Strengths and Weaknesses of Academic Literacy Competence - Essay Example

Yet another area where I am confident about my performance is my computer knowledge. In fact, I possess good keyboard skills. I am good at using analysis and presentation tools for various purposes that will immensely help me in my employability skills. In addition, I have the ability to learn various computer operations, and hence, computer literacy will be a positive point in my employability.

However, the area where I lag behind is the ability to comprehend what I read. I think this happens because of my poor reading habit and skills. I think this lack of ability is going to have an adverse impact on my researches if not solved. Probably as a result of this, I find it difficult to do academic writing.

My research skills are rather weak because firstly, I find it difficult to gather information, and secondly, I find it difficult to synthesize the information I collect. As a result, even if I collect a lot of information, my research ends up fruitless. There are certain areas related to research that I will have to improve if I want to improve my research. The very first thing is locating useful information, because “research strategies are as friendly as a puppy, as informative as a friend’s diary, and as helpful as a personal valet” (Badke, 2004, p. 176). I need to work a lot in improving my ability to reach useful information. It will have to be followed by learning how to organize what I have collected. As I possess poor study skills, what I do is end up with a mixture of information from various sources that are not arranged appropriately. Another point that requires improvement is my ability to evaluate the information I collect. It often happens that I fail to collect relevant information and collect irrelevant ones. However, the most important problem I need to solve is my interpretation of the collected information. Probably due to my poor reading skills, my interpretation is often biased or inaccurate, thus resulting n poor quality research work.

Another point that is worth mentioning is my weak academic writing skills. To be precise, I am in almost total oblivion about the various requirements of academic writing. I have very little idea about the pattern of academic writing, how to gather information for the same and how to organize them effectively. Admittedly, the lack of these skills will have a huge impact on my employability. Even as an employee, I will find it difficult to communicate and express ideas effectively without these skills. So, to improve my employability skills, it is highly necessary to have these skills.

Another area of improvement for me, I think, is my ability to critically read. As I already mentioned, most of the time, I fail to have a bird’ eye view of what I read. So, the ability to gather both expressed and intended meaning of communication in visual, audio, and video literature will make me well-equipped to be an effective employee.   

In total, it seems to me that though I possess personal qualities like good communication skills, teamwork skills along good computer skills, there are areas like reading and comprehension, and writing that I need to improve.