Writing Your Assignment
Plan Out Your Assignment: find out what percentage of your final mark this work will count towards as this will dictate how much time you spend on it.
Check the marking schedule to see what your lecturer is looking for and how the marks will assigned.
Divide up the work into sections and decide how much time you will spend on each. There will usually be a deadline for handing up the assignment.
Look at the essay question and define exactly what you are asked to answer/do. Look for key words for what you are doing, e.g. analyse/compare/contrast, etc., and also for words describing the topic.
Draft out an outline of the assignment which will give you the structure you will follow. Generally you will follow the structure of “Introduction, discussion, conclusion”. The discussion will comprise of a number of paragraphs.
Finding Information: see information in Starting Out Your Research, Expanding Your Research and Evaluating Web Resources for help on this.
Writing the Assignment: write your first draft, writing freely, getting down as much as you can that you have learned in your research. You may find it easier to start with the discussion or conclusion rather than the introduction.
Fine tune your assignment, checking your spelling, grammar and that it makes sense. You can also fill in gaps or change/remove parts of the text.
Remember that you have to include in-text citations(see next window for a definition) where you use or refer to other people’s work in the text of your assignment.
Do a final proof-read and then start on your bibliography (see next window for a definition) which will go at the end of your assignment. If you have kept a record of all your sources as you did your research, you can use this list to complete your bibliography.
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