Academic Module 1: Creating Academic Content
As students engage with academic texts, they also need to regularly produce academic content themselves in the form or annotations and note-taking, short and long written compositions, and oral informal and formal presentations. An overarching strategy when producing such a diverse range of academic content is to ask yourself three simple questions:
- Who is the audience?
- What is the purpose?
- What are the parameters?
These three criteria–Audience, Purpose, and Parameters (or, what I call the APP for producing academic content)–can be extremely helpful for students who tend to get confused by how and what content to create in response to informal tasks and formal assignments that their professors give them to complete. We will explore these ideas in more detail in the chapters in this section. However, briefly ‘audience’ refers to the target person or people you’re writing for or presenting to, ‘purpose’ refers to why and what you are trying to communicate through your written or oral presentation, and ‘parameters’ refers to the specific boundaries that you have to adhere to in your written or oral assignment.
