Bruna Tolomeli (Brazil)

I am Bruna Tolomeli from Brazil studying MA Post Production Editing. As an international student whose first language is not English, I was concerned about starting my studies at Bournemouth University and not having enough help and guidance. I was surprised to see how well prepared the university is regarding academic support.

Build your confidence

To start with, BU has a Learning Support Centre, where qualified staff is available to help students with their assignments. When I wrote my first essay I wasn’t sure the structure was correct, so I scheduled an appointment with them. They went through it with me and helped me understand how to write a very good essay. I was very pleased and from that day on I was confident when writing my essays.

https://www1.bournemouth.ac.uk/why-bu/student-wellbeing/academic-support

Develop new or existing skills

Apart from the one-to-one support BU provides, there are also several workshops available for students to join. The IT Learning Support, for instance, offers lessons in Photoshop, Excel and Powerpoint presentations, amongst others. I believe the university provides us with a great deal of opportunities to learn new things and develop existing skills.

https://itservices.bournemouth.ac.uk/services/training-it-skills.aspx

Prepare to meet academic expectations

Furthermore, there are study skills workshops in which students can have lessons on subjects such as reflective writing, advanced literature searching and academic writing style. These are face to face workshops that need to be booked in advanced. I took part in the BU Harvard Referencing workshop last term. I found this to be very tricky, since the method used for referencing is different from country to country. I managed to understand the lecturer’s expectations regarding referencing, and now I am more confident when writing quotations, citations and referencing them.

https://www1.bournemouth.ac.uk/students/learning/study-skills-languages

It is crucial to know our academic weaknesses, so we can work on them in order to improve. Bournemouth University gives us several tools to improve our knowledge and to support our learning. It is up to us as students to make the best of these tools and build the skills that are going to help us develop as professionals.

By Bruna Tolomeli, Brazil, MA Post Production Editing, 2017/18