Academic skills development

It's crucial to develop your academic skills, including critical thinking and reading, note-taking, speaking and presenting, and academic reading and writing.

Developing your academic skills is crucial to your success at the University of Melbourne. These skills include critical thinking and reading, note-taking, speaking and presenting, and academic reading and writing.

You will have already started developing these skills in your previous studies, but you may find expectations become higher as you progress.

Listen as these students highlight the importance of these skills to prepare for classes, become academically engaged and keep up with reading and attendance in classes.

Preparing for classes

The Academic Skills team at the University of Melbourne provides a range of support to help you continue developing these important skills.

  • Reading academic texts

    Work on your reading skills to:

    • Become familiar with key concepts and technical vocabulary in your subjects
    • Learn about different perspectives on the topics you encounter
    • Engage with literature to use in your academic writing
    • Enable the development of your own ideas.

    How to read effectively and critically is a good place to start.

  • Listening in classes

    Listening skills are important for you to be able to:

    • Understand what lecturers, tutors and other students are saying
    • Participate fully in classes
    • Make notes of important information.

    Getting the most out of lectures covers some key points for improving your listening skills at university.

  • Speaking with confidence

    It’s common for students to feel a little nervous about speaking up at first, but the more you develop your speaking skills, the easier it will be for you to:

    • Raise questions or points in class about topics you find interesting
    • Have discussions with other students
    • Deliver presentations with confidence.

    Visit Participating in tutorials and discussions and Effective presentations for ideas to improve these skills.

  • Writing at university

    Improving your writing skills will help you succeed in your assessment tasks and will also:

    • Allow you to express your ideas about the topics in your subjects
    • Enable you to showcase your learning.

    We recommend Using a writing process.

Final tip: The advice and links on this resource are just the beginning. To support you to keep developing your study and communication skills Academic Skills provides resources, workshop and one-on-one advice. Visit Academic Skills to find out more or get in touch with us at academic-skills@unimelb.edu.au.