Study Skills – Preparing for assignments

Assignments. You have your question –
but where to begin?
Why not just start writing?
Probably not the best option.
How about this?
Start by understanding the task.
Now, a task
has two main parts:
there is of course
the question itself,
and then we have the details.
Let’s look at these.
What do we mean by ‘the details’?
Firstly, what kind of assignment
is it?
An essay,
a report,
a short-answer assignment,
or maybe something else?
Secondly
– this is an important one –
when do you need to submit?
Thirdly, how will it be marked?
Find out if there’s
a marking guide
or a list of assessment criteria.
And fourthly, is there
a word limit?
Knowing these four things
can help you plan
how much time you need to spend
on the assignment.
And then, we have
the all-important question itself.
Let’s imagine you’re studying literature.
Questions have key words.
We have ‘process words’,
also called ‘instruction words’.
These tell you what you need to do.
And ‘content words and phrases’,
these tell you the topics
to be focused on.
Here are some common process words:
‘Compare’ means
show similarities and differences between things.
Perhaps show which is preferable.
‘Contrast’ means to look
for differences between two things.
‘Evaluate’ or ‘criticise’
means to make a judgement
about something, based on evidence,
not based on personal opinion.
‘Define’ means to give
exact meaning, or meanings,
of a word, phrase or theory.
‘Discuss’ means to explore an issue,
giving both sides and
looking at any related issues.
‘To explain’ means to give
details about something,
and the reasons behind it.
And to ‘justify’
means to give reasons and evidence
supporting a point of view.
So, take time to really understand
what the question is asking.
Decide what subjects you
need to look up,
and organise what you need to do.
We also have a
separate video on using
sources in assignments.
Ah – now all you
need to do is the hard work.
We’re sure you’ll ace it!