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NCFM Study Skills Guide

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What Are Study Skills?

The term 'study skills' is used here to refer to more than just 'academic' skills. It includes a wider range of abilities that enable achievement in your studies. These can be viewed as four categories of skills: 

  • Self-management skills
  • Academic skills
  • People skills
  • Task-management skills

Learning and Teaching LibrariansWriting Development and MASH (Maths and Statistics Help) offer webinars, face-to-face sessions and online appointments on a variety of resources and study skills support

Study Skills

Academic, People and Task-management skills

As shown in the chart, your learning environment will frame the particular range of study skills that you will need to develop, and to what extent.

Self-management skills

The sets of interactions between the learning environment and you as an individual are complex. These will change frequently as you progress through your course. Good skills in self-management help you to manage these interactions more effectively and to identify the skills and qualities you need at any given time.

APT-S Framework diagram

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The APT-S Study Skills Framework

The skills landscape in higher level study can sometimes seem complex, as subject disciplines, institutions, employers and professional bodies produce ever longer lists of skills they feel students should develop.  The APT-S Study Skills framework simplifies such complexity by looking at three key things:

  1. You, the student, as the starting point
  2. The learning environment in its entirety – everything that relates to your study
  3. The skills that help you manage that learning environment, its people, tasks, conventions, tools and resources

Elements of skills framework: You and the learning environment

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