials required by me to improve my comprehensive, paraphrasing and summarising skill needed in academic progress which is at low to moderate level. The organisation skill refers to one's ability to remain focussed and use their energy, time, space, strength and others to efficiently achieve the desired result (El Mansour and Dean, 2016). I do not have effective organisation skill which is evident as the teacher mentioned that I lack focus on the way sentence is to be structured and phrases as well as keywords to be used in properly paraphrasing content so that it does not get plagiarised. The presence of effective organisation skill during employment helps the employee avoid getting disoriented or lost while executing different project, in turn, increasing their efficiency and productivity at work (Asonitou, 2015). Thus, the lack of organisation skill would lead me in employment to have lack of focus in executing different task at a time making me unable to achieve improved efficiency.

One of the essential employability skills is also having knowledge to use technology. This is because using updated technology at work in proficient manner helps to execute tasks with less time and efficiency, in turn, improving productivity (Williams-Diehm et al. 2018). I do have efficiency technology using skills which are evident as I used various content regarding paraphrasing and summarisation from education websites apart from the information provided by the teachers in the class to improve my skill to paraphrase and summarise content with less hindrance. However, my information processing skill is at moderate level which is evident as even though I used various sources and content to improve my knowledge regarding paraphrasing and summarisation yet I failed to develop productive results. This is evident as the teachers have mentioned that my paraphrasing skills are poor as I have not been successful to change sentence structure and different keywords other than the original text while paraphrasing the content.

I do have the ability to control my personal traits and emotions while communicating with others in the class. This is evident as I never misbehaved with anyone in the class when they provided opinion against mine. The ability to control emotion and personal traits is another effective employability skill as it helps one to work effectively without developing unnecessary disputes with others (Qureshi et al. 2016). The ability to learn helps one in the employment to improve their skills as they through learning understand what is wrong and right as well as the way issues at work are to be resolved to gain efficiency (Tran and Vu, 2016). I have effectively learning ability as I analysed the feedback of the teachers in term 1 to learn which aspects are to be improved and asked the module head to assist me in improving the skills without showing frustration on my non-performance.

Conclusion

The above discussion informs that I have effective academic disclosure abilities but I lack moderate level of comprehensive skill. I also lack effective paraphrasing skill as I used many words same as in original text to paraphrase the content but do have summarisation skill at moderate level which is required to be improved. In relation to employability skills, I have proper adaptability, collaboration, oral communication and information use ability. However, in this respect, I lack resource management, written communication skill, organisation skills and others which are required to be improved.

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References

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