Important Things to Remember while Writing an Assignment

There are often lots of assignments and other writing to do during the course of your studies, which can be overwhelming at first. There is a fixed deadlines for the tasks, which you are required to complete while adhering to the guidelines and rules. Colleges all around the world provide students with assignments in order to sharpen their learning ability and cognitive skills. Students can enhance their knowledge of a particular subject or concept with the aid of assignments. There are several reasons why an assignment is given.

As students choose informative and suitable assignment topic, the real challenge comes. The topic of the assignment plays a crucial role in its success and failure. When the topic of the assignment is chosen after sufficient counselling by tutors and understanding, extensive topic research is undertaken, which would allow you to achieve great academic scores which is the dream of every student.

Guide to writing assignments - ideal for all levels

• Read the question

This may seem like an obvious step, but it is often ignored. This is the main aspect that is to be remembered when you ponder how to start writing. Many of you do not devote sufficient time to read the assignment requirements closely and instead read quickly. This can be dangerous because although some of the keywords you think are important may have been considered, but you need to fully understand what is being questioned and what the examiner is asking for.

Getting carried away and delving into writing your assignment is easy without really answering the question. A better way to avoid this is to devote sufficient time to reading, consider the keywords and what the examiner is expecting you to do within the question. When you consider, I have to write my assignment”, knowing directive terms such as explain, discuss and evaluate is important as they provide guidance on how to answer the question. Highlighting and stressing on these words is a great idea to keep them in mind as you progress through your assignment.

• Planning and Research

Planning and Research provide you a structure to follow at the time of writing. It can allow you to prepare better and can make a difference between an average and an outstanding piece of work. It also provides an opportunity to consider certain criteria such as word count, the things you want to include, and how it needs to be organized.

It is important to consider what you are aiming for while preparing the points of your assignment. You can refer to the assessment criteria and learning outcomes of the assignment to help you. These can be found in the task brief, syllabus, study guide or in your course specification file. It is also a great idea to find good sources to be included in your assignments in advance from the web sources and course material. Use the unit reading list and Emerald Business Journals to obtain different perspectives that can help you to improve your answers.

• Structuring

The structure can help you to create a layout before you begin. This can be comprehensive, but the introduction, main arguments and intended conclusion should be the basic structure. The introduction is a short paragraph describing what you will be going to discuss. It should present the key points and issues within the question. The main body is where the statement should be built. To clarify your findings and arguments, you need to contrast and critically evaluate two or more theories and methods. You must ensure that research supports your theories and arguments if appropriate. The conclusion summarized what you have discussed. You should be careful not to introduce new ideas that you have not discussed. A successful conclusion will leave the examiner with a long lasting impression.

Things To Remember in your Assignment

Learn referencing style

A referencing style is a set of rules that teach you how to acknowledge people's thoughts, work and ideas in a particular way. Referencing is a critical part of good academic writing to avoid plagiarism, and is essential for every assignment. Referencing is completely new for every University student, but it is a vital part of most courses. Some universities should implement referencing styles early because the longer you leave it, the harder it will be for your second and third year. There are different referencing systems available, so make sure you know what your University prefers. Reference guides can be purchased, loaned from the library, or use online guides. At first, referring can be difficult, so make sure you ask your mentor or fellow students for guidance.

To write the references correctly, it is important that you carefully pen down the complete details of the date, author, title and publication of any source that you have used at the time of writing the assignment. You can do this effectively through the updated reference generators for APA, MLA, Harvard, Vancouver, Chicago and Oxford. Write down the date you accessed the source and URL address of e-books, e-journal and web pages. You can add weight to your statements and claims by referring to the work of experts and established authorities in your subject area. This helps to show that you have read, considered and analysed the work of other authors.  Thus, good referencing will help you achieve better grades or scores (often 5-10% of the total). Also, effective referencing is necessary to avoid plagiarism.

Learn how to use academic journals

Use peer-reviewed articles as well as lots of books instead of SparkNotes and Wikipedia to achieve good college grades. Journals are available as both hard and electronic versions in archives and in online libraries such as Jstor. Make sure you get a grasp on how to use online catalogs and take advice from your tutors on the most important articles for your subject.

You can use the following search strategy to search for high-quality academic articles or journals online:

• Start the procedure with the home page of your library's website.
• Keep away from the sections as they contain records and books that can be easily available in the library.
• Look for the links of databases and periodicals with the help of the site's search engine.
• Search the EBSCOhost database server, and then search for the list 'Academic Search Elite' in that server.
• Select an appropriate database as per your requirement.
• Use the checkboxes for peer-reviewed journals to narrow the search for reputable publications.
• Check for relevant keywords to see the result. You can also search for the name of a researcher to see what they have published recently.

Presentation and Formatting

It is important to properly format and present your assignment because almost all assignments include presentation marks. This includes layout, formatting, word count, referencing, writing style, spelling and grammar etc.

Following are some of the guidelines for formatting and presentation:

• File format: Most assignments are written using the MS Word. If you do not have access to MS Word, you can go to Office 365 to download the free version and access it. Assignments can be submitted in formats like doc, .xls, .docx, .xlsx or .rtf. Try not to upload XML files, PowerPoint(.ppt), web pages, Visio(.vsd), PDF (.pdf), CAD files, or zip files unless it is given in the specification.
• Fonts: Make use of a simple, consistent and readable font like Calibri, Verdana, Arial and Tahoma throughout the file. Write on white background with black text, unless you have permission to use colorful backgrounds and text. Make use of 11 or 12 font sizes in the body of the assignment.
• Spacing: Use double or 1.5 spacing with wider margins. This leaves space for the comments of the examiner. Leave a blank between the paragraphs with left-aligned text.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is regarded as a form of theft in which you use the words or ideas of someone else and put them as your own, whether accidentally or deliberately, by not giving credit. Plagiarism may include: copying and pasting from a source without the text being included in quotation marks, summarising the thoughts of someone else without citing them, or copying an assignment completed by someone else.

You can check your document on our authentic and accurate plagiarism check tool. With the help of this report, you can understand where plagiarism is occurring and work on reducing it.

Following are some of the tips to avoid plagiarism:

• Keep track of your sources: Often, a writer gets so distracted by work that they fail to record which truth, opinion or fact comes from which source. It may leave you confused about the source of information at the time of referencing and you may be left with no choice but to add fake references, hoping the piece of information will escape undetected through the plagiarism detecting tool. It is important to Bookmark, create a reference log or save references to a different directory. This will make it easy to manage and tackle sources when you add references to your assignment.
• Repurpose your research: The first rule to prevent plagiarism is to make minimum use of Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, and use your own language and style for the purpose of repurposing the data. This will add value to the reputation of your assignment and make it look like the product of your hard work.
• Cite and reference carefully: The simple rule of citation is “if it is not yours, it must be cited." Any source, whether it is books, academic articles, web searches or other sources that you use, must be correctly cited as per the University’s guidelines. Another good approach is to refer to multiple sources instead of taking information from one or two sources.

  Plagiarism is one of the top 10 reasons why students fail an assignment.

 Use the above-mentioned tips to write a perfect assignment and score well in your academia.