Academic Writing Guide

How to Write a Good Assignment

How to Write a Good Assignment
1. General planning

One of the main reasons why students submit unsatisfactory assignments is that they don’t plan in advance and they don’t use their time effectively. The most common mistake is to allow too little time to complete assignments, with the result that the final product is put together without much thought. Phase 1: 60 percent of your available time: Preparation for writing your assignment, that is planning the basic structure, preparatory reading following from your planning, making summaries, etc. 30 percent of your available time: Writing your assignment in a rough form and making the necessary adjustments. 2 percent of your available time: Rumination; this means you put your assignment aside for a while, and continue with other work. The reason for this is that you can get too involved with a topic with the result that you overlook your mistakes. The brain tends to take for granted certain relationships that are not made completely clear in the written work. If you give yourself a rest period, you’ll approach the assignment with a new, fresh perspective and you can then make adjustments based on logic or insight, as necessary. 8 percent of your available time: Make final adjustments and write the assignment in its final form for submission.

Phase 2:

Phase 3:

Phase 4:

With these guidelines in mind you should draw up a schedule to ensure that you allow yourself enough time for completing the assignment. 2. Understanding the question

Understanding the question is extremely important. You need to ● read the question carefully ● identify the key words in the question ● draw up an outline

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How to Write a Good Assignment 2.1. Read the question carefully

It is very important to read the question carefully and to determine what is expected of you. Read the question several times to make sure that you have not misinterpreted it. As you read the question, you will

Citations: Bibliographies and Plagiarism 3.4. Questions for students who plagiarise 1. What learning can take place when a student merely “cuts and pastes”? There is no evidence that the student understands the material until the student explains the information he/she is researching in his own words. 2. What learning takes place when the focus is to cut and paste pieces of information that the student believes would deceive the assessor into thinking these are his/her own words? 3. What thinking skills have been developed when someone else’s words are used as one’s own? 4. Often, students who deliberately plagiarise are not interested in developing a research strategy that assures them they have access to quality research material. 5. Naturally, students who merely cut and paste the thoughts of others are not developing their own ability to communicate in writing. 17