Transition to University
A critical student is one who does not accept information at face value without first examining it in detail and from different angles or perspectives. Students at first year university level are expected to not only maintain a high level of academic performance, but also, to think, form judgments and draw conclusions, to argue or discuss ideas and back them up with reasons, to read and look at the possible views, and to listen with an open mind (Marshall and Rowland, 1998). These prospects can not be achieved unless a student reads, thinks and writes critical. I believe the high level of expectations, are set by universities, of that students need to think and perform critical, to succeed in their chosen studies. For students to maintain a high level of academic performance students must need to read critical. Reading critical requires students to apply context in a reading strategy, read with a purpose or for a purpose, and be aware of the language used and for what reason. Context can be defined as "the situational, cultural, or historical set of circumstances out of which a text grows" (Elkins, 1999), for example, listing the characteristics and even describing the context. When reading with a purpose or even for a purpose
, there are many rhetorical strategies available to writers, but every piece of writing is motivated by a major purpose or set of purposes. "If you determine what an author wants to achieve and why, you can then measure how well an author has achieved those goals" (Elkins, 1999). Student may, for example, attempt to distinguish between 'you' the reader's purpose and 'his/her' the author's purpose. When reading, students need to be aware of the author's language by learning strategies to help become more conscious of the words authors choose, the associations of those words, pattern of words, and common figures of speech. "Word play", means, "analysing a text on the basis of word choice and patterns of language" (Elkins, 1999), this is crucial not only to the process of creating meaning, but also in detecting traces of meaning, such as an author's tone, biases, or methods of perception. Students may seek the exact dictionary meaning; implication, associations or suggestions caused by particular words or phrases: and figures of speech which parallel the author's intent. Reading critical and looking at the possible views helps students achieve the high level of expectations set by universities. For critical students to maintain a high academic performance level, they must also write critical. When learning to write at the university level, you are exposed to different theories of how people write. For example, "writing is a matter of prewriting, writing, and rewriting" (Elkins, 1999). When critical students go through the rewriting stages they often trigger new ideas, causing them to return to the earlier stages of generating and planning. Similarly, revising, which is often viewed as a final step, is actually a creative activity that occurs throughout the process. There are many pressure associated with writing at university level, such as: writing graded as an exercise in grammar, intimidation of submitting a work to
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Approximate Word count = 1301
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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