General Study, Internet Research and Writing Skills

You will need to develop your own extensive online resources list for effective writing and
LLM study skills. However, to help guide you in the right direction, and help you develop
appropriate information literacy skills, the following pages contain various online resources
that may be useful to you.

These suggested resources include

• Developing general graduate skills (including how to discover and improve your study and
learning styles)
• Using the WWW (including how to evaluate what you use)
• Using the WWW for legal research
• Developing your writing skills (grammar, style, punctuation etc)

You can find out more precisely what information literacy skills you might need to work on by
first taking the quizzes available in the How to Improve your Research and Information
Literacy Skills folder (under Research Skills for Law)in the Law Skills menu of this
Blackboard course.

1. Graduate Study Skills

Nos. Weblink Topic/Skill
A graduate skills resource website from University of Hertfordshire
1 Graduate Skills (useful for PDP too) – explore what is there as may be something
useful for your particular need
A website created to help you develop/enhance independent and
2 Information lifelong learning skills by offering free access to interactive
literacy gateway tutorials covering generic Information Literacy competence at
undergraduate and postgraduate level.

Find out about your learning and study styles; do some tasks to
test your information literacy; and get advice on advanced
information research (dissertation planning and writing)
3 Learning styles Find out how you learn and study and so improve your academic
achievements
4 Engage in A complete guide to student participation in research, primarily for
research the biosciences, but with lots of valuable guidance on preparing
literature reviews, project planning, data analysis and
dissemination.

Internet Research Skills

Nos. Weblink Topic/Skill
Interactive lessons on developing your internet
1 Internet for Lawyers information skills created by Intute Virtual Training Suite,
funded by JISC(plus an overview of the site can aid your
legal research skills)
2 Internet Detective Online tutorial developed by Intute Virtual Training Suite,
funded by JISC, to improve general information literacy
skills
3 How to search the web List from University of Hull of useful online tutorials on
how to use online legal search engines and resources,
and how to evaluate what you find
4 TONIC The Online Netskills Interactive Course –advice and
tutorials on using the web generally

LLM Skills July 2005 NML Update Oct 2007

3. Writing Skills
*** Highly recommended

Nos. Weblink Topic/Skill

Online resources for
1 study
internet grammar of
2 English
Online English grammar
Guardian style guide
Interactive tutorials and guides on how to improve your
study skills as well as general writing and dissertation
writing (generic advice) from University of Kent
Improve your writing style and grammar accuracy with
these use-friendly websites. They have been created for
all learners; irrespective of whether English is a first
language.

Elements of style

3 Writers online resources
4 OWL writing ***
PowerPoint’s (scroll down
to find)
Purdue OWL
5 The Writing Center
6 Writing resources
Writing on the net ***
7 provides links to many online resources to aid your
Writing up guide ***
8 writing tips **
Some very useful tips and links to popular online general
writing resources
The Online Writing Lab at Purdue University is a very
popular resource for all kinds of writing, not just academic
writing. Take some time to explore what is available to
suit your needs
This site is maintained by students at University of
Richmond, US and is quite useful
This is a useful general academic writing resource page
from UCL (UK)
Excellent guide from Asian Institute of Technology as
writing, including dissertations and theses (scroll down to
find this part) – especially useful is the practical interactive
writing up guide link – very good on writing up literature
reviews. It is worth working your way through the guide as
there is lots of good advice, examples and exercises on
content and language to use
Useful list of words to avoid, do’s and don’ts, dissertation
etc from Purdue University, USA.

LLM Skills July 2005 NML Update Oct 2007