Effective Academic Communication

Why are so many lectures or talks so difficult to understand?   The answer is usually the way that the information has been structured: in other words the lecturer is presenting ideas in a way that would be suitable for an essay but is completely inappropriate and ineffective in speech.  This analysis of a real example demonstrates why written discourse is impossible for a listener to understand, and will help you to improve your speaking skills. 

A practical demonstration of how to structure ideas in a lecture to communicate clearly.

A step by step comparison of the elements that comprise speech and writing: you will realise just how different these two modes of language are as you see how difficult it is to find equivalents for some of these elements:  italics, for example...  or paragraphs...

A brief introduction to the idea and importance of discourse, and to the exercise on worksheet

After watching this lecture you will recognise the grammatical and syntactic elements of spoken and written discourse, and be able to use them to communicate more effectively.

After this demonstration of how to convert spoken discourse into written discourse, your own writing skills will improve as you learn various techniques that will enable you to construct more concise and coherent sentences.

This video explains why redundancy is the most important consideration in effective communication, and demonstrates techniques for reducing redundancy in academic writing.

As well as illustrating further techniques to manage redundancy, this video demonstrates that the redundancy level is the biggest factor in determining the grade awarded to an essay: it is indeed the key to effective academic communication.

After watching this video and doing accompanying exercise, you will be able to spot and eliminate the most common types of redundancy, and thus write more succinctly and impressively.

After watching this practical demonstration of how a complex academic sentence can be constructed, you will be able to apply these techniques in your own writing, redrafting your work in a more academic style.

Further practice in the crucial skill of reducing redundancy in writing:  in this case a more challenging example that will further develop your redrafting skills.

This video and the accompanying exercise demonstrates how to process ideas from an academic text so that they can be presented effectively in lecture form.  You will be able to take a text on any topic and construct a set of notes that will be the basis for a clear, effective speech. 

Using the model provided by this video you will be able to communicate ideas clearly, coherently and confidently, in a lecture or a contribution to a seminar discussion.

This lecture considers how long and complex an academic sentence can and should be.  You will be able to judge whether your sentences are too long or too short, and redraft to make them more effective.

This lecture explains how to manipulate the syntax of a complex sentence to express ideas logically and powerfully.  You will, thus, be able to use syntactic tricks to communicate your thoughts with impressive eloquence.

This lecture and the accompanying exercise provides a practical demonstration how the redrafting process can transform a text.  You will become much better able to redraft your own work, creating powerful, effective academic sentences.

This lecture provides further practice in redrafting, looking specifically at an example from the literature review of a dissertation. You will be able to refer to a range of sources more succinctly in your own writing.

This lecture builds on the previous module, looking at how topic sentences anticipate the structure of a paragraph.  You will be able to develop your ideas coherently based on these patterns of coherence.

This lecture examines a good example of, and some common mistakes in, paragraph coherence.  This will enable you to avoid these errors in your own writing, and always to construct coherent paragraphs.

This brief demonstration will further develop and consolidate your skills in paragraph construction.