Media Studies is an academic subject with its own language & terminology. Success in Media Studies is heavily reliant on you knowing the correct words to describe things. Terminology is there to make your descriptions accurate so use it. You need to develop skills that will enable you to not only look at media texts with a critical eye, but also to consider how media products are produced & consumed by audiences
The ability to take notes during lessons, and to make sense of them over a period of time, can mean the difference between success and failure. You must stick to an organizational method that works. This does not mean only taking an initial set of notes, but also revisiting these notes while they are fresh and expanding or developing them in such a way that they will make sense late
Whatever system of storage you have, be it a memory stick or A4 folder, you need to develop a method of filing and organising your notes so that you can understand and access them easily. If you store information on a computer hard drive, do not forget to make a back-up copy on your USB. The other most effective way to improve is organizing your time. A timetable plan can help maximise your time.
So much information is now available via the Internet that it is easy to suffer from information overload. It is important to be selective in gaining access to and retrieving information. Search engines such as Google will list all of the sites on the Internet that seem relevant to your search. Often this can number several thousand, so you should do some initial research into how to get the best from the search engine you.
Even though we live in an age of electronic information, books are still an important part source for the media student. Here are some tips to help you select the right book at the right level:
Check cover/contents page. If you are browsing in a library, scan the book covers and contents page for what you are looking for.
Check the name of the writer(s). This may also be a hint about the usefulness of the book. Is this a writer whose name you have heard mentioned in other books or in class, perhaps?
Read the introduction. This should tell you about the approach the writer is going to take and what s/he intends to cover.
On occasions, you will need to lift information from a book. When you do so, you must reference direct quotes by putting them in inverted commas and revealing the original source. Author - Title - Publisher - Date of publication - Place of publishing
You should never try to claim that it is an original idea of your own but acknowledge the source from which it comes. Otherwise you can be accused of plagiarism.