Academic Literacy

Academic Literacy: Reading, Writing, Speaking, Critical and Creative Thinking

Reading

We begin by considering different types of reading and exploring a variety of effective reading strategies to help bring awareness and help strengthen your reading strategies.

Learn to manage your reading load at university by learning some helpful reading strategies designed by Harvard Library and presented by Dr. Amina Yonis.

Writing

Review the Steps of Academic Writing infographic and view the Academic Writing and Integrity Campus Partner Presentations to learn more about academic writing and integrity.

Steps for Academic Writing Infographic (PDF)

Speaking | Presenting

Oral communication skills benefit students academically, interpersonally, and in their future careers. Check out the following website for a list of YouTube videos designed to help students develop oral presentation skills.

Critical and Creative Thinking

Many great breakthroughs and discoveries in art, science and innovation have resulted from combining creative and critical thinking skills. Approaches differ considerably between the skills used in creative thinking and those used in critical thinking. However, it is because of the synergy created by the combination of both sets of skills that they are being discussed in conjunction with one another. By applying creative and critical thinking approaches to your subject area you will enrich and deepen your learning experiences. Furthermore, creative and critical thinking skills can benefit many other areas of your life from problem solving to decision making. (Coughlan, 2008)^[1]

Critical Thinking

“Critical thinking is about having the language and frames of reference to examine one’s life in-depth, as well as the world around us, so we can ask questions about the things we take for granted.”

(Zevallos, 2018)^[2]

Sociologist, Zuleyka Zevallos, posted a blog entry titled, bell hooks on critical thinking. bell hooks was an American author, professor, feminist, and social activist who died in December 2021. Read Zevallos’ blog post and watch the two embedded videos of bell hooks talking about the power of critical thinking as a transformational and radical intervention. Trigger warning: videos contain clips from popular culture films with strong language and scenes of graphic violence and nudity.

Creative Thinking

In one of the most-watched TED talks of our time, Ken Robinson claims that “schools kill creativity.” Read Julian Astle’s critique of Ken Robinson’s video as he compares and contrasts it with Tim Leunig’s video: Why real creativity is based on knowledge.