what does assignment mean in writing

Understanding Assignments

What this handout is about.

The first step in any successful college writing venture is reading the assignment. While this sounds like a simple task, it can be a tough one. This handout will help you unravel your assignment and begin to craft an effective response. Much of the following advice will involve translating typical assignment terms and practices into meaningful clues to the type of writing your instructor expects. See our short video for more tips.

Basic beginnings

Regardless of the assignment, department, or instructor, adopting these two habits will serve you well :

• Read the assignment carefully as soon as you receive it. Do not put this task off—reading the assignment at the beginning will save you time, stress, and problems later. An assignment can look pretty straightforward at first, particularly if the instructor has provided lots of information. That does not mean it will not take time and effort to complete; you may even have to learn a new skill to complete the assignment.
• Ask the instructor about anything you do not understand. Do not hesitate to approach your instructor. Instructors would prefer to set you straight before you hand the paper in. That’s also when you will find their feedback most useful.

Assignment formats

Many assignments follow a basic format. Assignments often begin with an overview of the topic, include a central verb or verbs that describe the task, and offer some additional suggestions, questions, or prompts to get you started.

An Overview of Some Kind

The instructor might set the stage with some general discussion of the subject of the assignment, introduce the topic, or remind you of something pertinent that you have discussed in class. For example:

“Throughout history, gerbils have played a key role in politics,” or “In the last few weeks of class, we have focused on the evening wear of the housefly …”

The Task of the Assignment

Pay attention; this part tells you what to do when you write the paper. Look for the key verb or verbs in the sentence. Words like analyze, summarize, or compare direct you to think about your topic in a certain way. Also pay attention to words such as how, what, when, where, and why; these words guide your attention toward specific information. (See the section in this handout titled “Key Terms” for more information.)

“Analyze the effect that gerbils had on the Russian Revolution”, or “Suggest an interpretation of housefly undergarments that differs from Darwin’s.”

Additional Material to Think about

Here you will find some questions to use as springboards as you begin to think about the topic. Instructors usually include these questions as suggestions rather than requirements. Do not feel compelled to answer every question unless the instructor asks you to do so. Pay attention to the order of the questions. Sometimes they suggest the thinking process your instructor imagines you will need to follow to begin thinking about the topic.

“You may wish to consider the differing views held by Communist gerbils vs. Monarchist gerbils, or Can there be such a thing as ‘the housefly garment industry’ or is it just a home-based craft?”

These are the instructor’s comments about writing expectations:

“Be concise”, “Write effectively”, or “Argue furiously.”

Technical Details

These instructions usually indicate format rules or guidelines.

“Your paper must be typed in Palatino font on gray paper and must not exceed 600 pages. It is due on the anniversary of Mao Tse-tung’s death.”

The assignment’s parts may not appear in exactly this order, and each part may be very long or really short. Nonetheless, being aware of this standard pattern can help you understand what your instructor wants you to do.

Interpreting the assignment

Ask yourself a few basic questions as you read and jot down the answers on the assignment sheet:

Why did your instructor ask you to do this particular task?

Who is your audience.

• What kind of evidence do you need to support your ideas?

What kind of writing style is acceptable?

• What are the absolute rules of the paper?

Try to look at the question from the point of view of the instructor. Recognize that your instructor has a reason for giving you this assignment and for giving it to you at a particular point in the semester. In every assignment, the instructor has a challenge for you. This challenge could be anything from demonstrating an ability to think clearly to demonstrating an ability to use the library. See the assignment not as a vague suggestion of what to do but as an opportunity to show that you can handle the course material as directed. Paper assignments give you more than a topic to discuss—they ask you to do something with the topic. Keep reminding yourself of that. Be careful to avoid the other extreme as well: do not read more into the assignment than what is there.

Of course, your instructor has given you an assignment so that he or she will be able to assess your understanding of the course material and give you an appropriate grade. But there is more to it than that. Your instructor has tried to design a learning experience of some kind. Your instructor wants you to think about something in a particular way for a particular reason. If you read the course description at the beginning of your syllabus, review the assigned readings, and consider the assignment itself, you may begin to see the plan, purpose, or approach to the subject matter that your instructor has created for you. If you still aren’t sure of the assignment’s goals, try asking the instructor. For help with this, see our handout on getting feedback .

Given your instructor’s efforts, it helps to answer the question: What is my purpose in completing this assignment? Is it to gather research from a variety of outside sources and present a coherent picture? Is it to take material I have been learning in class and apply it to a new situation? Is it to prove a point one way or another? Key words from the assignment can help you figure this out. Look for key terms in the form of active verbs that tell you what to do.

Key Terms: Finding Those Active Verbs

Here are some common key words and definitions to help you think about assignment terms:

Information words Ask you to demonstrate what you know about the subject, such as who, what, when, where, how, and why.

• define —give the subject’s meaning (according to someone or something). Sometimes you have to give more than one view on the subject’s meaning
• describe —provide details about the subject by answering question words (such as who, what, when, where, how, and why); you might also give details related to the five senses (what you see, hear, feel, taste, and smell)
• explain —give reasons why or examples of how something happened
• illustrate —give descriptive examples of the subject and show how each is connected with the subject
• summarize —briefly list the important ideas you learned about the subject
• trace —outline how something has changed or developed from an earlier time to its current form
• research —gather material from outside sources about the subject, often with the implication or requirement that you will analyze what you have found

Relation words Ask you to demonstrate how things are connected.

• compare —show how two or more things are similar (and, sometimes, different)
• contrast —show how two or more things are dissimilar
• apply—use details that you’ve been given to demonstrate how an idea, theory, or concept works in a particular situation
• cause —show how one event or series of events made something else happen
• relate —show or describe the connections between things

Interpretation words Ask you to defend ideas of your own about the subject. Do not see these words as requesting opinion alone (unless the assignment specifically says so), but as requiring opinion that is supported by concrete evidence. Remember examples, principles, definitions, or concepts from class or research and use them in your interpretation.

• assess —summarize your opinion of the subject and measure it against something
• prove, justify —give reasons or examples to demonstrate how or why something is the truth
• evaluate, respond —state your opinion of the subject as good, bad, or some combination of the two, with examples and reasons
• support —give reasons or evidence for something you believe (be sure to state clearly what it is that you believe)
• synthesize —put two or more things together that have not been put together in class or in your readings before; do not just summarize one and then the other and say that they are similar or different—you must provide a reason for putting them together that runs all the way through the paper
• analyze —determine how individual parts create or relate to the whole, figure out how something works, what it might mean, or why it is important
• argue —take a side and defend it with evidence against the other side

More Clues to Your Purpose As you read the assignment, think about what the teacher does in class:

• What kinds of textbooks or coursepack did your instructor choose for the course—ones that provide background information, explain theories or perspectives, or argue a point of view?
• In lecture, does your instructor ask your opinion, try to prove her point of view, or use keywords that show up again in the assignment?
• What kinds of assignments are typical in this discipline? Social science classes often expect more research. Humanities classes thrive on interpretation and analysis.
• How do the assignments, readings, and lectures work together in the course? Instructors spend time designing courses, sometimes even arguing with their peers about the most effective course materials. Figuring out the overall design to the course will help you understand what each assignment is meant to achieve.

Now, what about your reader? Most undergraduates think of their audience as the instructor. True, your instructor is a good person to keep in mind as you write. But for the purposes of a good paper, think of your audience as someone like your roommate: smart enough to understand a clear, logical argument, but not someone who already knows exactly what is going on in your particular paper. Remember, even if the instructor knows everything there is to know about your paper topic, he or she still has to read your paper and assess your understanding. In other words, teach the material to your reader.

Aiming a paper at your audience happens in two ways: you make decisions about the tone and the level of information you want to convey.

• Tone means the “voice” of your paper. Should you be chatty, formal, or objective? Usually you will find some happy medium—you do not want to alienate your reader by sounding condescending or superior, but you do not want to, um, like, totally wig on the man, you know? Eschew ostentatious erudition: some students think the way to sound academic is to use big words. Be careful—you can sound ridiculous, especially if you use the wrong big words.
• The level of information you use depends on who you think your audience is. If you imagine your audience as your instructor and she already knows everything you have to say, you may find yourself leaving out key information that can cause your argument to be unconvincing and illogical. But you do not have to explain every single word or issue. If you are telling your roommate what happened on your favorite science fiction TV show last night, you do not say, “First a dark-haired white man of average height, wearing a suit and carrying a flashlight, walked into the room. Then a purple alien with fifteen arms and at least three eyes turned around. Then the man smiled slightly. In the background, you could hear a clock ticking. The room was fairly dark and had at least two windows that I saw.” You also do not say, “This guy found some aliens. The end.” Find some balance of useful details that support your main point.

You’ll find a much more detailed discussion of these concepts in our handout on audience .

The Grim Truth

With a few exceptions (including some lab and ethnography reports), you are probably being asked to make an argument. You must convince your audience. It is easy to forget this aim when you are researching and writing; as you become involved in your subject matter, you may become enmeshed in the details and focus on learning or simply telling the information you have found. You need to do more than just repeat what you have read. Your writing should have a point, and you should be able to say it in a sentence. Sometimes instructors call this sentence a “thesis” or a “claim.”

So, if your instructor tells you to write about some aspect of oral hygiene, you do not want to just list: “First, you brush your teeth with a soft brush and some peanut butter. Then, you floss with unwaxed, bologna-flavored string. Finally, gargle with bourbon.” Instead, you could say, “Of all the oral cleaning methods, sandblasting removes the most plaque. Therefore it should be recommended by the American Dental Association.” Or, “From an aesthetic perspective, moldy teeth can be quite charming. However, their joys are short-lived.”

Convincing the reader of your argument is the goal of academic writing. It doesn’t have to say “argument” anywhere in the assignment for you to need one. Look at the assignment and think about what kind of argument you could make about it instead of just seeing it as a checklist of information you have to present. For help with understanding the role of argument in academic writing, see our handout on argument .

What kind of evidence do you need?

There are many kinds of evidence, and what type of evidence will work for your assignment can depend on several factors–the discipline, the parameters of the assignment, and your instructor’s preference. Should you use statistics? Historical examples? Do you need to conduct your own experiment? Can you rely on personal experience? See our handout on evidence for suggestions on how to use evidence appropriately.

Make sure you are clear about this part of the assignment, because your use of evidence will be crucial in writing a successful paper. You are not just learning how to argue; you are learning how to argue with specific types of materials and ideas. Ask your instructor what counts as acceptable evidence. You can also ask a librarian for help. No matter what kind of evidence you use, be sure to cite it correctly—see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial .

You cannot always tell from the assignment just what sort of writing style your instructor expects. The instructor may be really laid back in class but still expect you to sound formal in writing. Or the instructor may be fairly formal in class and ask you to write a reflection paper where you need to use “I” and speak from your own experience.

Try to avoid false associations of a particular field with a style (“art historians like wacky creativity,” or “political scientists are boring and just give facts”) and look instead to the types of readings you have been given in class. No one expects you to write like Plato—just use the readings as a guide for what is standard or preferable to your instructor. When in doubt, ask your instructor about the level of formality she or he expects.

No matter what field you are writing for or what facts you are including, if you do not write so that your reader can understand your main idea, you have wasted your time. So make clarity your main goal. For specific help with style, see our handout on style .

Technical details about the assignment

The technical information you are given in an assignment always seems like the easy part. This section can actually give you lots of little hints about approaching the task. Find out if elements such as page length and citation format (see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial ) are negotiable. Some professors do not have strong preferences as long as you are consistent and fully answer the assignment. Some professors are very specific and will deduct big points for deviations.

Usually, the page length tells you something important: The instructor thinks the size of the paper is appropriate to the assignment’s parameters. In plain English, your instructor is telling you how many pages it should take for you to answer the question as fully as you are expected to. So if an assignment is two pages long, you cannot pad your paper with examples or reword your main idea several times. Hit your one point early, defend it with the clearest example, and finish quickly. If an assignment is ten pages long, you can be more complex in your main points and examples—and if you can only produce five pages for that assignment, you need to see someone for help—as soon as possible.

Tricks that don’t work

Your instructors are not fooled when you:

• spend more time on the cover page than the essay —graphics, cool binders, and cute titles are no replacement for a well-written paper.
• use huge fonts, wide margins, or extra spacing to pad the page length —these tricks are immediately obvious to the eye. Most instructors use the same word processor you do. They know what’s possible. Such tactics are especially damning when the instructor has a stack of 60 papers to grade and yours is the only one that low-flying airplane pilots could read.
• use a paper from another class that covered “sort of similar” material . Again, the instructor has a particular task for you to fulfill in the assignment that usually relates to course material and lectures. Your other paper may not cover this material, and turning in the same paper for more than one course may constitute an Honor Code violation . Ask the instructor—it can’t hurt.
• get all wacky and “creative” before you answer the question . Showing that you are able to think beyond the boundaries of a simple assignment can be good, but you must do what the assignment calls for first. Again, check with your instructor. A humorous tone can be refreshing for someone grading a stack of papers, but it will not get you a good grade if you have not fulfilled the task.

Critical reading of assignments leads to skills in other types of reading and writing. If you get good at figuring out what the real goals of assignments are, you are going to be better at understanding the goals of all of your classes and fields of study.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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NCI LIBRARY

Academic writing skills guide: understanding assignments.

• Key Features of Academic Writing
• The Writing Process
• Understanding Assignments
• Brainstorming Techniques
• Planning Your Assignments
• Thesis Statements
• Writing Drafts
• Structuring Your Assignment
• How to Deal With Writer's Block
• Using Paragraphs
• Conclusions
• Introductions
• Revising & Editing
• Proofreading
• Grammar & Punctuation
• Reporting Verbs
• Signposting, Transitions & Linking Words/Phrases
• Using Lecturers' Feedback

Below is a list of interpretations for some of the more common directive/instructional words. These interpretations are intended as a guide only but should help you gain a better understanding of what is required when they are used. 

Communications from the Library:  Please note all communications from the library, concerning renewal of books, overdue books and reservations will be sent to your NCI student email account.

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Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Understanding Writing Assignments

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This resource describes some steps you can take to better understand the requirements of your writing assignments. This resource works for either in-class, teacher-led discussion or for personal use.

How to Decipher the Paper Assignment

Many instructors write their assignment prompts differently. By following a few steps, you can better understand the requirements for the assignment. The best way, as always, is to ask the instructor about anything confusing.

• Read the prompt the entire way through once. This gives you an overall view of what is going on.
• Underline or circle the portions that you absolutely must know. This information may include due date, research (source) requirements, page length, and format (MLA, APA, CMS).
• Underline or circle important phrases. You should know your instructor at least a little by now - what phrases do they use in class? Does he repeatedly say a specific word? If these are in the prompt, you know the instructor wants you to use them in the assignment.
• Think about how you will address the prompt. The prompt contains clues on how to write the assignment. Your instructor will often describe the ideas they want discussed either in questions, in bullet points, or in the text of the prompt. Think about each of these sentences and number them so that you can write a paragraph or section of your essay on that portion if necessary.
• Rank ideas in descending order, from most important to least important. Instructors may include more questions or talking points than you can cover in your assignment, so rank them in the order you think is more important. One area of the prompt may be more interesting to you than another.
• Ask your instructor questions if you have any.

After you are finished with these steps, ask yourself the following:

• What is the purpose of this assignment? Is my purpose to provide information without forming an argument, to construct an argument based on research, or analyze a poem and discuss its imagery?
• Who is my audience? Is my instructor my only audience? Who else might read this? Will it be posted online? What are my readers' needs and expectations?
• What resources do I need to begin work? Do I need to conduct literature (hermeneutic or historical) research, or do I need to review important literature on the topic and then conduct empirical research, such as a survey or an observation? How many sources are required?
• Who - beyond my instructor - can I contact to help me if I have questions? Do you have a writing lab or student service center that offers tutorials in writing?

(Notes on prompts made in blue )

Poster or Song Analysis: Poster or Song? Poster!

Goals : To systematically consider the rhetorical choices made in either a poster or a song. She says that all the time.

Things to Consider: ah- talking points

• how the poster addresses its audience and is affected by context I'll do this first - 1.
• general layout, use of color, contours of light and shade, etc.
• use of contrast, alignment, repetition, and proximity C.A.R.P. They say that, too. I'll do this third - 3.
• the point of view the viewer is invited to take, poses of figures in the poster, etc. any text that may be present
• possible cultural ramifications or social issues that have bearing I'll cover this second - 2.
• ethical implications
• how the poster affects us emotionally, or what mood it evokes
• the poster's implicit argument and its effectiveness said that was important in class, so I'll discuss this last - 4.
• how the song addresses its audience
• lyrics: how they rhyme, repeat, what they say
• use of music, tempo, different instruments
• possible cultural ramifications or social issues that have bearing
• emotional effects
• the implicit argument and its effectiveness

These thinking points are not a step-by-step guideline on how to write your paper; instead, they are various means through which you can approach the subject. I do expect to see at least a few of them addressed, and there are other aspects that may be pertinent to your choice that have not been included in these lists. You will want to find a central idea and base your argument around that. Additionally, you must include a copy of the poster or song that you are working with. Really important!

I will be your audience. This is a formal paper, and you should use academic conventions throughout.

Length: 4 pages Format: Typed, double-spaced, 10-12 point Times New Roman, 1 inch margins I need to remember the format stuff. I messed this up last time =(

Academic Argument Essay

5-7 pages, Times New Roman 12 pt. font, 1 inch margins.

Minimum of five cited sources: 3 must be from academic journals or books

• Design Plan due: Thurs. 10/19
• Rough Draft due: Monday 10/30
• Final Draft due: Thurs. 11/9

Remember this! I missed the deadline last time

The design plan is simply a statement of purpose, as described on pages 40-41 of the book, and an outline. The outline may be formal, as we discussed in class, or a printout of an Open Mind project. It must be a minimum of 1 page typed information, plus 1 page outline.

This project is an expansion of your opinion editorial. While you should avoid repeating any of your exact phrases from Project 2, you may reuse some of the same ideas. Your topic should be similar. You must use research to support your position, and you must also demonstrate a fairly thorough knowledge of any opposing position(s). 2 things to do - my position and the opposite.

Your essay should begin with an introduction that encapsulates your topic and indicates 1 the general trajectory of your argument. You need to have a discernable thesis that appears early in your paper. Your conclusion should restate the thesis in different words, 2 and then draw some additional meaningful analysis out of the developments of your argument. Think of this as a "so what" factor. What are some implications for the future, relating to your topic? What does all this (what you have argued) mean for society, or for the section of it to which your argument pertains? A good conclusion moves outside the topic in the paper and deals with a larger issue.

You should spend at least one paragraph acknowledging and describing the opposing position in a manner that is respectful and honestly representative of the opposition’s 3 views. The counterargument does not need to occur in a certain area, but generally begins or ends your argument. Asserting and attempting to prove each aspect of your argument’s structure should comprise the majority of your paper. Ask yourself what your argument assumes and what must be proven in order to validate your claims. Then go step-by-step, paragraph-by-paragraph, addressing each facet of your position. Most important part!

Finally, pay attention to readability . Just because this is a research paper does not mean that it has to be boring. Use examples and allow your opinion to show through word choice and tone. Proofread before you turn in the paper. Your audience is generally the academic community and specifically me, as a representative of that community. Ok, They want this to be easy to read, to contain examples I find, and they want it to be grammatically correct. I can visit the tutoring center if I get stuck, or I can email the OWL Email Tutors short questions if I have any more problems.

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• Knowledge Base
• Academic writing

What Is Academic Writing? | Dos and Don’ts for Students

Academic writing is a formal style of writing used in universities and scholarly publications. You’ll encounter it in journal articles and books on academic topics, and you’ll be expected to write your essays , research papers , and dissertation in academic style.

Academic writing follows the same writing process as other types of texts, but it has specific conventions in terms of content, structure and style.

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Table of contents

Types of academic writing, academic writing is…, academic writing is not…, useful tools for academic writing, academic writing checklist.

Academics mostly write texts intended for publication, such as journal articles, reports, books, and chapters in edited collections. For students, the most common types of academic writing assignments are listed below.

Different fields of study have different priorities in terms of the writing they produce. For example, in scientific writing it’s crucial to clearly and accurately report methods and results; in the humanities, the focus is on constructing convincing arguments through the use of textual evidence. However, most academic writing shares certain key principles intended to help convey information as effectively as possible.

Whether your goal is to pass your degree, apply to graduate school , or build an academic career, effective writing is an essential skill.

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Formal and unbiased

Academic writing aims to convey information in an impartial way. The goal is to base arguments on the evidence under consideration, not the author’s preconceptions. All claims should be supported with relevant evidence, not just asserted.

To avoid bias, it’s important to represent the work of other researchers and the results of your own research fairly and accurately. This means clearly outlining your methodology  and being honest about the limitations of your research.

The formal style used in academic writing ensures that research is presented consistently across different texts, so that studies can be objectively assessed and compared with other research.

Because of this, it’s important to strike the right tone with your language choices. Avoid informal language , including slang, contractions , clichés, and conversational phrases:

• Also , a lot of the findings are a little unreliable.
• Moreover , many of the findings are somewhat unreliable.

Clear and precise

It’s important to use clear and precise language to ensure that your reader knows exactly what you mean. This means being as specific as possible and avoiding vague language :

• People have been interested in this thing for a long time .
• Researchers have been interested in this phenomenon for at least 10 years .

Avoid hedging your claims with words like “perhaps,” as this can give the impression that you lack confidence in your arguments. Reflect on your word choice to ensure it accurately and directly conveys your meaning:

• This could perhaps suggest that…
• This suggests that…

Specialist language or jargon is common and often necessary in academic writing, which generally targets an audience of other academics in related fields.

However, jargon should be used to make your writing more concise and accurate, not to make it more complicated. A specialist term should be used when:

• It conveys information more precisely than a comparable non-specialist term.
• Your reader is likely to be familiar with the term.
• The term is commonly used by other researchers in your field.

The best way to familiarize yourself with the kind of jargon used in your field is to read papers by other researchers and pay attention to their language.

Focused and well structured

An academic text is not just a collection of ideas about a topic—it needs to have a clear purpose. Start with a relevant research question or thesis statement , and use it to develop a focused argument. Only include information that is relevant to your overall purpose.

A coherent structure is crucial to organize your ideas. Pay attention to structure at three levels: the structure of the whole text, paragraph structure, and sentence structure.

Well sourced

Academic writing uses sources to support its claims. Sources are other texts (or media objects like photographs or films) that the author analyzes or uses as evidence. Many of your sources will be written by other academics; academic writing is collaborative and builds on previous research.

It’s important to consider which sources are credible and appropriate to use in academic writing. For example, citing Wikipedia is typically discouraged. Don’t rely on websites for information; instead, use academic databases and your university library to find credible sources.

You must always cite your sources in academic writing. This means acknowledging whenever you quote or paraphrase someone else’s work by including a citation in the text and a reference list at the end.

There are many different citation styles with different rules. The most common styles are APA , MLA , and Chicago . Make sure to consistently follow whatever style your institution requires. If you don’t cite correctly, you may get in trouble for plagiarism . A good plagiarism checker can help you catch any issues before it’s too late.

You can easily create accurate citations in APA or MLA style using our Citation Generators.

APA Citation Generator MLA Citation Generator

Correct and consistent

As well as following the rules of grammar, punctuation, and citation, it’s important to consistently apply stylistic conventions regarding:

• How to write numbers
• Introducing abbreviations
• Using verb tenses in different sections
• Capitalization of terms and headings
• Spelling and punctuation differences between UK and US English

In some cases there are several acceptable approaches that you can choose between—the most important thing is to apply the same rules consistently and to carefully proofread your text before you submit. If you don’t feel confident in your own proofreading abilities, you can get help from Scribbr’s professional proofreading services or Grammar Checker .

Academic writing generally tries to avoid being too personal. Information about the author may come in at some points—for example in the acknowledgements or in a personal reflection—but for the most part the text should focus on the research itself.

Always avoid addressing the reader directly with the second-person pronoun “you.” Use the impersonal pronoun “one” or an alternate phrasing instead for generalizations:

• As a teacher, you must treat your students fairly.
• As a teacher, one must treat one’s students fairly.
• Teachers must treat their students fairly.

The use of the first-person pronoun “I” used to be similarly discouraged in academic writing, but it is increasingly accepted in many fields. If you’re unsure whether to use the first person, pay attention to conventions in your field or ask your instructor.

When you refer to yourself, it should be for good reason. You can position yourself and describe what you did during the research, but avoid arbitrarily inserting your personal thoughts and feelings:

• In my opinion…
• I think that…
• I like/dislike…
• I conducted interviews with…
• I argue that…
• I hope to achieve…

Long-winded

Many students think their writing isn’t academic unless it’s over-complicated and long-winded. This isn’t a good approach—instead, aim to be as concise and direct as possible.

If a term can be cut or replaced with a more straightforward one without affecting your meaning, it should be. Avoid redundant phrasings in your text, and try replacing phrasal verbs with their one-word equivalents where possible:

• Interest in this phenomenon carried on in the year 2018 .
• Interest in this phenomenon continued in 2018 .

Repetition is a part of academic writing—for example, summarizing earlier information in the conclusion—but it’s important to avoid unnecessary repetition. Make sure that none of your sentences are repeating a point you’ve already made in different words.

Emotive and grandiose

An academic text is not the same thing as a literary, journalistic, or marketing text. Though you’re still trying to be persuasive, a lot of techniques from these styles are not appropriate in an academic context. Specifically, you should avoid appeals to emotion and inflated claims.

Though you may be writing about a topic that’s sensitive or important to you, the point of academic writing is to clearly communicate ideas, information, and arguments, not to inspire an emotional response. Avoid using emotive or subjective language :

• This horrible tragedy was obviously one of the worst catastrophes in construction history.
• The injury and mortality rates of this accident were among the highest in construction history.

Students are sometimes tempted to make the case for their topic with exaggerated , unsupported claims and flowery language. Stick to specific, grounded arguments that you can support with evidence, and don’t overstate your point:

• Charles Dickens is the greatest writer of the Victorian period, and his influence on all subsequent literature is enormous.
• Charles Dickens is one of the best-known writers of the Victorian period and has had a significant influence on the development of the English novel.

There are a a lot of writing tools that will make your writing process faster and easier. We’ll highlight three of them below.

Paraphrasing tool

AI writing tools like ChatGPT and a paraphrasing tool can help you rewrite text so that your ideas are clearer, you don’t repeat yourself, and your writing has a consistent tone.

They can also help you write more clearly about sources without having to quote them directly. Be warned, though: it’s still crucial to give credit to all sources in the right way to prevent plagiarism .

Grammar checker

Writing tools that scan your text for punctuation, spelling, and grammar mistakes. When it detects a mistake the grammar checke r will give instant feedback and suggest corrections. Helping you write clearly and avoid common mistakes .

You can use a summarizer if you want to condense text into its most important and useful ideas. With a summarizer tool, you can make it easier to understand complicated sources. You can also use the tool to make your research question clearer and summarize your main argument.

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

Use the checklist below to assess whether you have followed the rules of effective academic writing.

• Checklist: Academic writing

I avoid informal terms and contractions .

I avoid second-person pronouns (“you”).

I avoid emotive or exaggerated language.

I avoid redundant words and phrases.

I avoid unnecessary jargon and define terms where needed.

I present information as precisely and accurately as possible.

I use appropriate transitions to show the connections between my ideas.

My text is logically organized using paragraphs .

Each paragraph is focused on a single idea, expressed in a clear topic sentence .

Every part of the text relates to my central thesis or research question .

I support my claims with evidence.

I use the appropriate verb tenses in each section.

I consistently use either UK or US English .

I format numbers consistently.

I cite my sources using a consistent citation style .

Your text follows the most important rules of academic style. Make sure it's perfect with the help of a Scribbr editor!

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What is your plagiarism score?

Understanding the Assignment

There are four kinds of analysis you need to do in order to fully understand an assignment: determining the purpose of the assignment , understanding how to answer an assignment’s questions , recognizing implied questions in the assignment , and recognizing the disciplinary expectations of the assignment .

Always make sure you fully understand an assignment before you start writing!

Determining the Purpose

The wording of an assignment should suggest its purpose. Any of the following might be expected of you in a college writing assignment:

• Summarizing information
• Analyzing ideas and concepts
• Taking a position and defending it
• Combining ideas from several sources and creating your own original argument.

Understanding How to Answer the Assignment

College writing assignments will ask you to answer a how or why question – questions that can’t be answered with just facts. For example, the question “ What are the names of the presidents of the US in the last twenty years?” needs only a list of facts to be answered. The question “ Who was the best president of the last twenty years and why?”  requires you to take a position and support that position with evidence.

Sometimes, a list of prompts may appear with an assignment. Remember, your instructor will not expect you to answer all of the questions listed. They are simply offering you some ideas so that you can think of your own questions to ask.

Recognizing Implied Questions

A prompt may not include a clear ‘how’ or ‘why’ question, though one is always implied by the language of the prompt. For example:

“Discuss the effects of the No Child Left Behind Act on special education programs” is asking you to write how the act has affected special education programs. “Consider the recent rise of autism diagnoses” is asking you to write why the diagnoses of autism are on the rise.

Recognizing Disciplinary Expectations

Depending on the discipline in which you are writing, different features and formats of your writing may be expected. Always look closely at key terms and vocabulary in the writing assignment, and be sure to note what type of evidence and citations style your instructor expects.

About Writing: A Guide Copyright © 2015 by Robin Jeffrey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Understanding the Writing Assignment

Before you begin working on an essay or a writing assignment, don’t forget to spend some quality time analyzing the assignment sheet. By closely reading and breaking down the assignment sheet, you are setting yourself up for an easier time planning and composing the assignment.

Understanding what you need to do

• First , carefully read the assignment sheet and search for the required page length, due dates, and other submission-based information.
• Second , determine the genre of the assignment
• Third , identify the core assignment questions that you need to answer
• Fourth , locate the evaluation and grading criteria

Identifying Writing Requirements & Disciplinary Expectations

Some instructors offer indications of what certain parts of the essay/composition should contain. Does the assignment sheet offer suggestions or requirements for the Intro paragraph? For the thesis statement? For the structure or content of the body paragraphs or conclusion paragraphs?

Depending on the discipline in which you are writing, different features and formats of your writing may be expected. Always look closely at key terms and vocabulary in the writing assignment, and be sure to note what type of evidence and citation style your instructor expects.

• Does the essay need to be in MLA, APA, CMS, or another style?
• Does the professor require any specific submission elements or formats?

Writing Genre

What, in the broadest sense, are you being asked to do? What writing genre is expected?

• Narrative –  The act of telling a story through an essay. Also note that narrative includes the act of writing about yourself, which is exceptionally difficult for most writers but is nonetheless required for many circumstances in and out of college.
• Analysis –  Analysis questions often contain words like how, in what ways, and what are some of the ____. Analysis asks you to examine small pieces of the larger whole and indicate their meaning or significance.
• Synthesis –  If you are asked to draw from and connect several different sources, then you will be synthesizing.
• Argument – Any text in which you are attempting to get a reader to accept your claim. Argument is persuasive writing, and it can include things like argument-based research papers or critiques/evaluations of others’ work.
• Explanation – Any text in which you merely report (as opposed to attempting to persuade) is going to be an explanation paper. None of your own opinions is being sought. Summaries, annotations, and reports are often explanatory.
• Compare and Contrast – This essay is usually between two ideas. The primary aim of comparing and contrasting in college writing is to clarify meaningful, non-obvious features of similarity and difference.

Answer the Assignment Questions & Implied Questions

Sometimes, a list of prompts or questions may appear with an assignment. Likely, your instructor will not expect you to answer all of the questions listed. They are simply offering you some ideas so that you can think of your questions to ask.

• Circle all assignment questions that you see on the assignment sheet
• Put a star next to the question that is either the most important OR that you will pursue in creating the assignment

A prompt may not include a clear ‘how’ or ‘why’ question, though one is always implied by the language of the prompt. For example:

“Discuss the effects of the No Child Left Behind Act on special education programs” is asking you to write how the act has affected special education programs. “Consider the recent rise of autism diagnoses” is asking you to write why the diagnoses of autism are on the rise.

Identifying Evaluation Criteria

Many assignment sheets contain a grading rubric or some other indication of evaluation criteria for the assignment. You can use these criteria to both begin the writing process and to guide your revision and editing process. If you do not see any rubric or evaluation criteria on the assignment sheet — ask!

Attributions

A Guide to Rhetoric, Genre, and Success in First-Year Writing  by Melanie Gagich & Emilie Zickel is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

This chapter has additions, edits, and organization by James Charles Devlin.

Understanding the Writing Assignment Copyright © by James Charles Devlin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Writing Assignments

Kate Derrington; Cristy Bartlett; and Sarah Irvine

Introduction

Assignments are a common method of assessment at university and require careful planning and good quality research. Developing critical thinking and writing skills are also necessary to demonstrate your ability to understand and apply information about your topic.  It is not uncommon to be unsure about the processes of writing assignments at university.

• You may be returning to study after a break
• You may have come from an exam based assessment system and never written an assignment before
• Maybe you have written assignments but would like to improve your processes and strategies

This chapter has a collection of resources that will provide you with the skills and strategies to understand assignment requirements and effectively plan, research, write and edit your assignments.  It begins with an explanation of how to analyse an assignment task and start putting your ideas together.  It continues by breaking down the components of academic writing and exploring the elements you will need to master in your written assignments. This is followed by a discussion of paraphrasing and synthesis, and how you can use these strategies to create a strong, written argument. The chapter concludes with useful checklists for editing and proofreading to help you get the best possible mark for your work.

Task Analysis and Deconstructing an Assignment

It is important that before you begin researching and writing your assignments you spend sufficient time understanding all the requirements. This will help make your research process more efficient and effective. Check your subject information such as task sheets, criteria sheets and any additional information that may be in your subject portal online. Seek clarification from your lecturer or tutor if you are still unsure about how to begin your assignments.

The task sheet typically provides key information about an assessment including the assignment question. It can be helpful to scan this document for topic, task and limiting words to ensure that you fully understand the concepts you are required to research, how to approach the assignment, and the scope of the task you have been set. These words can typically be found in your assignment question and are outlined in more detail in the two tables below (see Table 19.1 and Table 19.2 ).

Table 19.1 Parts of an Assignment Question

Make sure you have a clear understanding of what the task word requires you to address.

Table 19.2 Task words

The criteria sheet , also known as the marking sheet or rubric, is another important document to look at before you begin your assignment. The criteria sheet outlines how your assignment will be marked and should be used as a checklist to make sure you have included all the information required.

The task or criteria sheet will also include the:

• Word limit (or word count)
• Referencing style and research expectations
• Formatting requirements

Task analysis and criteria sheets are also discussed in the chapter Managing Assessments for a more detailed discussion on task analysis, criteria sheets, and marking rubrics.

Preparing your ideas

Brainstorm or concept map:  List possible ideas to address each part of the assignment task based on what you already know about the topic from lectures and weekly readings.

Finding appropriate information: Learn how to find scholarly information for your assignments which is

See the chapter Working With Information for a more detailed explanation .

What is academic writing?

Academic writing tone and style.

Many of the assessment pieces you prepare will require an academic writing style.  This is sometimes called ‘academic tone’ or ‘academic voice’.  This section will help you to identify what is required when you are writing academically (see Table 19.3 ). The best way to understand what academic writing looks like, is to read broadly in your discipline area.  Look at how your course readings, or scholarly sources, are written. This will help you identify the language of your discipline field, as well as how other writers structure their work.

Table 19.3 Comparison of academic and non-academic writing

Thesis statements.

Essays are a common form of assessment that you will likely encounter during your university studies. You should apply an academic tone and style when writing an essay, just as you would in in your other assessment pieces. One of the most important steps in writing an essay is constructing your thesis statement.  A thesis statement tells the reader the purpose, argument or direction you will take to answer your assignment question. A thesis statement may not be relevant for some questions, if you are unsure check with your lecturer. The thesis statement:

• Directly  relates to the task .  Your thesis statement may even contain some of the key words or synonyms from the task description.
• Does more than restate the question.
• Is specific and uses precise language.
• Let’s your reader know your position or the main argument that you will support with evidence throughout your assignment.
• The subject is the key content area you will be covering.
• The contention is the position you are taking in relation to the chosen content.

Your thesis statement helps you to structure your essay.  It plays a part in each key section: introduction, body and conclusion.

Planning your assignment structure

When planning and drafting assignments, it is important to consider the structure of your writing. Academic writing should have clear and logical structure and incorporate academic research to support your ideas.  It can be hard to get started and at first you may feel nervous about the size of the task, this is normal. If you break your assignment into smaller pieces, it will seem more manageable as you can approach the task in sections. Refer to your brainstorm or plan. These ideas should guide your research and will also inform what you write in your draft. It is sometimes easier to draft your assignment using the 2-3-1 approach, that is, write the body paragraphs first followed by the conclusion and finally the introduction.

Writing introductions and conclusions

Clear and purposeful introductions and conclusions in assignments are fundamental to effective academic writing. Your introduction should tell the reader what is going to be covered and how you intend to approach this. Your conclusion should summarise your argument or discussion and signal to the reader that you have come to a conclusion with a final statement.  These tips below are based on the requirements usually needed for an essay assignment, however, they can be applied to other assignment types.

Writing introductions

Most writing at university will require a strong and logically structured introduction. An effective introduction should provide some background or context for your assignment, clearly state your thesis and include the key points you will cover in the body of the essay in order to prove your thesis.

Usually, your introduction is approximately 10% of your total assignment word count. It is much easier to write your introduction once you have drafted your body paragraphs and conclusion, as you know what your assignment is going to be about. An effective introduction needs to inform your reader by establishing what the paper is about and provide four basic things:

• A brief background or overview of your assignment topic
• A thesis statement (see section above)
• An outline of your essay structure
• An indication of any parameters or scope that will/ will not be covered, e.g. From an Australian perspective.

The below example demonstrates the four different elements of an introductory paragraph.

1) Information technology is having significant effects on the communication of individuals and organisations in different professions. 2) This essay will discuss the impact of information technology on the communication of health professionals.   3)  First, the provision of information technology for the educational needs of nurses will be discussed.  4)  This will be followed by an explanation of the significant effects that information technology can have on the role of general practitioner in the area of public health.  5)  Considerations will then be made regarding the lack of knowledge about the potential of computers among hospital administrators and nursing executives.  6)   The final section will explore how information technology assists health professionals in the delivery of services in rural areas .  7)  It will be argued that information technology has significant potential to improve health care and medical education, but health professionals are reluctant to use it.

1 Brief background/ overview | 2 Indicates the scope of what will be covered |   3-6 Outline of the main ideas (structure) | 7 The thesis statement

Note : The examples in this document are taken from the University of Canberra and used under a CC-BY-SA-3.0 licence.

Writing conclusions

You should aim to end your assignments with a strong conclusion. Your conclusion should restate your thesis and summarise the key points you have used to prove this thesis. Finish with a key point as a final impactful statement.  Similar to your introduction, your conclusion should be approximately 10% of the total assignment word length. If your assessment task asks you to make recommendations, you may need to allocate more words to the conclusion or add a separate recommendations section before the conclusion. Use the checklist below to check your conclusion is doing the right job.

Conclusion checklist 

• Have you referred to the assignment question and restated your argument (or thesis statement), as outlined in the introduction?
• Have you pulled together all the threads of your essay into a logical ending and given it a sense of unity?
• Have you presented implications or recommendations in your conclusion? (if required by your task).
• Have you added to the overall quality and impact of your essay? This is your final statement about this topic; thus, a key take-away point can make a great impact on the reader.
• Remember, do not add any new material or direct quotes in your conclusion.

This below example demonstrates the different elements of a concluding paragraph.

1) It is evident, therefore, that not only do employees need to be trained for working in the Australian multicultural workplace, but managers also need to be trained.  2)  Managers must ensure that effective in-house training programs are provided for migrant workers, so that they become more familiar with the English language, Australian communication norms and the Australian work culture.  3)  In addition, Australian native English speakers need to be made aware of the differing cultural values of their workmates; particularly the different forms of non-verbal communication used by other cultures.  4)  Furthermore, all employees must be provided with clear and detailed guidelines about company expectations.  5)  Above all, in order to minimise communication problems and to maintain an atmosphere of tolerance, understanding and cooperation in the multicultural workplace, managers need to have an effective knowledge about their employees. This will help employers understand how their employee’s social conditioning affects their beliefs about work. It will develop their communication skills to develop confidence and self-esteem among diverse work groups. 6) The culturally diverse Australian workplace may never be completely free of communication problems, however,   further studies to identify potential problems and solutions, as well as better training in cross cultural communication for managers and employees,   should result in a much more understanding and cooperative environment. 

1  Reference to thesis statement – In this essay the writer has taken the position that training is required for both employees and employers . | 2-5 Structure overview – Here the writer pulls together the main ideas in the essay. | 6  Final summary statement that is based on the evidence.

Note: The examples in this document are taken from the University of Canberra and used under a CC-BY-SA-3.0 licence.

Writing paragraphs

Paragraph writing is a key skill that enables you to incorporate your academic research into your written work.  Each paragraph should have its own clearly identified topic sentence or main idea which relates to the argument or point (thesis) you are developing.  This idea should then be explained by additional sentences which you have paraphrased from good quality sources and referenced according to the recommended guidelines of your subject (see the chapter Working with Information ). Paragraphs are characterised by increasing specificity; that is, they move from the general to the specific, increasingly refining the reader’s understanding. A common structure for paragraphs in academic writing is as follows.

Topic Sentence 

This is the main idea of the paragraph and should relate to the overall issue or purpose of your assignment is addressing. Often it will be expressed as an assertion or claim which supports the overall argument or purpose of your writing.

Explanation/ Elaboration

The main idea must have its meaning explained and elaborated upon. Think critically, do not just describe the idea.

These explanations must include evidence to support your main idea. This information should be paraphrased and referenced according to the appropriate referencing style of your course.

Concluding sentence (critical thinking)

This should explain why the topic of the paragraph is relevant to the assignment question and link to the following paragraph.

Use the checklist below to check your paragraphs are clear and well formed.

Paragraph checklist

• Does your paragraph have a clear main idea?
• Is everything in the paragraph related to this main idea?
• Is the main idea adequately developed and explained?
• Do your sentences run together smoothly?
• Have you included evidence to support your ideas?
• Have you concluded the paragraph by connecting it to your overall topic?

Writing sentences

Make sure all the sentences in your paragraphs make sense. Each sentence must contain a verb to be a complete sentence. Avoid sentence fragments . These are incomplete sentences or ideas that are unfinished and create confusion for your reader. Avoid also run on sentences . This happens when you join two ideas or clauses without using the appropriate punctuation. This also confuses your meaning (See the chapter English Language Foundations for examples and further explanation).

Use transitions (linking words and phrases) to connect your ideas between paragraphs and make your writing flow. The order that you structure the ideas in your assignment should reflect the structure you have outlined in your introduction. Refer to transition words table in the chapter English Language Foundations.

Paraphrasing and Synthesising

Paraphrasing and synthesising are powerful tools that you can use to support the main idea of a paragraph. It is likely that you will regularly use these skills at university to incorporate evidence into explanatory sentences and strengthen your essay. It is important to paraphrase and synthesise because:

• Paraphrasing is regarded more highly at university than direct quoting.
• Paraphrasing can also help you better understand the material.
• Paraphrasing and synthesising demonstrate you have understood what you have read through your ability to summarise and combine arguments from the literature using your own words.

What is paraphrasing?

Paraphrasing is changing the writing of another author into your words while retaining the original meaning. You must acknowledge the original author as the source of the information in your citation. Follow the steps in this table to help you build your skills in paraphrasing (see Table 19.4 ).

Table 19.4 Paraphrasing techniques

Example of paraphrasing.

Please note that these examples and in text citations are for instructional purposes only.

Original text

Health care professionals   assist people often when they are at their most  vulnerable . To provide the best care and understand their needs, workers must demonstrate good communication skills .  They must develop patient trust and provide empathy   to effectively work with patients who are experiencing a variety of situations including those who may be suffering from trauma or violence, physical or mental illness or substance abuse (French & Saunders, 2018).

Poor quality paraphrase example

This is a poor example of paraphrasing. Some synonyms have been used and the order of a few words changed within the sentences however the colours of the sentences indicate that the paragraph follows the same structure as the original text.

Health care sector workers are often responsible for vulnerable  patients.   To understand patients and deliver good service , they need to be excellent communicators .  They must establish patient rapport and show empathy if they are to successfully care for patients from a variety of backgrounds  and with different medical, psychological and social needs (French & Saunders, 2018).

A good quality paraphrase example

This example demonstrates a better quality paraphrase. The author has demonstrated more understanding of the overall concept in the text by using the keywords as the basis to reconstruct the paragraph. Note how the blocks of colour have been broken up to see how much the structure has changed from the original text.

Empathetic   communication is a vital skill for health care workers.   Professionals in these fields   are often responsible for patients with complex medical, psychological and social needs. Empathetic   communication assists in building rapport and gaining the necessary trust   to assist these vulnerable patients  by providing appropriate supportive care (French & Saunders, 2018).

The good quality paraphrase example demonstrates understanding of the overall concept in the text by using key words as the basis to reconstruct the paragraph.  Note how the blocks of colour have been broken up, which indicates how much the structure has changed from the original text.

What is synthesising?

Synthesising means to bring together more than one source of information to strengthen your argument. Once you have learnt how to paraphrase the ideas of one source at a time, you can consider adding additional sources to support your argument. Synthesis demonstrates your understanding and ability to show connections between multiple pieces of evidence to support your ideas and is a more advanced academic thinking and writing skill.

Follow the steps in this table to improve your synthesis techniques (see Table 19.5 ).

Table 19.5 Synthesising techniques

Example of synthesis

There is a relationship between academic procrastination and mental health outcomes.  Procrastination has been found to have a negative effect on students’ well-being (Balkis, & Duru, 2016). Yerdelen, McCaffrey, and Klassens’ (2016) research results suggested that there was a positive association between procrastination and anxiety. This was corroborated by Custer’s (2018) findings which indicated that students with higher levels of procrastination also reported greater levels of the anxiety. Therefore, it could be argued that procrastination is an ineffective learning strategy that leads to increased levels of distress.

Topic sentence | Statements using paraphrased evidence | Critical thinking (student voice) | Concluding statement – linking to topic sentence

This example demonstrates a simple synthesis. The author has developed a paragraph with one central theme and included explanatory sentences complete with in-text citations from multiple sources. Note how the blocks of colour have been used to illustrate the paragraph structure and synthesis (i.e., statements using paraphrased evidence from several sources). A more complex synthesis may include more than one citation per sentence.

Creating an argument

What does this mean.

Throughout your university studies, you may be asked to ‘argue’ a particular point or position in your writing. You may already be familiar with the idea of an argument, which in general terms means to have a disagreement with someone. Similarly, in academic writing, if you are asked to create an argument, this means you are asked to have a position on a particular topic, and then justify your position using evidence.

What skills do you need to create an argument?

In order to create a good and effective argument, you need to be able to:

• Read critically to find evidence
• Plan your argument
• Think and write critically throughout your paper to enhance your argument

For tips on how to read and write critically, refer to the chapter Thinking for more information. A formula for developing a strong argument is presented below.

A formula for a good argument

What does an argument look like?

As can be seen from the figure above, including evidence is a key element of a good argument. While this may seem like a straightforward task, it can be difficult to think of wording to express your argument. The table below provides examples of how you can illustrate your argument in academic writing (see Table 19.6 ).

Table 19.6 Argument

Editing and proofreading (reviewing).

Once you have finished writing your first draft it is recommended that you spend time revising your work.  Proofreading and editing are two different stages of the revision process.

• Editing considers the overall focus or bigger picture of the assignment
• Proofreading considers the finer details

As can be seen in the figure above there are four main areas that you should review during the editing phase of the revision process. The main things to consider when editing include content, structure, style, and sources. It is important to check that all the content relates to the assignment task, the structure is appropriate for the purposes of the assignment, the writing is academic in style, and that sources have been adequately acknowledged. Use the checklist below when editing your work.

Editing checklist

• Have I answered the question accurately?
• Do I have enough credible, scholarly supporting evidence?
• Is my writing tone objective and formal enough or have I used emotive and informal language?
• Have I written in the third person not the first person?
• Do I have appropriate in-text citations for all my information?
• Have I included the full details for all my in-text citations in my reference list?

There are also several key things to look out for during the proofreading phase of the revision process. In this stage it is important to check your work for word choice, grammar and spelling, punctuation and referencing errors. It can be easy to mis-type words like ‘from’ and ‘form’ or mix up words like ‘trail’ and ‘trial’ when writing about research, apply American rather than Australian spelling, include unnecessary commas or incorrectly format your references list. The checklist below is a useful guide that you can use when proofreading your work.

Proofreading checklist

• Is my spelling and grammar accurate?
•  Are they complete?
• Do they all make sense?
• Do they only contain only one idea?
• Do the different elements (subject, verb, nouns, pronouns) within my sentences agree?
• Are my sentences too long and complicated?
• Do they contain only one idea per sentence?
• Is my writing concise? Take out words that do not add meaning to your sentences.
• Have I used appropriate discipline specific language but avoided words I don’t know or understand that could possibly be out of context?
• Have I avoided discriminatory language and colloquial expressions (slang)?
• Is my referencing formatted correctly according to my assignment guidelines? (for more information on referencing refer to the Managing Assessment feedback section).

This chapter has examined the experience of writing assignments.  It began by focusing on how to read and break down an assignment question, then highlighted the key components of essays. Next, it examined some techniques for paraphrasing and summarising, and how to build an argument. It concluded with a discussion on planning and structuring your assignment and giving it that essential polish with editing and proof-reading. Combining these skills and practising them, can greatly improve your success with this very common form of assessment.

• Academic writing requires clear and logical structure, critical thinking and the use of credible scholarly sources.
• A thesis statement is important as it tells the reader the position or argument you have adopted in your assignment. Not all assignments will require a thesis statement.
• Spending time analysing your task and planning your structure before you start to write your assignment is time well spent.
• Information you use in your assignment should come from credible scholarly sources such as textbooks and peer reviewed journals. This information needs to be paraphrased and referenced appropriately.
• Paraphrasing means putting something into your own words and synthesising means to bring together several ideas from sources.
• Creating an argument is a four step process and can be applied to all types of academic writing.
• Editing and proofreading are two separate processes.

Academic Skills Centre. (2013). Writing an introduction and conclusion . University of Canberra, accessed 13 August, 2013, http://www.canberra.edu.au/studyskills/writing/conclusions

Balkis, M., & Duru, E. (2016). Procrastination, self-regulation failure, academic life satisfaction, and affective well-being: underregulation or misregulation form. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 31 (3), 439-459.

Custer, N. (2018). Test anxiety and academic procrastination among prelicensure nursing students. Nursing education perspectives, 39 (3), 162-163.

Yerdelen, S., McCaffrey, A., & Klassen, R. M. (2016). Longitudinal examination of procrastination and anxiety, and their relation to self-efficacy for self-regulated learning: Latent growth curve modeling. Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice, 16 (1).

Writing Assignments Copyright © 2021 by Kate Derrington; Cristy Bartlett; and Sarah Irvine is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Assignment – Types, Examples and Writing Guide

Table of Contents

Definition:

Assignment is a task given to students by a teacher or professor, usually as a means of assessing their understanding and application of course material. Assignments can take various forms, including essays, research papers, presentations, problem sets, lab reports, and more.

Assignments are typically designed to be completed outside of class time and may require independent research, critical thinking, and analysis. They are often graded and used as a significant component of a student’s overall course grade. The instructions for an assignment usually specify the goals, requirements, and deadlines for completion, and students are expected to meet these criteria to earn a good grade.

History of Assignment

The use of assignments as a tool for teaching and learning has been a part of education for centuries. Following is a brief history of the Assignment.

• Ancient Times: Assignments such as writing exercises, recitations, and memorization tasks were used to reinforce learning.
• Medieval Period : Universities began to develop the concept of the assignment, with students completing essays, commentaries, and translations to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the subject matter.
• 19th Century : With the growth of schools and universities, assignments became more widespread and were used to assess student progress and achievement.
• 20th Century: The rise of distance education and online learning led to the further development of assignments as an integral part of the educational process.
• Present Day: Assignments continue to be used in a variety of educational settings and are seen as an effective way to promote student learning and assess student achievement. The nature and format of assignments continue to evolve in response to changing educational needs and technological innovations.

Types of Assignment

Here are some of the most common types of assignments:

An essay is a piece of writing that presents an argument, analysis, or interpretation of a topic or question. It usually consists of an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion.

Essay structure:

• Introduction : introduces the topic and thesis statement
• Body paragraphs : each paragraph presents a different argument or idea, with evidence and analysis to support it
• Conclusion : summarizes the key points and reiterates the thesis statement

Research paper

A research paper involves gathering and analyzing information on a particular topic, and presenting the findings in a well-structured, documented paper. It usually involves conducting original research, collecting data, and presenting it in a clear, organized manner.

Research paper structure:

• Title page : includes the title of the paper, author’s name, date, and institution
• Abstract : summarizes the paper’s main points and conclusions
• Introduction : provides background information on the topic and research question
• Literature review: summarizes previous research on the topic
• Methodology : explains how the research was conducted
• Results : presents the findings of the research
• Discussion : interprets the results and draws conclusions
• Conclusion : summarizes the key findings and implications

A case study involves analyzing a real-life situation, problem or issue, and presenting a solution or recommendations based on the analysis. It often involves extensive research, data analysis, and critical thinking.

Case study structure:

• Introduction : introduces the case study and its purpose
• Background : provides context and background information on the case
• Analysis : examines the key issues and problems in the case
• Solution/recommendations: proposes solutions or recommendations based on the analysis
• Conclusion: Summarize the key points and implications

A lab report is a scientific document that summarizes the results of a laboratory experiment or research project. It typically includes an introduction, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusion.

Lab report structure:

• Title page : includes the title of the experiment, author’s name, date, and institution
• Abstract : summarizes the purpose, methodology, and results of the experiment
• Methods : explains how the experiment was conducted
• Results : presents the findings of the experiment

Presentation

A presentation involves delivering information, data or findings to an audience, often with the use of visual aids such as slides, charts, or diagrams. It requires clear communication skills, good organization, and effective use of technology.

Presentation structure:

• Introduction : introduces the topic and purpose of the presentation
• Body : presents the main points, findings, or data, with the help of visual aids
• Conclusion : summarizes the key points and provides a closing statement

Creative Project

A creative project is an assignment that requires students to produce something original, such as a painting, sculpture, video, or creative writing piece. It allows students to demonstrate their creativity and artistic skills.

Creative project structure:

• Introduction : introduces the project and its purpose
• Body : presents the creative work, with explanations or descriptions as needed
• Conclusion : summarizes the key elements and reflects on the creative process.

Examples of Assignments

Following are Examples of Assignment templates samples:

Essay template:

I. Introduction

• Hook: Grab the reader’s attention with a catchy opening sentence.
• Background: Provide some context or background information on the topic.
• Thesis statement: State the main argument or point of your essay.

II. Body paragraphs

• Topic sentence: Introduce the main idea or argument of the paragraph.
• Evidence: Provide evidence or examples to support your point.
• Analysis: Explain how the evidence supports your argument.
• Transition: Use a transition sentence to lead into the next paragraph.

III. Conclusion

• Restate thesis: Summarize your main argument or point.
• Review key points: Summarize the main points you made in your essay.
• Concluding thoughts: End with a final thought or call to action.

Research paper template:

I. Title page

• Title: Give your paper a descriptive title.
• Author: Include your name and institutional affiliation.
• Date: Provide the date the paper was submitted.

II. Abstract

• Background: Summarize the background and purpose of your research.
• Methodology: Describe the methods you used to conduct your research.
• Results: Summarize the main findings of your research.
• Conclusion: Provide a brief summary of the implications and conclusions of your research.

III. Introduction

• Background: Provide some background information on the topic.
• Research question: State your research question or hypothesis.
• Purpose: Explain the purpose of your research.

IV. Literature review

• Background: Summarize previous research on the topic.
• Gaps in research: Identify gaps or areas that need further research.

V. Methodology

• Participants: Describe the participants in your study.
• Procedure: Explain the procedure you used to conduct your research.
• Measures: Describe the measures you used to collect data.

VI. Results

• Quantitative results: Summarize the quantitative data you collected.
• Qualitative results: Summarize the qualitative data you collected.

VII. Discussion

• Interpretation: Interpret the results and explain what they mean.
• Implications: Discuss the implications of your research.
• Limitations: Identify any limitations or weaknesses of your research.

VIII. Conclusion

• Review key points: Summarize the main points you made in your paper.

Case study template:

• Background: Provide background information on the case.
• Research question: State the research question or problem you are examining.
• Purpose: Explain the purpose of the case study.

II. Analysis

• Problem: Identify the main problem or issue in the case.
• Factors: Describe the factors that contributed to the problem.
• Alternative solutions: Describe potential solutions to the problem.

III. Solution/recommendations

• Proposed solution: Describe the solution you are proposing.
• Rationale: Explain why this solution is the best one.
• Implementation: Describe how the solution can be implemented.

IV. Conclusion

• Summary: Summarize the main points of your case study.

Lab report template:

• Title: Give your report a descriptive title.
• Date: Provide the date the report was submitted.
• Background: Summarize the background and purpose of the experiment.
• Methodology: Describe the methods you used to conduct the experiment.
• Results: Summarize the main findings of the experiment.
• Conclusion: Provide a brief summary of the implications and conclusions
• Background: Provide some background information on the experiment.
• Hypothesis: State your hypothesis or research question.
• Purpose: Explain the purpose of the experiment.

IV. Materials and methods

• Materials: List the materials and equipment used in the experiment.
• Procedure: Describe the procedure you followed to conduct the experiment.
• Data: Present the data you collected in tables or graphs.
• Analysis: Analyze the data and describe the patterns or trends you observed.

VI. Discussion

• Implications: Discuss the implications of your findings.
• Limitations: Identify any limitations or weaknesses of the experiment.

VII. Conclusion

• Restate hypothesis: Summarize your hypothesis or research question.
• Review key points: Summarize the main points you made in your report.

Presentation template:

• Attention grabber: Grab the audience’s attention with a catchy opening.
• Purpose: Explain the purpose of your presentation.
• Overview: Provide an overview of what you will cover in your presentation.

II. Main points

• Main point 1: Present the first main point of your presentation.
• Supporting details: Provide supporting details or evidence to support your point.
• Main point 2: Present the second main point of your presentation.
• Main point 3: Present the third main point of your presentation.
• Summary: Summarize the main points of your presentation.
• Call to action: End with a final thought or call to action.

Creative writing template:

• Setting: Describe the setting of your story.
• Characters: Introduce the main characters of your story.
• Rising action: Introduce the conflict or problem in your story.
• Climax: Present the most intense moment of the story.
• Falling action: Resolve the conflict or problem in your story.
• Resolution: Describe how the conflict or problem was resolved.
• Final thoughts: End with a final thought or reflection on the story.

How to Write Assignment

Here is a general guide on how to write an assignment:

• Understand the assignment prompt: Before you begin writing, make sure you understand what the assignment requires. Read the prompt carefully and make note of any specific requirements or guidelines.
• Research and gather information: Depending on the type of assignment, you may need to do research to gather information to support your argument or points. Use credible sources such as academic journals, books, and reputable websites.
• Organize your ideas : Once you have gathered all the necessary information, organize your ideas into a clear and logical structure. Consider creating an outline or diagram to help you visualize your ideas.
• Write a draft: Begin writing your assignment using your organized ideas and research. Don’t worry too much about grammar or sentence structure at this point; the goal is to get your thoughts down on paper.
• Revise and edit: After you have written a draft, revise and edit your work. Make sure your ideas are presented in a clear and concise manner, and that your sentences and paragraphs flow smoothly.
• Proofread: Finally, proofread your work for spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. It’s a good idea to have someone else read over your assignment as well to catch any mistakes you may have missed.
• Submit your assignment : Once you are satisfied with your work, submit your assignment according to the instructions provided by your instructor or professor.

Applications of Assignment

Assignments have many applications across different fields and industries. Here are a few examples:

• Education : Assignments are a common tool used in education to help students learn and demonstrate their knowledge. They can be used to assess a student’s understanding of a particular topic, to develop critical thinking skills, and to improve writing and research abilities.
• Business : Assignments can be used in the business world to assess employee skills, to evaluate job performance, and to provide training opportunities. They can also be used to develop business plans, marketing strategies, and financial projections.
• Journalism : Assignments are often used in journalism to produce news articles, features, and investigative reports. Journalists may be assigned to cover a particular event or topic, or to research and write a story on a specific subject.
• Research : Assignments can be used in research to collect and analyze data, to conduct experiments, and to present findings in written or oral form. Researchers may be assigned to conduct research on a specific topic, to write a research paper, or to present their findings at a conference or seminar.
• Government : Assignments can be used in government to develop policy proposals, to conduct research, and to analyze data. Government officials may be assigned to work on a specific project or to conduct research on a particular topic.
• Non-profit organizations: Assignments can be used in non-profit organizations to develop fundraising strategies, to plan events, and to conduct research. Volunteers may be assigned to work on a specific project or to help with a particular task.

Purpose of Assignment

The purpose of an assignment varies depending on the context in which it is given. However, some common purposes of assignments include:

• Assessing learning: Assignments are often used to assess a student’s understanding of a particular topic or concept. This allows educators to determine if a student has mastered the material or if they need additional support.
• Developing skills: Assignments can be used to develop a wide range of skills, such as critical thinking, problem-solving, research, and communication. Assignments that require students to analyze and synthesize information can help to build these skills.
• Encouraging creativity: Assignments can be designed to encourage students to be creative and think outside the box. This can help to foster innovation and original thinking.
• Providing feedback : Assignments provide an opportunity for teachers to provide feedback to students on their progress and performance. Feedback can help students to understand where they need to improve and to develop a growth mindset.
• Meeting learning objectives : Assignments can be designed to help students meet specific learning objectives or outcomes. For example, a writing assignment may be designed to help students improve their writing skills, while a research assignment may be designed to help students develop their research skills.

When to write Assignment

Assignments are typically given by instructors or professors as part of a course or academic program. The timing of when to write an assignment will depend on the specific requirements of the course or program, but in general, assignments should be completed within the timeframe specified by the instructor or program guidelines.

It is important to begin working on assignments as soon as possible to ensure enough time for research, writing, and revisions. Waiting until the last minute can result in rushed work and lower quality output.

It is also important to prioritize assignments based on their due dates and the amount of work required. This will help to manage time effectively and ensure that all assignments are completed on time.

In addition to assignments given by instructors or professors, there may be other situations where writing an assignment is necessary. For example, in the workplace, assignments may be given to complete a specific project or task. In these situations, it is important to establish clear deadlines and expectations to ensure that the assignment is completed on time and to a high standard.

Characteristics of Assignment

Here are some common characteristics of assignments:

• Purpose : Assignments have a specific purpose, such as assessing knowledge or developing skills. They are designed to help students learn and achieve specific learning objectives.
• Requirements: Assignments have specific requirements that must be met, such as a word count, format, or specific content. These requirements are usually provided by the instructor or professor.
• Deadline: Assignments have a specific deadline for completion, which is usually set by the instructor or professor. It is important to meet the deadline to avoid penalties or lower grades.
• Individual or group work: Assignments can be completed individually or as part of a group. Group assignments may require collaboration and communication with other group members.
• Feedback : Assignments provide an opportunity for feedback from the instructor or professor. This feedback can help students to identify areas of improvement and to develop their skills.
• Academic integrity: Assignments require academic integrity, which means that students must submit original work and avoid plagiarism. This includes citing sources properly and following ethical guidelines.
• Learning outcomes : Assignments are designed to help students achieve specific learning outcomes. These outcomes are usually related to the course objectives and may include developing critical thinking skills, writing abilities, or subject-specific knowledge.

Advantages of Assignment

There are several advantages of assignment, including:

• Helps in learning: Assignments help students to reinforce their learning and understanding of a particular topic. By completing assignments, students get to apply the concepts learned in class, which helps them to better understand and retain the information.
• Develops critical thinking skills: Assignments often require students to think critically and analyze information in order to come up with a solution or answer. This helps to develop their critical thinking skills, which are important for success in many areas of life.
• Encourages creativity: Assignments that require students to create something, such as a piece of writing or a project, can encourage creativity and innovation. This can help students to develop new ideas and perspectives, which can be beneficial in many areas of life.
• Builds time-management skills: Assignments often come with deadlines, which can help students to develop time-management skills. Learning how to manage time effectively is an important skill that can help students to succeed in many areas of life.
• Provides feedback: Assignments provide an opportunity for students to receive feedback on their work. This feedback can help students to identify areas where they need to improve and can help them to grow and develop.

Limitations of Assignment

There are also some limitations of assignments that should be considered, including:

• Limited scope: Assignments are often limited in scope, and may not provide a comprehensive understanding of a particular topic. They may only cover a specific aspect of a topic, and may not provide a full picture of the subject matter.
• Lack of engagement: Some assignments may not engage students in the learning process, particularly if they are repetitive or not challenging enough. This can lead to a lack of motivation and interest in the subject matter.
• Time-consuming: Assignments can be time-consuming, particularly if they require a lot of research or writing. This can be a disadvantage for students who have other commitments, such as work or extracurricular activities.
• Unreliable assessment: The assessment of assignments can be subjective and may not always accurately reflect a student’s understanding or abilities. The grading may be influenced by factors such as the instructor’s personal biases or the student’s writing style.
• Lack of feedback : Although assignments can provide feedback, this feedback may not always be detailed or useful. Instructors may not have the time or resources to provide detailed feedback on every assignment, which can limit the value of the feedback that students receive.

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

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Chapter 2: Understanding Assignment Outlines and Instructions

Understanding assignment outlines and instructions, writing for whom writing for what.

The first principle of good communication is knowing your audience .  Often when you write for an audience of one, you might write a text or email. But college papers aren’t written like emails; they’re written like articles for a hypothetical group of readers that you don’t actually know much about. There’s a fundamental mismatch between the real-life audience and the form your writing takes.

Unless there is a particular audience specified in the assignment, you would do well to imagine yourself writing for a group of peers who have some introductory knowledge of the field but are unfamiliar with the specific topic you’re discussing. Imagine them being interested in your topic but also busy; try to write something that is well worth your readers’ time. Keeping an audience like this in mind will help you distinguish common knowledge in the field from that which must be defined and explained in your paper.

Another basic tenet of good communication is clarifying the purpose of the communication and letting that purpose shape your decisions. Your professor wants to see you work through complex ideas and demonstrate your learning through the process of producing the paper. Each assignment—be it an argumentative paper, reaction paper, reflective paper, lab report, discussion question, blog post, essay exam, project proposal, or what have you—is ultimately about your learning. To succeed with writing assignments (and benefit from them) you first have to understand their learning-related purposes. As you write for your audience, you’re demonstrating to your professor how far you’ve gotten in analyzing your topic.

Professors don’t assign writing lightly. Grading student writing is generally the hardest, most intensive work instructors do. You would do well to approach every assignment by putting yourself in the shoes of your instructor and asking yourself, “Why did she give me this assignment? How does it fit into the learning goals of the course? Why is this question/topic/problem so important to my professor that he is willing to spend time reading and commenting on several dozen papers on it?”

Professors certainly vary in the quantity and specificity of the guidelines and suggestions they distribute with each writing assignment. Some professors make a point to give very few parameters about an assignment—perhaps just a topic and a length requirement—and they likely have some good reasons for doing so. Here are some possible reasons:

• They figured it out themselves when they were students .  Many instructors will teach how they were taught in school.  The emphasis on student-centered instruction is relatively recent; your instructors more often had professors who adhered to the classic model of college instruction: they went to lectures and/or labs and wrote papers.  Students were often ‘on their own’ to learn the lingo and conventions of each field, to identify the key concepts and ideas within readings and lectures, and to sleuth out instructors’ expectations for written work. Learning goals, rubrics, quizzes, and preparatory assignments were generally rare.
• They think figuring it out yourself is good for you . Because your professors often  succeeded in a much less supportive environment , they appreciate how learning to thrive in those conditions gave them life-long problem-solving and critical thinking skills. Many think you should be able to figure it out yourself and that it would be good practice for you to do so. Even those who do include a lot of guidance with writing assignments sometimes worry that they’re depriving you of an important personal and intellectual challenge. Figuring out unspoken expectations is a valuable skill in itself.  They may also want to give you the freedom to explore and produce new and interesting ideas and feel that instructions that are too specific may limit you.  There’s a balancing act to creating a good assignment outline, so sometimes you might need to ask for clarification.
• They think you already know the skills/concepts :  Some professors assume that students come with a fully developed set of academic skills and knowledge.  You may need to ask your professor for clarification or help and it’s good to learn what additional resources are out there to assist you (the Library, Writing Guides, etc).

It is understandably frustrating when you feel you don’t know how to direct your efforts to succeed with an assignment.  The transparency that you get from some professors—along with books like this one—will be a big help to you in situations where you have to be scrappier and more pro-active, piecing together the clues you get from your professors, the readings, and other course documents.

The assignment prompt: what does “analyze” mean anyway?

Often, the handout or other written text explaining the assignment—what professors call the assignment prompt or outline—will explain the purpose of the assignment, the required parameters (length, number and type of sources, referencing style, etc.), and the criteria for evaluation.

Sometimes, though—especially when you are new to a field—you will encounter the baffling situation in which you comprehend every single sentence in the prompt but still have absolutely no idea how to approach the assignment. No one is doing anything wrong in a situation like that. It just means that further discussion of the assignment is in order. Here are some tips:

Video source: https://youtu.be/JZ175MLpOmE

• Try to brainstorm or do a free-write . A free-write is when you just write, without stopping, for a set period of time. That doesn’t sound very “free;” it actually sounds kind of coerced. The “free” part is what you write—it can be whatever comes to mind. Professional writers use free-writing to get started on a challenging (or distasteful) writing task or to overcome writers block or a powerful urge to procrastinate. The idea is that if you just make yourself write, you can’t help but produce some kind of useful nugget. Thus, even if the first eight sentences of your free write are all variations on “I don’t understand this” or “I’d really rather be doing something else,” eventually you’ll write something like “I guess the main point of this is …” and—booyah!—you’re off and running. If your instructor doesn’t make time for that in class, a quick free-write on your own will quickly reveal whether you need clarification about the assignment and, often, what questions to ask.

Rubrics as road maps

Not all professors use rubrics : some mark “holistically” (which means that they evaluate the paper as a whole), versus “analytically” (where they break down the marks by criteria).  If the professor took the trouble to prepare and distribute a rubric, you can be sure that they will use it to grade your paper.  A rubric is the clearest possible statement of what the professor is looking for in the paper. If it’s wordy, it may seem like those online “terms and conditions” that we routinely accept without reading. But you really should read it over carefully before you begin and again as your work progresses. A lot of rubrics do have some useful specifics. Even less specific criteria (such as “incorporates course concepts” and “considers counter-arguments”) will tell you how you should be spending your writing time.

Even the best rubrics aren’t completely transparent because they simply can’t be. For example, what is the real difference between “demonstrating a thorough understanding of context, audience, and purpose” and “demonstrating adequate consideration” of the same? It depends on the specific context. So how can you know whether you’ve done that? A big part of what you’re learning, through feedback from your professors, is to judge the quality of your writing for yourself. Your future employers are counting on that. At this point, it is better to think of rubrics as roadmaps, displaying your destination, rather than a GPS system directing every move you make.

Video source: https://youtu.be/mXRzyZAE8Y4

What’s critical about critical thinking?

Critical thinking is one of those terms that has been used so often and in so many different ways that if often seems meaningless. It also makes one wonder, is there such a thing as uncritical thinking? If you aren’t thinking critically, then are you even thinking?

Despite the prevalent ambiguities, critical thinking actually does mean something. The Association of American Colleges and Universities usefully defines it as “a habit of mind characterized by the comprehensive exploration of issues, ideas, artifacts, and events before accepting or formulating an opinion or conclusion.” [1]

The critical thinking rubric produced by the AAC&U describes the relevant activities of critical thinking in more detail. To think critically, one must …

(a) “clearly state and comprehensively describe the issue or problem”,

(b) “independently interpret and evaluate sources”,

(c) “thoroughly analyze assumptions behind and context of your own or others’ ideas”,

(d) “argue a complex position and one that takes counter-arguments into account,” and

(e) “arrive at logical and well informed conclusions”. [2]

While you are probably used to providing some evidence for your claims, you can see that college-level expectations go quite a bit further. When professors assign an analytical paper, they don’t just want you to formulate a plausible-sounding argument. They want you to dig into the evidence, think hard about unspoken assumptions and the influence of context, and then explain what you really think and why.

Thinking critically—thoroughly questioning your immediate intuitive responses—is difficult work, but every organization and business in the world needs people who can do that effectively.  The ability to think critically also entails being able to hear and appreciate multiple perspectives on an issue, even if we don’t agree with them.  While writing time is often solitary, it’s meant to plug you into a vibrant academic community. What your professors want, overall, is for you to join them in asking and pursuing important questions about the natural, social, and creative worlds.

• Terrel Rhodes, ed., Assessing Outcomes and Improving Achievement: Tips and Tools for Using Rubrics (Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2010). ↵
• Ibid ↵

Writing for Academic and Professional Contexts: An Introduction Copyright © 2023 by Sheridan College is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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2 What Does the Professor Want? Understanding the Assignment

Writing for whom writing for what.

The first principle of good communication is knowing your audience . This is where writing papers for class gets kind of weird. As Peter Elbow explains: [1]

When you write for a teacher you are usually swimming against the stream of natural communication. The natural direction of communication is to explain what you understand to someone who doesn’t understand it. But in writing an essay for a teacher your task is usually to explain what you are still engaged in trying to understand to someone who understands it better.

Often when you write for an audience of one, you write a letter or email. But college papers aren’t written like letters; they’re written like articles for a hypothetical group of readers that you don’t actually know much about. There’s a fundamental mismatch between the real-life audience and the form your writing takes. It’s kind of bizarre, really.

It helps to remember the key tenet of the university model: you’re a junior scholar joining the academic community. Academic papers, in which scholars report the results of their research and thinking to one another, are the lifeblood of the scholarly world, carrying useful ideas and information to all parts of the academic corpus. Unless there is a particular audience specified in the assignment, you would do well to imagine yourself writing for a group of peers who have some introductory knowledge of the field but are unfamiliar with the specific topic you’re discussing. Imagine them being interested in your topic but also busy; try to write something that is well worth your readers’ time. Keeping an audience like this in mind will help you distinguish common knowledge in the field from that which must be defined and explained in your paper. Understanding your audience like this also resolve the audience mismatch that Elbow describes. As he notes, “You don’t write to teachers, you write for them.” [2]

Another basic tenet of good communication is clarifying the purpose of the communication and letting that purpose shape your decisions. Your professor wants to see you work through complex ideas and deepen your knowledge through the process of producing the paper. Each assignment—be it an argumentative paper, reaction paper, reflective paper, lab report, discussion question, blog post, essay exam, project proposal, or what have you—is ultimately about your learning. To succeed with writing assignments (and benefit from them) you first have to understand their learning-related purposes. As you write for the hypothetical audience of peer junior scholars, you’re demonstrating to your professor how far you’ve gotten in analyzing your topic.

Don’t be scared whenever you are given an assignment. Professors know what it was like to be in college and write all kinds of papers. They aren’t trying to make your lives difficult, but it is their jobs to make us think and ponder about many things. Take your time and enjoy the paper. Make sure you answer the question being asked rather than rant on about something that is irrelevant to the prompt.

Timothée Pizarro

Professors don’t assign writing lightly. Grading student writing is generally the hardest, most intensive work instructors do. [3]  With every assignment they give you, professors assign themselves many, many hours of demanding and tedious work that has to be completed while they are also preparing for each class meeting, advancing their scholarly and creative work, advising students, and serving on committees. Often, they’re grading your papers on evenings and weekends because the conventional work day is already saturated with other obligations. You would do well to approach every assignment by putting yourself in the shoes of your instructor and asking yourself, “Why did she give me this assignment? How does it fit into the learning goals of the course? Why is this question/topic/problem so important to my professor that he is willing to spend evenings and weekends reading and commenting on several dozen novice papers on it?”

As I briefly discussed in Chapter 1 , most instructors do a lot to make their pedagogical goals and expectations transparent to students: they explain the course learning goals associated with assignments, provide grading rubrics in advance, and describe several strategies for succeeding. Other professors … not so much. Some students perceive more open-ended assignments as evidence of a lazy, uncaring, or even incompetent instructor. Not so fast! Professors certainly vary in the quantity and specificity of the guidelines and suggestions they distribute with each writing assignment. Some professors make a point to give very few parameters about an assignment—perhaps just a topic and a length requirement—and they likely have some good reasons for doing so. Here are some possible reasons:

• They figured it out themselves when they were students . Unsurprisingly, your instructors were generally successful students who relished the culture and traditions of higher education so much that they strove to build an academic career. The current emphasis on student-centered instruction is relatively recent; your instructors much more often had professors who adhered to the classic model of college instruction: they gave lectures together with, perhaps, one or two exams or papers. Students were on their own to learn the lingo and conventions of each field, to identify the key concepts and ideas within readings and lectures, and to sleuth out instructors’ expectations for written work. Learning goals, rubrics, quizzes, and preparatory assignments were generally rare.
• They think figuring it out yourself is good for you . Because your professors by and large succeeded in a much less supportive environment , they appreciate how learning to thrive in those conditions gave them life-long problem-solving skills. Many think you should be able to figure it out yourself and that it would be good practice for you to do so. Even those who do include a lot of guidance with writing assignments sometimes worry that they’re depriving you of an important personal and intellectual challenge. Figuring out unspoken expectations is a valuable skill in itself.
• They’re egg-heads . As I explained in Chapter 1 , many of your instructors have been so immersed in their fields that they may struggle to remember what it was like to encounter a wholly new discipline for the first time. The assumptions, practices, and culture of their disciplines are like the air they breathe; so much so that it is hard to describe to novices. They may assume that a verb like “analyze” is self-evident, forgetting that it can mean very different things in different fields. As a student, you voluntarily came to study with the scholars, artists, and writers at your institution. Rightly or wrongly, the burden is ultimately on you to meet them where they are.
• Professors value academic freedom ; that is, they firmly believe that their high-level expertise in their fields grants them the privilege of deciding what is important to focus on and how to approach it. As I also explain in Chapter 1 , college professors differ in this way from high school teachers who are usually obligated to address a defined curriculum. Professors are often extremely wary of anything that seems to threaten academic freedom . Some see specified learning goals and standardized rubrics as the first step in a process that would strip higher education of its independence, scholarly innovation, and sense of discovery. While a standardized set of expectations and practices might make it easier to earn a degree, it’s also good to consider the benefits of the more flexible and diversified model.

It is understandably frustrating when you feel you don’t know how to direct your efforts to succeed with an assignment. However, except for rare egregious situations, you would do well to assume the best of your instructor and to appreciate the diversity of learning opportunities you have access to in college. Like one first-year student told Keith Hjortshoj, [4] “I think that every course, every assignment, is a different little puzzle I have to solve. What do I need to do here? When do I need to do it, and how long will it take? What does this teacher expect of me?” The transparency that you get from some professors—along with guides like this one—will be a big help to you in situations where you have to be scrappier and more pro-active, piecing together the clues you get from your professors, the readings, and other course documents.

The prompt: what does “analyze” mean anyway?

Often, the handout or other written text explaining the assignment—what professors call the assignment prompt —will explain the purpose of the assignment, the required parameters (length, number and type of sources, referencing style, etc.), and the criteria for evaluation. Sometimes, though—especially when you are new to a field—you will encounter the baffling situation in which you comprehend every single sentence in the prompt but still have absolutely no idea how to approach the assignment. No one is doing anything wrong in a situation like that. It just means that further discussion of the assignment is in order. Here are some tips:

• Focus on the verbs . Look for verbs like “compare,” “explain,” “justify,” “reflect” or the all-purpose “analyze.” You’re not just producing a paper as an artifact; you’re conveying, in written communication, some intellectual work you have done. So the question is, what kind of thinking are you supposed to do to deepen your learning?
• Put the assignment in context . Many professors think in terms of assignment sequences . For example, a social science professor may ask you to write about a controversial issue three times: first, arguing for one side of the debate; second, arguing for another; and finally, from a more comprehensive and nuanced perspective, incorporating text produced in the first two assignments. A sequence like that is designed to help you think through a complex issue. Another common one is a scaffolded research paper sequence: you first propose a topic, then prepare an annotated bibliography, then a first draft, then a final draft, and, perhaps, a reflective paper. The preparatory assignments help ensure that you’re on the right track, beginning the research process long before the final due date, and taking the time to consider recasting your thesis, finding additional sources, or reorganizing your discussion. [5] If the assignment isn’t part of a sequence, think about where it falls in the semester, and how it relates to readings and other assignments. Are there headings on the syllabus that indicate larger units of material? For example, if you see that a paper comes at the end of a three-week unit on the role of the Internet in organizational behavior, then your professor likely wants you to synthesize that material in your own way. You should also check your notes and online course resources for any other guidelines about the workflow. Maybe you got a rubric a couple weeks ago and forgot about it. Maybe your instructor posted a link about “how to make an annotated bibliography” but then forgot to mention it in class.
• Try a free-write . When I hand out an assignment, I often ask students to do a five-minute or ten-minute free-write. A free-write is when you just write, without stopping, for a set period of time. That doesn’t sound very “free;” it actually sounds kind of coerced. The “free” part is what you write—it can be whatever comes to mind. Professional writers use free-writing to get started on a challenging (or distasteful) writing task or to overcome writers block or a powerful urge to procrastinate. The idea is that if you just make yourself write, you can’t help but produce some kind of useful nugget. Thus, even if the first eight sentences of your free write are all variations on “I don’t understand this” or “I’d really rather be doing something else,” eventually you’ll write something like “I guess the main point of this is …” and—booyah!—you’re off and running. As an instructor, I’ve found that asking students to do a brief free-write right after I hand out an assignment generates useful clarification questions. If your instructor doesn’t make time for that in class, a quick free-write on your own will quickly reveal whether you need clarification about the assignment and, often, what questions to ask.
• Ask for clarification the right way . Even the most skillfully crafted assignments may need some verbal clarification, especially because students’ familiarity with the field can vary enormously. Asking for clarification is a good thing. Be aware, though, that instructors get frustrated when they perceive that students want to skip doing their own thinking and instead receive an exact recipe for an A paper. Go ahead and ask for clarification, but try to convey that you want to learn and you’re ready to work.In general, avoid starting a question with “Do we have to …” because I can guarantee that your instructor is thinking, “You don’t have to do crap. You’re an adult. You chose college. You chose this class. You’re free to exercise your right to fail.” Similarly, avoid asking the professor about what he or she “wants.” You’re not performing some service for the professor when you write a paper. What they “want” is for you to really think about the material.

Rubrics as road maps

If a professor provides a grading rubric with an assignment prompt, thank your lucky stars (and your professor). If the professor took the trouble to prepare and distribute it, you can be sure that he or she will use it to grade your paper. He or she may not go over it in class, but it’s the clearest possible statement of what the professor is looking for in the paper. If it’s wordy, it may seem like those online “terms and conditions” that we routinely accept without reading. But you really should read it over carefully before you begin and again as your work progresses. A lot of rubrics do have some useful specifics. Mine, for example, often contain phrases like “makes at least six error-free connections to concepts or ideas from the course,” or “gives thorough consideration to at least one plausible counter-argument.” Even less specific criteria (such as “incorporates course concepts” and “considers counter-arguments”) will tell you how you should be spending your writing time.

Even the best rubrics aren’t completely transparent. They simply can’t be. Take, for example, the AAC&U rubric discussed in Chapter 1 . It has been drafted and repeatedly revised by a multidisciplinary expert panel and tested multiple times on sample student work to ensure reliability. But it is still seems kind of vague. What is the real difference between “demonstrating a thorough understanding of context, audience, and purpose” and “demonstrating adequate consideration” of the same? It depends on the specific context. So how can you know whether you’ve done that? A big part of what you’re learning, through feedback from your professors, is to judge the quality of your writing for yourself. Your future bosses are counting on that. At this point, it is better to think of rubrics as roadmaps, displaying your destination, rather than a GPS system directing every move you make.

Behind any rubric is the essential goal of higher education: helping you take charge of your own learning, which means writing like an independently motivated scholar. Are you tasked with proposing a research paper topic? Don’t just tell the professor what you want to do, convince him or her of the salience of your topic, as if you were a scholar seeking grant money. Is it a reflection paper? Then outline both the insights you’ve gained and the intriguing questions that remain, as a scholar would. Are you writing a thesis-driven analytical paper? Then apply the concepts you’ve learned to a new problem or situation. Write as if your scholarly peers around the country are eagerly awaiting your unique insights. Descriptors like “thoroughness” or “mastery” or “detailed attention” convey the vision of student writers making the time and rigorous mental effort to offer something new to the ongoing, multi-stranded academic conversation. What your professor wants, in short, is critical thinking.

What’s critical about critical thinking?

Critical thinking is one of those terms that has been used so often and in so many different ways that if often seems meaningless. It also makes one wonder, is there such a thing as uncritical thinking? If you aren’t thinking critically, then are you even thinking?

Despite the prevalent ambiguities, critical thinking actually does mean something. The Association of American Colleges and Universities usefully defines it as “a habit of mind characterized by the comprehensive exploration of issues, ideas, artifacts, and events before accepting or formulating an opinion or conclusion.” [6]

That definition aligns with the best description of critical thinking I ever heard; it came from my junior high art teacher, Joe Bolger. [7] He once asked us, “What color is the ceiling?” In that withering tween tone, we reluctantly replied, “Whiiiite.” He then asked, “What color is it really?” We deigned to aim our pre-adolescent eyes upwards, and eventually began to offer more accurate answers: “Ivory?” “Yellow-ish tan.” “It’s grey in that corner.” After finally getting a few thoughtful responses, Mr. Bolger said something like, “Making good art is about drawing what you see, not what you think you’re supposed to see.” The AAC&U definition, above, essentially amounts to the same thing: taking a good look and deciding what you really think rather than relying on the first idea or assumption that comes to mind.

The critical thinking rubric produced by the AAC&U describes the relevant activities of critical thinking in more detail. To think critically, one must …

(a) “clearly state and comprehensively describe the issue or problem”,

(b) “independently interpret and evaluate sources”,

(c) “thoroughly analyze assumptions behind and context of your own or others’ ideas”,

(d) “argue a complex position and one that takes counter-arguments into account,” and

(e) “arrive at logical and well informed conclusions”. [8]

While you are probably used to providing some evidence for your claims, you can see that college-level expectations go quite a bit further. When professors assign an analytical paper, they don’t just want you to formulate a plausible-sounding argument. They want you to dig into the evidence, think hard about unspoken assumptions and the influence of context, and then explain what you really think and why.

Interestingly, the AAC&U defines critical thinking as a “habit of mind” rather than a discrete achievement. And there are at least two reasons to see critical thinking as a craft or art to pursue rather than a task to check off. First, the more you think critically, the better you get at it . As you get more and more practice in closely examining claims, their underlying logic, and alternative perspectives on the issue, it’ll begin to feel automatic. You’ll no longer make or accept claims that begin with “Everyone knows that …” or end with “That’s just human nature.” Second, just as artists and craftspersons hone their skills over a lifetime, learners continually expand their critical thinking capacities, both through the feedback they get from others and their own reflections . Artists of all kinds find satisfaction in continually seeking greater challenges. Continual reflection and improvement is part of the craft.

As soon as I see the phrase “critical thinking,” the first thing I think is more work . It always sounds as if you’re going to have to think harder and longer. But I think the AAC&U’s definition is on point, critical thinking is a habit. Seeing that phrase shouldn’t be a scary thing because by this point in many people’s college career this is an automatic response. I never expect an answer to a question to be in the text; by now I realize that my professors want to know what I have to say about something or what I have learned. In a paper or essay, the three-step thesis process explained in Chapter 3 is a tool that will help you get this information across. While you’re doing the hard work (the thinking part), this formula offers you a way to clearly state your position on a subject. It’s as simple as: make a general statement, make an arguable statement, and finally, say why it is important. This is my rule of thumb, and I would not want to start a thesis-driven paper any other way!

Critical thinking is hard work. Even those who actively choose to do it experience it as tedious, difficult, and sometimes surprisingly emotional. Nobel-prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains that our brains aren’t designed to think; rather, they’re designed to save us from having to think. [9] Our brains are great at developing routines and repertoires that enable us to accomplish fairly complex tasks like driving cars, choosing groceries, and having a conversation without thinking consciously and thoroughly about every move we make. Kahneman calls this “fast thinking.” “Slow thinking,” which is deliberate and painstaking, is something our brains seek to avoid. That built-in tendency can lead us astray. Kahneman and his colleagues often used problems like this one in experiments to gauge how people used fast and slow thinking in different contexts: [10]

A bat and ball cost $1.10.

The bat costs one dollar more than the ball.

How much does the ball cost?

Most people automatically say the ball costs $0.10. However, if the bat costs $1 more, than the bat would cost $1.10 leading to the incorrect total of $1.20. The ball costs $0.05. Kahneman notes, “Many thousands of university students have answered the bat-and-ball puzzle, and the results are shocking. More than 50% of students at Harvard, MIT, and Princeton gave the intuitive—incorrect—answer.” These and other results confirm that “many people are overconfident, prone to place too much faith in their intuitions.” [11] Thinking critically—thoroughly questioning your immediate intuitive responses—is difficult work, but every organization and business in the world needs people who can do that effectively. Some students assume that an unpleasant critical thinking experience means that they’re either doing something wrong or that it’s an inherently uninteresting (and oppressive) activity. While we all relish those times when we’re pleasantly absorbed in a complex activity (what psychologist Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi calls “flow” [12] ), the more tedious experiences can also bring satisfaction, sort of like a good work-out.

Critical thinking can also be emotionally challenging, researchers have found. Facing a new realm of uncertainty and contradiction without relying on familiar assumptions is inherently anxiety-provoking because when you’re doing it, you are, by definition, incompetent. Recent research has highlighted that both children and adults need to be able to regulate their own emotions in order to cope with the challenges of building competence in a new area. [13] The kind of critical thinking your professors are looking for—that is, pursuing a comprehensive, multi-faceted exploration in order to arrive at an arguable, nuanced argument—is inevitably a struggle and it may be an emotional one. Your best bet is to find ways to make those processes as efficient, pleasant, and effective as you can .

The thing no one tells you when you get to college is that critical thinking papers are professors’ favorites. College is all about learning how to think individual thoughts so you’ll have to do quite a few of them. Have no fear though; they do get easier with time. The first step? Think about what you want to focus on in the paper (aka your thesis) and go with it.

Kaethe Leonard

As Chapter 1 explains, the demands students face are not at all unique to their academic pursuits. Professional working roles demand critical thinking, as 81% of major employers reported in an AAC&U-commissioned survey , [14] and it’s pretty easy to imagine how critical thinking helps one make much better decisions in all aspects of life. Embrace it. And just as athletes, artists, and writers sustain their energy and inspiration for hard work by interacting with others who share these passions, look to others in the scholarly community—your professors and fellow students—to keep yourself engaged in these ongoing intellectual challenges. While writing time is often solitary, it’s meant to plug you into a vibrant academic community. What your professors want, overall, is for you to join them in asking and pursuing important questions about the natural, social, and creative worlds.

Other resources

• This website from the Capital Community College Foundation has some good advice about overcoming writer’s block. And student contributor Aly Button recommends this funny clip from SpongeBob Squarepants .
• The Foundation for Critical Thinking maintains a website with many useful articles and tools.
• The Online Writing Laboratory (OWL) at Purdue University is a wonderful set of resources for every aspect of college writing. Especially germane to this chapter is this summary of the most common types of writing assignments.
• This website , BrainBashers.com offers logic puzzles and other brain-teasers for your entertainment.
• Free-write on an assignment prompt. If you have one, do that one. If not, here’s one to practice with:A. “Please write a five-page paper analyzing the controversy surrounding genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the food supply.”B. What clarification questions would you like to ask your professor? What additional background knowledge do you need to deeply understand the topic? What are some starter ideas that could lead to a good thesis and intriguing argument?
• Find a couple of sample student papers from online paper mills such as this one (Google “free college papers”) and journals featuring excellent undergraduate writing (such as and prize-winning undergraduate papers (such as these from  the Norton Writers Prize ), and use the AAC&U rubric on critical thinking to evaluate them. Which descriptor in each row most closely fits the paper?
• Peter Elbow, Writing With Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process (Oxford University Press, 1981), 219. ↵
• Ibid., 220. ↵
• A lot of professors joke, “I teach for free. They pay me to grade.” ↵
• Keith Hjortshoj, The Transition to College Writing , 2nd Edition (New York: Norton, 2009), 4. ↵
• Most professors are perpetually frustrated with the “one-and-done” attitude that most students bring to their work, and some sequences are specifically designed to force you to really rethink your conclusions. ↵
• Terrel Rhodes, ed., Assessing Outcomes and Improving Achievement: Tips and Tools for Using Rubrics (Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2010). ↵
• Thank you, Mr. Bolger! ↵
• Ibid. ↵
• Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011). ↵
• Ibid., 44. ↵
• Ibid., 45. ↵
• Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (New York: Harper & Row, 1990). ↵
• Rosen, Jeffrey A., Elizabeth J. Glennie, Ben W. Dalton, Jean M. Lennon, and Robert N. Bozick. Noncognitive Skills in the Classroom: New Perspectives on Educational Research . RTI International. PO Box 12194, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-2194, 2010. ↵
• Hart Research Associates, Raising the Bar , 9. ↵

Writing in College Copyright © 2016 by Amy Guptill is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Assignments usually ask you to demonstrate that you have immersed yourself in the course material and that you've done some thinking on your own; questions not treated at length in class often serve as assignments. Fortunately, if you've put the time into getting to know the material, then you've almost certainly begun thinking independently. In responding to assignments, keep in mind the following advice.

• Beware of straying.  Especially in the draft stage, "discussion" and "analysis" can lead you from one intrinsically interesting problem to another, then another, and then ... You may wind up following a garden of forking paths and lose your way. To prevent this, stop periodically while drafting your essay and reread the assignment. Its purposes are likely to become clearer.
• Consider the assignment in relation to previous and upcoming assignments.  Ask yourself what is new about the task you're setting out to do. Instructors often design assignments to build in complexity. Knowing where an assignment falls in this progression can help you concentrate on the specific, fresh challenges at hand.

Understanding some key words commonly used in assignments also may simplify your task. Toward this end, let's take a look at two seemingly impenetrable instructions: "discuss" and "analyze."

1. Discuss the role of gender in bringing about the French Revolution.

• "Discuss" is easy to misunderstand because the word calls to mind the oral/spoken dimension of communication. "Discuss" suggests conversation, which often is casual and undirected. In the context of an assignment, however, discussion entails fulfilling a defined and organized task: to construct an argument that considers and responds to an ample range of materials. To "discuss," in assignment language, means to make a broad argument about a set of arguments you have studied. In the case above, you can do this by
• pointing to consistencies and inconsistencies in the evidence of gendered causes of the Revolution;
• raising the implications of these consistencies and/or inconsistencies (perhaps they suggest a limited role for gender as catalyst);
• evaluating different claims about the role of gender; and
• asking what is gained and what is lost by focusing on gendered symbols, icons and events.

A weak discussion essay in response to the question above might simply list a few aspects of the Revolution—the image of Liberty, the executions of the King and Marie Antoinette, the cry "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite!" —and make separate comments about how each, being "gendered," is therefore a powerful political force. Such an essay would offer no original thesis, but instead restate the question asked in the assignment (i.e., "The role of gender was very important in the French Revolution" or "Gender did not play a large role in the French Revolution").

In a strong discussion essay, the thesis would go beyond a basic restatement of the assignment question. You might test the similarities and differences of the revolutionary aspects being discussed. You might draw on fresh or unexpected evidence, perhaps using as a source an intriguing reading that was only briefly touched upon in lecture.

2. Analyze two of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, including one not discussed in class, as literary works and in terms of sources/analogues.

The words "analyze" and "analysis" may seem to denote highly advanced, even arcane skills, possessed in virtual monopoly by mathematicians and scientists. Happily, the terms refer to mental activity we all perform regularly; the terms just need decoding. "Analyze" means two things in this specific assignment prompt.

• First, you need to divide the two tales into parts, elements, or features. You might start with a basic approach: looking at the beginning, middle, and end. These structural features of literary works—and of historical events and many other subjects of academic study—may seem simple or even simplistic, but they can yield surprising insights when examined closely.
• Alternatively, you might begin at a more complex level of analysis. For example, you might search for and distinguish between kinds of humor in the two tales and their sources in Boccaccio or the Roman de la Rose: banter, wordplay, bawdy jokes, pranks, burlesque, satire, etc.

Second, you need to consider the two tales critically to arrive at some reward for having observed how the tales are made and where they came from (their sources/analogues). In the course of your essay, you might work your way to investigating Chaucer's broader attitude toward his sources, which alternates between playful variation and strict adherence. Your complex analysis of kinds of humor might reveal differing conceptions of masculine and feminine between Chaucer and his literary sources, or some other important cultural distinction.

Analysis involves both a set of observations about the composition or workings of your subject and a critical approach that keeps you from noticing just anything—from excessive listing or summarizing—and instead leads you to construct an interpretation, using textual evidence to support your ideas.

Some Final Advice

If, having read the assignment carefully, you're still confused by it, don't hesitate to ask for clarification from your instructor. He or she may be able to elucidate the question or to furnish some sample responses to the assignment. Knowing the expectations of an assignment can help when you're feeling puzzled. Conversely, knowing the boundaries can head off trouble if you're contemplating an unorthodox approach. In either case, before you go to your instructor, it's a good idea to list, underline or circle the specific places in the assignment where the language makes you feel uncertain.

William C. Rice, for the Writing Center at Harvard University

Writing Guide: Types of Assignments & Best Practices

• Home & Appointments
• Types of Assignments & Best Practices
• Tables & Figures
• Thesis & Project Guide

The most common types of writing assignments you will encounter at MLTS

• How to approach a writing assignment
• Expository writing & research papers
• Compare & Contrast paper
• Book & Literature Reviews
• Reflective writing
• Online discussion posts
• Thesis/Project

As a graduate student, you will be assigned a variety of types of writing projects.  A good rule of thumb in approaching any writing project is to ask yourself: for whom am I writing and why?  Or, who is my audience and what do they expect from my writing?  Your assignments will almost invariably require you to make one or more arguments.   A good argument is well-written, logical, and supported by evidence.

Expository writing involves understanding, explaining, analyzing, and/or evaluating a topic.  It includes your standard graduate school essay, book review, or research paper where your instructor requires you to analyze and/or study a topic.  In general, your audience for such assignments will be your course instructor. You can think of such writing assignments as your instructor asking you to make an argument.  Your instructor wants to gauge your creative thinking skills and how well you understand the course material by seeing how well you can make an argument related to that material.  Remember: a good argument is well-written, logical, and supported by evidence.

An expository paper is therefore not about you (at least not directly); it is about the facts you have learned and researched and the argument you have built from those facts. Therefore, unless you are quoting someone, you should avoid using first person pronouns (the words I, me, my, we, us, our ) in your writing.  Let your facts and arguments speak for themselves instead of beginning statements with "I think" or "I believe."

A compare & contrast assignment is a type of expository & research paper assignment.  It is important to organize your writing around the themes you are comparing & contrasting.  If, for example, you are assigned to compare & contrast, say, Augustine's Confessions and The Autobiography of Malcolm X , a common mistake students make is to write the first part of their essay strictly about Augustine's Confessions , and the second part of the essay strictly about The Autobiography of Malcolm X .  In a good compare & contrast essay, you instead explore an issue in every paragraph or two, and show how, in this case, both Augustine & Malcolm X share common ground or differ on that issue.  Then, move onto another issue and show how both Augustne and Malcolm X covered it.

Unless your instructor directs you otherwise, you should not use first person pronouns ( I, me, my ) in such a paper.

A book review assignment is meant to be an analysis of a book, not a chapter-by-chapter summary of a book.  Instead of organizing your paper sequentially (the first paragraph is about chapter 1, the second paragraph is about chapter 2, etc.), organize your paragraphs around the themes of the book that are thread throughout the book.  Topics to consider in a book review include (but are not limited to):

• What are the author's arguments, and how successful is she in making those arguments?
• What sort of sources does the author utilize?
• What methodology/methodologies does the author utilize?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the book?

A literature review is similar to a book review assignment in that it is meant to be an analysis of a theme or themes across several books/articles.   What have various authors written about your topic?   That said, as you will typically have less space to talk about each work (perhaps a paragraph or less for each work as opposed to multiple pages), you might end up moving from one author's findings to another.  For a literature review in a thesis, think of a literature review as a mini-essay within your broader thesis with its own mini-introduction, thesis statement, and conclusion.

Unless your instructor directs you otherwise, book reviews and literature reviews should be written like expository & research papers.  In particular, you should not use first person pronouns ( I, me, my ).  So, instead of writing: "I think this book is a good analysis of ___," write: "This book is a good analysis of ___."

Reflective essays are especially common in theology courses.  Reflective writing requires that you explicitly write about yourself and your own views.  To put it another way, you typically have two audiences to write for in such an assignment: your instructor and yourself.   As such, and unlike a standard expository paper, such essays require you to write about yourself using first person pronouns ( I, me, my) and use statements like “I think” and “I believe.”  Otherwise, a reflective essay shares a lot with expository writing.  You are still making arguments, and you still need evidence from cited sources!  Unless your instructor tells you otherwise, you should still include a good title, introduction paragraph, thesis statement, conclusion, and bibliography.

For online courses, you will likely have to take part in classroom or group discussions online, in which you will be encouraged or even required to respond to your classmates.  Such writing assignments often include a reflective element. Discussion posts are almost always shorter than essays and as such may not need long introductions or conclusions.  That said, a discussion post is not like a Facebook or social media post!  Good discussion posts are long and well-written enough to convey one or more thoughtful, insightful observations; you cannot just "like" someone else's post or only write "Good job!"  If you decide to challenge or critique a classmate’s post—and you are certainly encouraged to do so!—you should do so in a respectful and constructive manner.   As your main audience for online discussions are your own classmates and, to a lesser extent, your instructor, it is often okay to use relatively more informal language and to refer to yourself using first person pronouns ( I, me, my ).  Finally, as with reflective essays, discussion posts still benefit from evidence.  Even if a discussion post is relatively less formal than an essay, if you quote, paraphrase, or draw ideas from outside sources, you still must cite them!  If the online medium does not allow for footnotes, use parenthetical references for citations (see chapter 19 of Turabian).

Those of you taking preaching courses or earning a DMin degree will have to write and submit your sermons. On one hand, your main audience for such a writing assignment is the congregation to whom you may preach.  The language, tone, message, level of detail, etc. of a good sermon will depend on the precise context of your congregation and the message you want to impart.  Therefore, unlike an expository essay or a reflective essay, you have a lot more freedom in how you chose to organize your sermon, as well as how formal or not you want the language to be.

On the other hand, in submitting such assignments, you also have a secondary audience: your instructor.  As such, you may still need to include citations, even if you would not read them out loud in your sermon.  In submitting a sermon as an assignment, you may also need to include some sort of write up or commentary, which your instructor may require to be expository and/or reflective in nature.

Those of you earning an MAR or DMin will finish your coursework by proposing, researching, writing, and defending a thesis or project.   A thesis/project should be an original contribution to your field of study.  To put it another way, the audience for your thesis/project is not just your advisor, but the broader academic and/or ministerial community.   A good thesis/project can go on to become the first draft of a published academic journal article or a chapter or two of a book.  Your thesis/project should be largely expository, but it may also include reflective sections.

It is never too early to start thinking about what you want to do for your thesis/project! You can try to make your thesis/project writing process easier by writing your course papers on topics within or adjacent to what you think you want to do for your thesis/project; that said, if you do so, you will need to cite these earlier works in your final thesis.   See our citation guide for help with that.

For more information on writing a thesis or project, from choosing a topic to submitting it, check out our Thesis & Project Guide .

Tips for Composing Good Academic Prose

• Proofread, proofread, proofread!
• Find evidence to support your thesis statement from good quality sources
• Use quotations as evidence, not filler
• Be careful not to turn long sentences into run-on sentences
• Relatively longer paragraphs are generally better than short ones
• Make sure your paper flows well from one idea to the next
• When possible, avoid using the passive voice
• Be precise and crystal-clear in your statements and arguments
• Use the present tense when paraphrasing an author or setting up a quotation
• Use repetition of words carefully

First and most importantly: Proofread your paper over before you submit it to make sure that it reads well and is without errors!  Read your paper over as you are writing it.  Check over your work with spell check.  Before you submit it, read it over one last time to catch anything you missed.  If possible, consider reading the work out loud: you will be more likely to spot problems in your writing than if you read it in your head.  If you are able to do so, ask a friend or schedule an appointment with the Writing Center for a review.  Another pair of eyes can often spot a mistake or problem that the writer has overlooked.

Find evidence to support your thesis from good quality sources.   Your research and writing should be based on the study of reputable primary and secondary sources.  Typically, this means books published by academic presses and academic journal articles.  Wikipedia, YouTube, random websites, and dictionary entries are generally not considered to be good sources for academic writing, although there are instances when it is acceptable to use and cite them, like if you were researching how topics in Black theology are represented or misrepresented on Wikipedia.  If you need help in finding good resources for your paper, consult a librarian.

Quotations are meant to be evidence to support your argument; they are not filler to meet a length requirement.   While you must quote and paraphrase sources, you should not quote or paraphrase more than you need.  When possible, consider paraphrasing over quoting.  Keep in mind that your writing assignments are supposed to showcase your thinking and writing, not the thinking and writing of whoever you are citing.

Be careful not to turn long sentences into run-on sentences.   Long sentences are not always bad: when well-written, a long sentence can read better and help convey complex ideas better than a series of short sentences.  A run-on sentence, on the other hand, occurs when multiple sentences are inappropriately lumped into a single sentence.  Therefore, when reading your paper over, keep an eye out for any sentence that you can break into multiple sentences.

Relatively longer paragraphs are generally better than short ones.   If your paragraph is three sentences or less, consider if you can write more about that paragraph's topic or incorporate it into another paragraph.  If a paragraph represents one idea, then a longer paragraph typically shows that you have better considered and flushed out that idea.  That said, if your paragraph is longer than a page, you could probably shorten it or break it into two paragraphs.

Make sure your paper flows well from one idea to the next.   Does your third paragraph make sense following your second paragraph?  Do you drop ideas and only pick them up much later?  Cut and paste sentences and paragraphs around as necessary.

When possible, avoid using the passive voice.   This can be tricky!  The passive voice is when you use the verb “to be” next to and in conjunction with another verb to make the object of the sentence into the subject.  For example, compare the active sentence: “Kate Turabian wrote the book” to its passive equivalent: “The book was written by Kate Turabian.”  Grammatically speaking, in the latter, passive sentence, "The book" is the subject, even though in a real world active sense, it is the object.

Writers consider passive sentences not as good because, like in the above example, they can be wordier than necessary and take the focus off the real subject. There are exceptions in which it is good to use the passive voice. For example, if you were writing an article about Kate Turabian, it would be better to write: “Kate Turabian was born in 1893” instead of “Kate Turabian’s mother gave birth to her in 1893.”  The former sentence keeps Kate Turabian, the focus of the paper, as the subject, while the latter sounds a little weird (maybe English speakers are too squeamish, but we typically do not recount someone's birth in that way).

At its worst, the passive voice can obscure the subject and make facts unclear. Consider the sentence: "Jackie Robinson's signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1946 was considered a crucial moment in the Civil Rights movement." With the passive voice, the reader does not know who exactly considered that so?  Did all Americans in 1946 think this?  Did some specific people come to recognize it later?  Compare that sentence to: "Martin Luther King, Jr. considered Jackie Robinson's signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1946 a crucial moment in the Civil Rights movement."

Be precise and crystal-clear in your statements and arguments.   Similar to how the passive voice can make facts unclear, overly general language can make for weak arguments.  Consider the argument: "Many people now support same-sex marriage."  Many people?  Which people?  "Many" and "people" are very general terms and do not tell us much in this statement; the more specific you can be, the better your argument:

• Despite official church statements, many American Catholics now support same-sex marriage.
• [Specific number]% of Chicagoans now support same-sex marriage.
• Many South African theologians, including [so-and-so] and [so-and so], now support same-sex marriage.

In general, use the present tense when paraphrasing an author or setting up a quotation.  While you should use the past tense when writing about events in the past, you should in general use the present tense when discussing a scholar's writing.  Scholarship is a ongoing discussion.  When you read and discuss an author's work, that author is making an argument right now in the present, even if she is dead.  So, do not write:

   Carl Jung wrote: "The psyche...    Carl Jung said, "The psyche...    Carl Jung argued that...

but instead:

   Carl Jung writes: "The psyche...    Carl Jung says, "The psyche...    Carl Jung argues that...

Use repetition of words carefully.   When done well, repeating words can sound good and emphasize ideas.  When done poorly, repetition sounds monotonous. Avoid, for example, starting too many sentences or paragraphs with the same word, or overutilizing the same verb.  If you need help in bringing variety to your word choices, purchase a thesaurus or check out thesaurus.com .

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4 Key Points for Effective Assignment Writing

Methodology

By Christina Desouza

Writing an effective assignment is more of an art than a science. It demands critical thinking, thorough research, organized planning, and polished execution. As a professional academic writer with over four years of experience, I've honed these skills and discovered proven strategies for creating standout assignments.

In this article, I will delve into the four key steps of assignment writing, offering detailed advice and actionable tips to help students master this craft.

1.    Start With Research

In-depth research is the cornerstone of any high-quality assignment. It allows you to gain a profound understanding of your topic and equip yourself with relevant data, compelling arguments, and unique insights.

Here's how to do it right:

●       Diversify Your Sources

Don't limit yourself to the first page of Google results. Make use of academic databases like JSTOR , Google Scholar , PubMed , or your school's online library. These resources house a plethora of scholarly articles, research papers, and academic books that can provide you with valuable information.

●       Verify Information

Remember, not all information is created equal. Cross-check facts and data from multiple reliable sources to ensure accuracy. Look for consensus among experts on contentious issues.

●       Stay Organized

Keep track of your resources as you go. Tools like Zotero or Mendeley can help you organize your references and generate citations in various formats. This will save you from scrambling to find sources when you're wrapping up your assignment.

1.    Prepare Assignment Structure

Creating a well-planned structure for your assignment is akin to drawing a roadmap. It helps you stay on track and ensures that your ideas flow logically. Here's what to consider:

●       Develop an Outline

The basic structure of an assignment includes an introduction, body, and conclusion. The introduction should present the topic and establish the purpose of your assignment. The body should delve into the topic in detail, backed by your research. The conclusion should summarize your findings or arguments without introducing new ideas.

●       Use Subheadings

Subheadings make your assignment easier to read and follow. They allow you to break down complex ideas into manageable sections. As a rule of thumb, each paragraph should cover one idea or argument.

●       Allocate Word Count

Assignments often come with word limits. Allocate word count for each section of your assignment based on its importance to avoid overwriting or underwriting any part.

1.    Start Assignment Writing

Writing your assignment is where your research and planning come to fruition. You now have a robust foundation to build upon, and it's time to craft a compelling narrative.

Here's how to accomplish this:

●       Write a Gripping Introduction

Your introduction is the gateway to your assignment. Make it captivating. Start with a hook—a surprising fact, an interesting quote, or a thought-provoking question—to grab your readers' attention. Provide an overview of what your assignment is about and the purpose it serves. A well-crafted introduction sets the tone for the rest of the assignment and motivates your readers to delve deeper into your work.

●       Develop a Comprehensive Body

The body of your assignment is where you delve into the details. Develop your arguments, present your data, and discuss your findings. Use clear and concise language. Avoid jargon unless necessary. Each paragraph should cover one idea or argument to maintain readability.

●       Craft a Convincing Conclusion

Your conclusion is your final chance to leave an impression on your reader. Summarize your key findings or arguments without introducing new ideas. Reinforce the purpose of your assignment and provide a clear answer to the question or problem you addressed in the introduction. A strong conclusion leaves your readers with a sense of closure and a full understanding of your topic.

●       Write Clearly

Use straightforward sentences and avoid jargon. Your goal is to communicate, not to confuse. Tools like Hemingway Editor can help ensure your writing is clear and concise.

●       Use Paraphrasingtool.ai

Paraphrasingtool.ai is an AI-powered tool that can enhance your assignment writing. It reformulates your sentences while preserving their meaning. It not only helps you avoid plagiarism but also enhances the readability of your work.

●       Cite Your Sources

Citations are a critical part of assignment writing. They acknowledge the work of others you've built upon and demonstrate the depth of your research. Always include in-text citations and a bibliography at the end. This not only maintains academic integrity but also gives your readers resources to delve deeper into the topic if they wish.

1.    Review and Proofread The Assignment

Reviewing and proofreading are the final but critical steps in assignment writing. They ensure your assignment is free from errors and that your ideas are coherently presented. Here's how to do it effectively:

●       Take a Break

After you finish writing, take a break before you start proofreading. Fresh eyes are more likely to spot mistakes and inconsistencies.

●       Read Aloud

Reading your work aloud can help you identify awkward phrasing, run-on sentences, and typos. You're more likely to catch errors when you hear them, as it requires a different type of processing than reading silently.

●       Use Proofreading Tools

Digital tools like Grammarly can be your second pair of eyes, helping you spot grammatical errors, typos, and even issues with sentence structure. However, don't rely solely on these tools—make sure to manually review your work as well.

Effective assignment writing is a skill that takes practice to master. It requires meticulous research, organized planning, clear writing, and careful proofreading. The steps and tips outlined in this article are by no means exhaustive, but they provide a solid framework to start from.

Remember, there is always room for improvement. Don't be disheartened by initial challenges. Each assignment is an opportunity to learn, grow, and sharpen your writing skills. So, be persistent, stay curious, and keep refining your craft. With time and practice, you will find yourself writing assignments that are not just excellent, but truly outstanding.

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Understanding instruction words in academic essay titles

Posted in: essay-writing

Instruction or command words indicate what your tutor wants you to do in your written assignment. It's vital that you understand exactly what these instruction words mean so you can answer all parts of the essay question and provide a complete response.

Here's a list of some of the most common instruction/command words you'll see in essay questions (and examination questions as well), together with an explanation of what they mean.

Describe: Give a detailed account of…

Outline: Give the main features/general principles; don't include minor details.

Explain, account for, interpret: Describe the facts but also give causes and reasons for them. Depending on the context, these words may also suggest that you need to make the possible implications clear as well. For example: 'Explain X and its importance for Y'.

Comment on, criticise, evaluate, critically evaluate, assess: Judge the value of something. But first, analyse, describe and explain. Then go through the arguments for and against, laying out the arguments neutrally until the section where you make your judgement clear. Judgements should be backed by reasons and evidence.

Discuss, consider: The least specific of the instruction words. Decide, first of all, what the main issues are. Then follow the same procedures for Comment on, Criticise, Evaluate, Critically Evaluate and Assess.

Analyse: Break down into component parts. Examine critically or closely.

How far, how true, to what extent: These suggest there are various views on and various aspects to the subject. Outline some of them, evaluate their strengths and weaknesses, explore alternatives and then give your judgement.

Justify: Explain, with evidence, why something is the case, answering the main objections to your view as you go along.

Refute: Give evidence to prove why something is not the case.

Compare, contrast, distinguish, differentiate, relate: All require that you discuss how things are related to each other.  Compare suggests you concentrate on similarities, which may lead to a stated preference, the justification of which should be made clear. These words suggest that two situations or ideas can be compared in a number of different ways, or from a variety of viewpoints. Contrast suggests you concentrate on differences.

Define: Write down the precise meaning of a word or phrase. Sometimes several co-existing definitions may be used and, possibly, evaluated.

Illustrate: Make clear and explicit; usually requires the use of carefully chosen examples.

State: Give a concise, clear explanation or account of…

Summarise: Give a concise, clear explanation or account of… presenting the main factors and excluding minor detail or examples (see also Outline).

Trace: Outline or follow the development of something from its initiation or point of origin.

Devise: Think up, work out a plan, solve a problem etc.

Apply (to): Put something to use, show how something can be used in a particular situation.

Identify: Put a name to, list something.

Indicate: Point out. This does not usually involve giving too much detail.

List: Make a list of a number of things. This usually involves simply remembering or finding out a number of things and putting them down one after the other.

Plan: Think about how something is to be done, made, organised, etc.

Report on: Describe what you have seen or done.

Review: Write a report on something.

Specify: Give the details of something.

Work out: Find a solution to a problem.

Adapted from: Coles, M. (1995), A Student’s Guide to Coursework Writing,   University of Stirling, Stirling 

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Write a response

So wonderful can anyone get the information

Thanks Josphat!

This is a life saver, do you have a youtube channel where you talk about all this stuff? If so I would love to know about it 🙂 Rachelle

Hi Rachelle, Thanks for your comment. We don't have a youtube channel but stay tuned for more posts and also check out the new My-skills portal (go.bath.ac.uk/My-skills) for lots more skills support. Tom

Quite helpful. I would definitely check this before my next essay.

Thank you, Dan.

Very helpful now I understand how construct my assignments and how to answer exam questions

I have understood it clearly;)

it is very useful for us to understand many instruction word and what we need to write down

There are some define of some words,and I find that there do have many common things for some words,but not all the same.Such as compare, contrast, distinguish, differentiate, relate,they all need people to compare but foucs on different ways.

Very helpful. Listed most of the words that might be misunderstood by foreign students. Now I know why my score of writing IELTS test is always 6, I even didn't get the point of what I was supposed to write!

I have already read all of this. And it gave me a brief instruction.

There are varied instruction words in essay questions. It's a good chance for me to have a overview of these main command words because I could response to requirements of questions precisely and without the risk of wandering off the topic.

When i encounter with an essay title with these instruction words above,I should understand exactly what these words mean so that i could know what my tutor would like me to do in the assignments.Also,these words may help me make an outline and read academic articles with percific purposes.

These words are accurate and appropriate. It is really helpful for me to response some assignment questions and I can know the orientation of my answers . I can also use these words to make an outline of my essay. However, in my view, for some instruction words which are confusing and hard to understand, it is better to give an example to help us understand.

It's the first time for me to recognise these instruction words , some of them are really similar with each other.

it is very helpful to my future study. it will be better to have some examples with it.

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Academic Evaluations

In our daily lives, we are continually evaluating objects, people, and ideas in our immediate environments. We pass judgments in conversation, while reading, while shopping, while eating, and while watching television or movies, often being unaware that we are doing so. Evaluation is an equally fundamental writing process, and writing assignments frequently ask us to make and defend value judgments.

Evaluation is an important step in almost any writing process, since we are constantly making value judgments as we write. When we write an "academic evaluation," however, this type of value judgment is the focus of our writing.

A Definition of Evaluation

Kate Kiefer, English Professor Like most specific assignments that teachers give, writing evaluations mirrors what happens so often in our day-to-day lives. Every day we decide whether the temperature is cold enough to need a light or heavy jacket; whether we're willing to spend money on a good book or a good movie; whether the prices at the grocery store tell us to keep shopping at the same place or somewhere else for a better value. Academic tasks rely on evaluation just as often. Is a source reliable? Does an argument convince? Is the article worth reading? So writing evaluation helps students make this often unconscious daily task more overt and prepares them to examine ideas, facts, arguments, and so on more critically.

To evaluate is to assess or appraise. Evaluation is the process of examining a subject and rating it based on its important features. We determine how much or how little we value something, arriving at our judgment on the basis of criteria that we can define.

We evaluate when we write primarily because it is almost impossible to avoid doing so. If right now you were asked to write for five minutes on any subject and were asked to keep your writing completely value-free, you would probably find such an assignment difficult. Readers come to evaluative writing in part because they seek the opinions of other people for one reason or another.

Uses for Evaluation

Consider a time recently when you decided to watch a movie. There were at least two kinds of evaluation available to you through the media: the rating system and critical reviews.

Newspapers and magazines, radio and TV programs all provide critical evaluations for their readers and viewers. Many movie-goers consult more than one media reviewer to adjust for bias. Most movie-goers also consider the rating system, especially if they are deciding to take children to a movie. In addition, most people will also ask for recommendations from friends who have already seen the movie.

Whether professional or personal, judgments like these are based on the process of evaluation. The terminology associated with the elements of this process--criteria, evidence, and judgment--might seem alien to you, but you have undoubtedly used these elements almost every time you have expressed an opinion on something.

Types of Written Evaluation

Quite a few of the assignments writers are given at the university and in the workplace involve the process of evaluation.

One type of written evaluation that most people are familiar with is the review. Reviewers will attend performances, events, or places (like restaurants, movies, or concerts), basing their evaluations on their observations. Reviewers typically use a particular set of criteria they establish for themselves, and their reviews most often appear in newspapers and magazines.

Critical Writing

Reviews are a type of critical writing, but there are other types of critical writing which focus on objects (like works of art or literature) rather than on events and performances. Literary criticism, for instance, is a way of establishing the worth or literary merit of a text on the basis of certain established criteria. When we write about literary texts, we do so using one of many critical "lenses," viewing the text as it addresses matters like form, culture, historical context, gender, and class (to name a few). Deciding whether a text is "good" or "bad" is a matter of establishing which "lens" you are viewing that text through, and using the appropriate set of criteria to do so. For example, we might say that a poem by an obscure Nineteenth Century African American poet is not "good" or "useful" in terms of formal characteristics like rhyme, meter, or diction, but we might judge that same text as "good" or "useful" in terms of the way it addresses cultural and political issues historically.

Response Essays

One very common type of academic writing is the response essay. In many different disciplines, we are asked to respond to something that we read or observe. Some types of response, like the interpretive response, simply ask us to explain a text. However, there are other types of response (like agree/disagree and analytical response) which demand that we make some sort of judgment based on careful consideration of the text, object, or event in question.

Problem Solving Essays

In writing assignments which focus on issues, policies, or phenomena, we are often asked to propose possible solutions for identifiable problems. This type of essay requires evaluation on two levels. First of all, it demands that we use evaluation in order to determine that there is a legitimate problem. And secondly, it demands that we take more than one policy or solution into consideration to determine which will be the most feasible, viable, or effective one, given that problem.

Arguing Essays

Written argument is a type of evaluative writing, particularly when it focuses on a claim of value (like "The death penalty is cruel and ineffective") or policy claim (like "Oakland's Ebonics program is an effective way of addressing standard English deficiencies among African American students in public schools"). In written argument, we advance a claim like one of the above, then support this claim with solid reasons and evidence.

Process Analysis

In scientific or investigative writing, in which experiments are conducted and processes or phenomena are observed or studied, evaluation plays a part in the writer's discussion of findings. Often, these findings need to be both interpreted and analyzed by way of criteria established by the writer.

Source Evaluation

Although not a form of written evaluation in and of itself, source evaluation is a process that is involved in many other types of academic writing, like argument, investigative and scientific writing, and research papers. When we conduct research, we quickly learn that not every source is a good source and that we need to be selective about the quality of the evidence we transplant into our own writing.

Relevance to the Topic

When you conduct research, you naturally look for sources that are relevant to your topic. However, writers also often fall prey to the tendency to accept sources that are just relevant enough . For example, if you were writing an essay on Internet censorship, you might find that your research yielded quite a few sources on music censorship, art censorship, or censorship in general. Though these sources could possibly be marginally useful in an essay on Internet censorship, you will probably want to find more directly relevant sources to serve a more central role in your essay.

Perspective on the Topic

Another point to consider is that even though you want sources relevant to your topic, you might not necessarily want an exclusive collection of sources which agree with your own perspective on that topic. For example, if you are writing an essay on Internet censorship from an anti-censorship perspective, you will want to include in your research sources which also address the pro-censorship side. In this way, your essay will be able to fully address perspectives other than (and sometimes in opposition to) your own.

Credibility

One of the questions you want to ask yourself when you consider using a source is "How credible will my audience consider this source to be?" You will want to ask this question not only of the source itself (the book, journal, magazine, newspaper, home page, etc.) but also of the author. To use an extreme example, for most academic writing assignments you would probably want to steer clear of using a source like the National Enquirer or like your eight year old brother, even though we could imagine certain writing situations in which such sources would be entirely appropriate. The key to determining the credibility of a source/author is to decide not only whether you think the source is reliable, but also whether your audience will find it so, given the purpose of your writing.

Currency of Publication

Unless you are doing research with an historical emphasis, you will generally want to choose sources which have been published recently. Sometimes research and statistics maintain their authority for a very long time, but the more common trend in most fields is that the more recent a study is, the more comprehensive and accurate it is.

Accessibility

When sorting through research, it is best to select sources that are readable and accessible both for you and for your intended audience. If a piece of writing is laden with incomprehensible jargon and incoherent structure or style, you will want to think twice about directing it toward an audience unfamiliar with that type of jargon, structure, or style. In short, it is a good rule of thumb to avoid using any source which you yourself do not understand and are not able to interpret for your audience.

Quality of Writing

When choosing sources, consider the quality of writing in the texts themselves. It is possible to paraphrase from sources that are sloppily written, but quoting from such a source would serve only to diminish your own credibility in the eyes of your audience.

Understanding of Biases

Few are sources are truly objective or unbiased . Trying to eliminate bias from your sources will be nearly impossible, but all writers can try to understand and recognize the biases of their sources. For instance, if you were doing a comparative study of 1/2-ton pickup trucks on the market, you might consult the Ford home page. However, you would also need to be aware that this source would have some very definite biases. Likewise, it would not be unreasonable to use an article from Catholic World in an anti-abortion argument, but you would want to understand how your audience would be likely to view that source. Although there is no fail-proof way to determine the bias of a particular journal or newspaper, you can normally sleuth this out by looking at the language in the article itself or in the surrounding articles.

Use of Research

In evaluating a source, you will need to examine the sources that it in turn uses. Looking at the research used by the author of your source, what biases can you recognize? What are the quantity and quality of evidence and statistics included? How reliable and readable do the excerpts cited seem to be?

Considering Purpose and Audience

We typically think of "values" as being personal matters. But in our writing, as in other areas of our lives, values often become matters of public and political concern. Therefore, it is important when we evaluate to consider why we are making judgments on a subject (purpose) and who we hope to affect with our judgments (audience).

Purposes of Evaluation

Your purpose in written evaluation is not only to express your opinion or judgment about a subject, but also to convince, persuade, or otherwise influence an audience by way of that judgment. In this way, evaluation is a type of argument, in which you as a writer are attempting consciously to have an effect on your readers' ways of thinking or acting. If, for example, you are writing an evaluation in which you make a judgment that Mountain Bike A is a better buy than Mountain Bike B, you are doing more than expressing your approval of the merits of Bike A; you are attempting to convince your audience that Bike A is the better buy and, ultimately, to persuade them to buy Bike A rather than Bike B.

Effects of Audience

Kate Kiefer, English Professor When we evaluate for ourselves, we don't usually take the time to articulate criteria and detail evidence. Our thought processes work fast enough that we often seem to make split-second decisions. Even when we spend time thinking over a decision--like which expensive toy (car, stereo, skis) to buy--we don't often lay out the criteria explicitly. We can't take that shortcut when we write to other folks, though. If we want readers to accept our judgment, then we need to be clear about the criteria we use and the evidence that helps us determine value for each criterion. After all, why should I agree with you to eat at the Outback Steak House if you care only about cost but I care about taste and safe food handling? To write an effective evaluation, you need to figure out what your readers care about and then match your criteria to their concerns. Similarly, you can overwhelm readers with too much detail when they don't have the background knowledge to care about that level of detail. Or you can ignore the expertise of your readers (at your peril) and not give enough detail. Then, as a writer, you come across as condescending, or worse. So targeting an audience is really key to successful evaluation.

In written evaluation, it is important to keep in mind not only your own system of value, but also that of your audience. Writers do not evaluate in a vacuum. Giving some thought to the audience you are attempting to influence will help you to determine what criteria are important to them and what evidence they will require in order to be convinced or persuaded by your evaluative argument. In order to evaluate effectively, it is important that you consider what motivates and concerns your audience.

Criteria and Audience Considerations

The first step in deciding which criteria will be effective in your evaluation is determining which criteria your audience considers important. For example, if you are writing a review of a Mexican restaurant to an audience comprised mainly of senior citizens from the midwest, it is unlikely that "large portions" and "fiery green chile" will be the criteria most important to them. They might be more concerned, rather, with "quality of service" or "availability of heart smart menu items." Trying to anticipate and address your audience's values is an indispensable step in writing a persuasive evaluative argument. Your next step in suiting your criteria to your audience is to determine how you will explain and/or defend not only your judgments, but the criteria supporting them as well. For example, if you are arguing that a Mexican restaurant is excellent because, among other reasons, the texture of the food is appealing, you might need to explain to your audience why texture is a significant criterion in evaluating Mexican food.

Evidence and Audience Considerations

The amount and type of evidence you use to support your judgments will depend largely on the demands of your audience. Common sense tells us that the more oppositional an audience is, the more evidence will be needed to convince them of the validity a judgment. For instance, if you were writing a favorable review of La Cocina on the basis of their fiery green chile, you might not need to use a great deal of evidence for an audience of people who like spicy food but have not tried any of the Mexican restaurants in town. However, if you are addressing an audience who is deeply devoted to the green chile at Manuel's, you will need to provide a fair amount of solid evidence in order to persuade them to try another restaurant.

Parts of an Evaluation

When we evaluate, we make an overall value claim about a subject, using criteria to make judgments based on evidence. Often, we also make use of comparison and contrast as strategies for determining the relative worth of the subject we are considering. This section examines these parts of an evaluation and shows how each functions in a successful evaluation.

Overall Claim

An overall claim or judgment is an evaluator's final decision about worth. When we evaluate, we make a general statement about the worth of objects, goods, services, or solutions to problems.

An overall claim or judgment in an evaluation can be as simple as "See this movie!" or "Brand X is a better buy than the name brand." It can also be complex, particularly when the evaluator recognizes certain conditions that affect the judgment: If citizens of our community want to improve air and water quality and are willing to forego 300 additional jobs, then we should not approve the new plant Acme is hoping to build here.

Qualifications

An overall claim or judgment usually requires qualification so that it seems balanced. If judgments are weighted too much to one side, they will sometimes mar the credibility of your argument. If your overall judgment is wholly positive, your evaluation will wind up sounding like propaganda or advertisement. If it is wholly negative, you might present yourself as overly critical, unfair, or undiplomatic. An example of a qualified claim or judgment might be the following: Although La Cocina is not without its faults, it is the best Mexican restaurant in town. Qualifications are almost always positive additions to evaluative arguments, but writers must learn not to overuse them. If you make too many qualifications, your audience will be unable to determine your final position on your subject, and you will appear to be "waffling."

Example Text

Creating more parking lots is a possible solution to the horrendous traffic congestion in Taiwan's major cities. When a new building permit is issued, each building must include a certain number of spaces for parking. However, new construction takes time, and results will be seen only as new buildings are erected. This solution alone is inadequate for most of Taiwan's problem areas, which need a solution whose results will be noticed immediately.

Comment Notice how this sentence at the end of the paragraph seems to be a formal "thesis" or "claim" which might drive the rest of the essay. Based on this claim, we would assume that the remainder of the essay will deal with the reasons why the proposed policy along is "inadequate," and will address other possible solutions.

Supporting Judgments

In academic evaluations, the overall claim or judgment is backed up by smaller, more detailed judgments about aspects of a subject being evaluated. Supporting judgments function in the same way that "reasons" function in most arguments. They provide structure and justification for a more general claim. For example, if your overall claim or judgment in your evaluation is

"Although La Cocina is not without its faults, it is the best Mexican restaurant in town,"

one supporting judgment might be

"La Cocina's green chile is superb."

This judgment would be based on criteria you have established, and it would be supported by evidence.

Providing more parking spaces near buildings is not the only act necessary to solve Taiwan's parking problems. A combination of more parking spaces, increased fines, and lowered traffic volume may be necessary to eliminate the nightmare of driving in the cities. In fact, until laws are enforced and fines increased, no number of new parking spaces will impact the congestion seen in downtown areas.

Comment There are arguably three supporting judgments being made here, as three possible solutions are being suggested to rectify this problem of parking in Taiwan. If we were reading these supporting judgments at the beginning of an essay, we would expect the essay to discuss them in depth, pointing out evidence that these proposed solutions would be effective.

When we write evaluations, we consciously adopt certain standards of measurement, or criteria .

Criteria can be concrete standards, like size or speed, or can be abstract, like practicality. When we write evaluations in an academic context, we typically avoid using criteria that are wholly personal, and rely instead on those that are less "subjective" and more likely to be shared by the majority of the audience we are addressing. Choosing appropriate criteria often involves careful consideration of audience demands, values, and concerns.

As an evaluator, you will sometimes discover that you will need to explain and/or defend not only your judgments, but also the criteria informing those judgments. For example, if you are arguing that a Mexican restaurant is excellent because (among other reasons) the texture of the food is appealing, you might need to explain to your audience why texture is a significant criterion in evaluating Mexican food.

Types of Criteria

If you are evaluating a concrete canoe for an engineering class, you will use concrete criteria such as float time, cost of materials, hydrodynamic design, and so on. If you are evaluating the suitability of a textbook for a history class, you will probably rely on more abstract criteria such as readability, length, and controversial vs. mainstream interpretation of history.

In evaluation, we often rely on concrete , measurable standards according to which subjects (usually objects) may be evaluated. For example, cars may be evaluated according to the criteria of size, speed, or cost.

Many academic evaluations, however, don't focus on objects that we can measure in terms of size, speed, or cost. Rather, they look at somewhat more abstract concepts (problems and solutions often), which we might measure in terms of "effectiveness," "feasibility," or other abstract criteria. When writing this kind of evaluation, it is vital to be as clear as possible when articulating, defining, and using your criteria, since not all readers are likely to understand and agree with these criteria as readily as they would understand and agree with concrete criteria.

Related Information: Abstract Criteria

Abstract criteria are not easily measurable, and they are usually less self-evident, more in need of definition, than concrete criteria. Even though criteria may be abstract, they should not be imprecise. Always state your criteria as clearly and precisely as possible. "Feasibility" is one example of an abstract criterion that a writer might use to evaluate a solution to a problem. Feasibility is the degree of likelihood of success of something like a plan of action or a solution to a problem. "Capability of being implemented" is a way to look at feasibility in terms of solutions to problems. The relative ease with which a solution would be adopted is sometimes a way to look at feasibility. The following example mentions directly the criteria it is using (the words in italics). Fire prevention should be the major consideration of a family building a home. By using concrete, the risk of fire is significantly decreased. But that is not all that concrete provides. It is affordable , suitable for all climates , and helps reduce deforestation . Since all of these factors are important, concrete should be demanded more than it is, and it should certainly be used more than wood for homebuilding.

Related Information: Concrete Criteria

Concrete criteria are measurable standards which most people are likely to understand and (usually) to agree with. For example, a person might make use of criteria like "size," "speed," and "cost" when buying a car.

If size is your main criterion, and something with a larger size will receive a more favorable evaluation.

Perhaps the only quality that you desire in a car is low initial cost. You don't need to take into account anything else. In this case, you can put judgments on these three cars in the local used car lot:

Because the Nissan has the lowest initial price, it receives the most favorable judgment. The evidence is found on the price tag. Each car is compared by way of a single criterion: cost.

Using Clear and Well-defined Criteria

When we evaluate informally (passing judgments during the course of conversation, for instance), we typically assume that our criteria are self-evident and require no explanation. However, in written evaluation, it is often necessary that we clarify and define our criteria in order to make a persuasive evaluative argument.

Criteria That Are Too Vague or Personal

Although we frequently find ourselves needing to use abstract criteria like "feasibility" or "effectiveness," we also must avoid using criteria that are overly vague or personal and difficult to support with evidence. As evaluators, we must steer clear of criteria that are matters of taste, belief, or personal preference. For example, the "best" lamp might simply be the one that you think looks prettiest in your home. If you depend on a criterion like "pretty in my home," and neglect to use more common, shared criteria like "brightness," "cost," and "weight," you are probably relying on a criterion that is too specific to your own personal preferences. To make "pretty in my home" an effective criterion, you would need to explain what "pretty in my home" means and how it might relate to other people's value systems. (For example: "Lamp A is attractive because it is an unoffensive style and color that would be appropriate for many people's decorating tastes.")

Using Criteria Based on the Appropriate "Class" of Subjects

When you make judgments, it is important that you use criteria that are appropriate to the type of object, person, policy, etc. that you are examining. If you are evaluating Steven Spielburg's film, Schindler's List , for instance, it is unfair to criticize it because it isn't a knee-slapper. Because "Schindler's List" is a drama and not a comedy, using the criterion of "humor" is inappropriate.

Weighing Criteria

Once you have established criteria for your evaluation of a subject, it is necessary to decide which of these criteria are most important. For example, if you are evaluating a Mexican restaurant and you have arrived at several criteria (variety of items on the menu, spiciness of the food, size of the portions, decor, and service), you need to decide which of these criteria are most critical to your evaluation. If the size of the portions is good, but the service is bad, can you give the restaurant a good rating? What about if the decor is attractive, but the food is bland? Once you have placed your criteria in a hierarchy of importance, it is much easier to make decisions like these.

When we evaluate, we must consider the audience we hope to influence with our judgments. This is particularly true when we decide which criteria are informing (and should inform) these judgments.

After establishing some criteria for your evaluation, it is important to ask yourself whether or not your audience is likely to accept those criteria. It is crucial that they do accept the criteria if, in turn, you expect them to accept the supporting judgments and overall claim or judgment built on them.

Related Information: Explaining and Defending Criteria

In deciding which criteria will be effective in your evaluation is determining which criteria your audience considers important. For example, if you are writing a review of a Mexican restaurant to an audience comprised mainly of senior citizens from the midwest, it is unlikely that "large portions" and "fiery green chile" will be the criteria most important to them. They might be more concerned, rather, with "quality of service" or "availability of heart smart menu items." Trying to anticipate and address your audience's values is an indispensable step in writing a persuasive evaluative argument.

Related Information: Understanding Audience Criteria

How Background Experience Influences Criteria

Laura Thomas - Composition Lecturer Your background experience influences the criteria that you use in evaluation. If you know a lot about something, you will have a good idea of what criteria should govern your judgments. On the other hand, it's hard if you don't know enough about what you're judging. Sometimes you have to research first in order to come up with useful criteria. For example, I recently went shopping for a new pair of skis for the first time in fifteen years. When I began shopping, I realized that I didn't even know what questions to ask anymore. The last time I had bought skis, you judged them according to whether they had a foam core or a wood core. But I had no idea what the important considerations were anymore.

Evidence consists of the specifics you use to reach your conclusion or judgment. For example, if you judge that "La Cocina's green chile is superb" on the basis of the criterion, "Good green chile is so fiery that you can barely eat it," you might offer evidence like the following:

"I drank an entire pitcher of water on my own during the course of the meal."

"Though my friend wouldn't admit that the chile was challenging for him, I saw beads of sweat form on his brow."

Related Information: Example Text

In the following paragraph, evidence appears in italics. Note that the reference to the New York Times backs up the evidence offered in the previous sentence:

Since killer whales have small lymphatic systems, they catch infections more easily when held captive ( Obee 23 ). The orca from the movie "Free Willy," Keiko, developed a skin disorder because the water he was living in was not cold enough. This infection was a result of the combination of tank conditions and the animal's immune system, according to a New York Times article .

Types of Evidence

Evidence for academic evaluations is usually of two types: concrete detail and analytic detail. Analytic detail comes from critical thinking about abstract elements of the thing being evaluated. It will also include quotations from experts. Concrete detail comes from sense perceptions and measurements--facts about color, speed, size, texture, smell, taste, and so on. Concrete details are more likely to support concrete criteria (as opposed to abstract criteria) used in judging objects. Analytic detail will more often support abstract criteria (as opposed to concrete criteria), like the criterion "feasibility," discussed in the section on criteria. Analytic detail also appears most often in academic evaluations of solutions to problems, although such solutions can also sometimes be evaluated according to concrete criteria.

What Kinds of Evidence Work

Good evidence ranges from personal experience to interviews with experts to published sources. The kind of evidence that works best for you will depend on your audience and often on the writing assignment you have been given.

Evidence and the Writing Assignment

When you choose evidence to support the judgments you are making in an evaluation, it will be important to consider what type of evaluation you are being asked to do. If, for instance, you are being asked to review a play you have attended, your evidence will most likely consist primarily of your own observations. However, if your assignment asks you to compare and contrast two potential national health care policies (toward deciding which is the better one), your evidence will need to be more statistical, more dependent on reputable sources, and more directed toward possible effects or outcomes of your judgment.

Comparison and Contrast

Comparison and contrast is the process of positioning an item or concept being evaluated among other like items or concepts. We are all familiar with this technique as it's used in the marketing of products: soft drink "taste tests," comparisons of laundry detergent effectiveness, and the like. It is a way of determining the value of something in relation to comparable things. For example, if you have made the judgment that "La Cocina's green chile is superb" and you have offered evidence of the spiciness and the flavor of the chile, you might also use comparison by giving your audience a scale on which to base judgment: "La Cocina's chile is even more fiery and flavorful than Manuel's, which is by no means a walk in the park."

In this case, the writer compares limestone with wood to show that limestone is a better building material. Although this comparison could be developed much more, it still begins to point out the relative merits of limestone. Concrete is a feasible substitute for wood as a building material. Concrete comes from a rock called limestone. Limestone is found all over the United States. By using limestone instead of wood, the dependence on dwindling forest reserves would decrease. There are more sedimentary rocks than there are forests left in this country, and they are more evenly distributed. For this reason, it is quite possible to switch from wood to concrete as the primary building material for residential construction.

Determining Relative Worth

Comparing and contrasting rarely means placing the item or concept being evaluated in relation to another item or concept that is obviously grossly inferior. For instance, if you are attempting to demonstrate the value of a Cannondale mountain bike, it would be foolish to compare it with a Huffy. However, it would be useful to compare it with a Klein, arguably a similar bicycle. In this type of maneuver, you are not comparing good with bad; rather, you are deciding which bike is better and which bike is worse. In order to determine relative worth in this way, you will need to be very careful in defining the criteria you are using to make the comparison.

Using Comparison and Contrast Effectively

In order to make comparison and contrast function well in evaluation, it is necessary to be attentive to: 1) focusing on the item or concept under consideration and 2) the use of evidence in comparison and contrast. When using comparison and contrast, writers must remember that they are using comparable items or concepts only as a way of demonstrating the worth of the main item or concept under consideration. It is easy to lose focus when using this technique, because of the temptation to evaluate two (or more) items or concepts rather than just the one under consideration. It is important to remember that judgments made on the basis of comparison and contrast need to be supported with evidence. It is not enough to assert that "La Cocina's chile is even more fiery and flavorful than Manuel's." It will be necessary to support this judgment with evidence, showing in what ways La Cocina's chile is more flavorful: "Manuel's chile relies heavily on a tomato base, giving it an Italian flavor. La Cocina follows a more traditional recipe which uses little tomato and instead flavors the chile with shredded pork, a dash of vinegar, and a bit of red chile to give it a piquant taste."

The Process of Writing an Evaluation

A variety of writing assignments call for evaluation. Bearing in mind the various approaches that might be demanded by those particular assignments, this section offers some general strategies for formulating a written evaluation.

Choosing a Topic for Evaluation

Sometimes your topic for evaluation will be dictated by the writing assignment you have been given. Other times, though, you will be required to choose your own topic. Common sense tells you that it is best to choose something about which you already have a base knowledge. For instance, if you are a skier, you might want to evaluate a particular model of skis. In addition, it is best to choose something that is tangible, observable, and/or researchable. For example, if you chose a topic like "methods of sustainable management of forests," you would know that there would be research to support your evaluation. Likewise, if you chose to evaluate a film like Pulp Fiction , you could rent the video and watch it several times in order to get the evidence you needed. However, you would have fewer options if you were to choose an abstract concept like "loyalty" or "faith." When evaluating, it is usually best to steer clear of abstractions like these as much as possible.

Brainstorming Possible Judgments

Once you have chosen a topic, you might begin your evaluation by thinking about what you already know about the topic. In doing this, you will be coming up with possible judgments to include in your evaluation. Begin with a tentative overall judgment or claim. Then decide what supporting judgments you might make to back that claim. Keep in mind that your judgments will likely change as you collect evidence for your evaluation.

Determining a Tentative Overall Judgment

Start by making an overall judgment on the topic in question, based on what you already know. For instance, if you were writing an evaluation of sustainable management practices in forestry, your tentative overall judgment might be: "Sustainable management is a viable way of dealing with deforestation in old growth forests."

Brainstorming Possible Supporting Judgments

With a tentative overall judgment in mind, you can begin to brainstorm judgments (or reasons) that could support your overall judgment by asking the question, "Why?" For example, asking "Why?" of the tentative overall judgment "Sustainable management is a viable way of dealing with deforestation in old growth forests" might yield the following supporting judgments:

• Sustainable management allows for continued support of the logging industry.
• It eliminates much unnecessary waste.
• It is much better for the environment than unrestricted, traditional forestry methods.
• It is less expensive than these traditional methods.

Anticipating Changes to Your Judgments After Collecting Evidence

When brainstorming possible judgments this early in the writing process, it is necessary to keep an open mind as you enter into the stage in which you collect evidence. Once you have done observations, analysis, or research, you might find that you are unable to advance your tentative overall judgment. Or you might find that some of the supporting judgments you came up with are not true or are not supportable. Your findings might also point you toward other judgments you can make in addition to the ones you are already making.

Defining Criteria

To prepare to organize and write your evaluation, it is important to clearly define the criteria you are using to make your judgments. These criteria govern the direction of the evaluation and provide structure and justification for the judgments you make.

Looking at the Criteria Informing Your Judgments (Working Backwards)

We often work backwards from the judgments we make, discovering what criteria we are using on the basis of what our judgments look like. For instance, our tentative judgments about sustainable management practices are as follows:

If we were to analyze these judgments, asking ourselves why we made them, we would see that we used the following criteria: wellbeing of the logging industry, conservation of resources, wellbeing of the environment, and cost.

Thinking of Additional Criteria

Once you have identified the criteria informing your initial judgments, you will want to determine what other criteria should be included in your evaluation. For example, in addition to the criteria you've already come up with (wellbeing of the logging industry, conservation of resources, wellbeing of the environment, and cost), you might include the criterion of preservation of the old growth forests.

Comparing Your Criteria with Those of Your Audience

In deciding which criteria are most important to include in your evaluation, it is necessary to consider the criteria your audience is likely to find important. Let's say we are directing our evaluation of sustainable management methods toward an audience of loggers. If we look at our list of criteria--wellbeing of the logging industry, conservation of resources, wellbeing of the environment, cost, and preservation of the old growth forests--we might decide that wellbeing of the logging industry and cost are the criteria most important to loggers. At this point, we would also want to identify additional criteria the audience might expect us to address: perhaps feasibility, labor requirements, and efficiency.

Deciding Which Criteria Are Most Important

Once you have developed a long list of possible criteria for judging your subject (in this case, sustainable management methods), you will need to narrow the list, since it is impractical and ineffective to use of all possible criteria in your essay. To decide which criteria to address, determine which are least dispensable, both to you and to your audience. Your own criteria were: wellbeing of the logging industry, conservation of resources, wellbeing of the environment, cost, and preservation of the old growth forests. Those you anticipated for your audience were: feasibility, labor requirements, and efficiency. In the written evaluation, you might choose to address those criteria most important to your audience, with a couple of your own included. For example, your list of indispensable criteria might look like this: wellbeing of the logging industry, cost, labor requirements, efficiency, conservation of resources, and preservation of the old growth forests.

Criteria and Assumptions

Stephen Reid, English Professor Warrants (to use a term from argumentation) come on the scene when we ask why a given criterion should be used or should be acceptable in evaluating the particular text, product, or performance in question. When we ask WHY a particular criterion should be important (let's say, strong performance in an automobile engine, quickly moving plot in a murder mystery, outgoing personality in a teacher), we are getting at the assumptions (i.e., the warrant) behind why the data is relevant to the claim of value we are about to make. Strong performance in an automobile engine might be a positive criterion in an urban, industrialized environment, where traveling at highway speeds on American interstates is important. But we might disagree about whether strong performance (accompanied by lower mileage) might be important in a rural European environment where gas costs are several dollars a litre. Similarly, an outgoing personality for a teacher might be an important standard of judgment or criterion in a teacher-centered classroom, but we could imagine another kind of decentered class where interpersonal skills are more important than teacher personality. By QUESTIONING the validity and appropriateness of a given criterion in a particular situation, we are probing for the ASSUMPTIONS or WARRANTS we are making in using that criterion in that particular situation. Thus, criteria are important, but it is often equally important for writers to discuss the assumptions that they are making in choosing the major criteria in their evaluations.

Collecting Evidence

Once you have established the central criteria you will use in our evaluation, you will investigate your subject in terms of these criteria. In order to investigate the subject of sustainable management methods, you would more than likely have to research whether these methods stand up to the criteria you have established: wellbeing of the logging industry, cost, labor requirements, time efficiency, conservation of resources, and preservation of the old growth forests. However, library research is only one of the techniques evaluators use. Depending on the type of evaluation being made, the evaluator might use such methods as observation, field research, and analysis.

Thinking About What You Already Know

The best place to start looking for evidence is with the knowledge you already possess. To do this, you might try brainstorming, clustering, or freewriting ideas.

Library Research

When you are evaluating policies, issues, or products, you will usually need to conduct library research to find the evidence your evaluation requires. It is always a good idea to check journals, databases, and bibliographies relevant to your subject when you begin research. It is also helpful to speak with a reference librarian about how to get started.

Observation

When you are asked to evaluate a performance, event, place, object, or person, one of the best methods available is simple observation. What makes observation not so simple is the need to focus on criteria you have developed ahead of time. If, for instance, you are reviewing a student production of Hamlet , you will want to review your list of criteria (perhaps quality of acting, costumes, faithfulness to the text, set design, lighting, and length of time before intermission) before attending the play. During or after the play, you will want to take as many notes as possible, keeping these criteria in mind.

Field Research

To expand your evaluation beyond your personal perspective or the perspective of your sources, you might conduct your own field research . Typical field research techniques include interviewing, taking a survey, administering a questionnaire, and conducting an experiment. These methods can help you support your judgment and can sometimes help you determine whether or not your judgment is valid.

When you are asked to evaluate a text, analysis is often the technique you will use in collecting evidence. If you are analyzing an argument, you might use the Toulmin Method. Other texts might not require such a structured analysis but might be better addressed by more general critical reading strategies.

Applying Criteria

After developing a list of indispensable criteria, you will need to "test" the subject according to these criteria. At this point, it will probably be necessary to collect evidence (through research, analysis, or observation) to determine, for example, whether sustainable management methods would hold up to the criteria you have established: wellbeing of the logging industry, cost, labor requirements, efficiency, conservation of resources, and preservation of the old growth forests. One way of recording the results of this "test" is by putting your notes in a three-column log.

Organizing the Evaluation

One of the best ways to organize your information in preparation for writing is to construct an informal outline of sorts. Outlines might be arranged according to criteria, comparison and contrast, chronological order, or causal analysis. They also might follow what Robert K. Miller and Suzanne S. Webb refer to in their book, Motives for Writing (2nd ed.) as "the pattern of classical oration for evaluations" (286). In addition to deciding on a general structure for your evaluation, it will be necessary to determine the most appropriate placement for your overall claim or judgment.

Placement of the Overall Claim or Judgment

Writers can state their final position at the beginning or the end of an essay. The same is true of the overall claim or judgment in a written evaluation.

When you place your overall claim or judgment at the end of your written evaluation, you are able to build up to it and to demonstrate how your evaluative argument (evidence, explanation of criteria, etc.) has led to that judgment.

Writers of academic evaluations normally don't need to keep readers in suspense about their judgments. By stating the overall claim or judgment early in the paper, writers help readers both to see the structure of the essay and to accept the evidence as convincing proof of the judgment. (Writers of evaluations should remember, of course, that there is no rule against stating the overall claim or judgment at both the beginning and the end of the essay.)

Organization by Criteria

The following is an example from Stephen Reid's The Prentice Hall Guide for College Writers (4th ed.), showing how a writer might arrange an evaluation according to criteria:

Introductory paragraphs: information about the restaurant (location, hours, prices), general description of Chinese restaurants today, and overall claim : The Hunan Dynasty is reliable, a good value, and versatile.

Criterion # 1/Judgment: Good restaurants should have an attractive setting and atmosphere/Hunan Dynasty is attractive.

Criterion # 2/Judgment: Good restaurants should give strong priority to service/ Hunan Dynasty has, despite an occasional glitch, expert service.

Criterion # 3/Judgment: Restaurants that serve modestly priced food should have quality main dishes/ Main dishes at Hunan Dynasty are generally good but not often memorable. (Note: The most important criterion--the quality of the main dishes--is saved for last.)

Concluding paragraphs: Hunan Dynasty is a top-flight neighborhood restaurant (338).

Organization by Comparison and Contrast

Sometimes comparison and contrast is not merely a strategy used in part [italics] of an evaluation, but is the strategy governing the organization of the entire essay. The following are examples from Stephen Reid's The Prentice Hall Guide for College Writers (4th ed.), showing two ways that a writer might organize an evaluation according to comparison and contrast.

Introductory paragraph(s)

Thesis [or overall claim/judgment]: Although several friends recommended the Yakitori, we preferred the Unicorn for its more authentic atmosphere, courteous service, and well-prepared food. [Notice that the criteria are stated in this thesis.]

Authentic atmosphere: Yakitori vs. Unicorn

Courteous service: Yakitori vs. Unicorn

Well-prepared food: Yakitori vs. Unicorn

Concluding paragraph(s) (Reid 339)

The Yakitori : atmosphere, service, and food

The Unicorn : atmosphere, service, and food as compared to the Yakitori

Concluding paragraph(s) (Reid 339).

Organization by Chronological Order

Writers often follow chronological order when evaluating or reviewing events or performances. This method of organization allows the writer to evaluate portions of the event or performance in the order in which it happens.

Organization by Causal Analysis

When using analysis to evaluate places, objects, events, or policies, writers often focus on causes or effects. The following is an example from Stephen Reid's The Prentice Hall Guide for College Writers (4th ed.), showing how one writer organizes an evaluation of a Goya painting by discussing its effects on the viewer.

Criterion #1/Judgment: The iconography, or use of symbols, contributes to the powerful effect of this picture on the viewer.

Evidence : The church as a symbol of hopefulness contrasts with the cruelty of the execution. The spire on the church emphasizes for the viewer how powerless the Church is to save the victims.

Criterion #2/Judgment: The use of light contributes to the powerful effect of the picture on the viewer.

Evidence : The light casts an intense glow on the scene, and its glaring, lurid, and artificial qualities create the same effect on the viewer that modern art sometimes does.

Criterion #3/Judgment: The composition or use of formal devices contributes to the powerful effect of the picture on the viewer.

Evidence : The diagonal lines scissors the picture into spaces that give the viewer a claustrophobic feeling. The corpse is foreshortened, so that it looks as though the dead man is bidding the viewer welcome (Reid 340).

Pattern of Classical Oration for Evaluations

Robert K. Miller and Suzanne S. Webb, in their book, Motives for Writing (2nd ed.) discuss what they call "the pattern of classical oration for evaluations," which incorporates opposing evaluations as well as supporting reasons and judgments. This pattern is as follows:

Present your subject. (This discussion includes any background information, description, acknowledgement of weaknesses, and so forth.)

State your criteria. (If your criteria are controversial, be sure to justify them.)

Make your judgment. (State it as clearly and emphatically as possible.)

Give your reasons. (Be sure to present good evidence for each reason.)

Refute opposing evaluations. (Let your reader know you have given thoughtful consideration to opposing views, since such views exist.)

State your conclusion. (You may restate or summarize your judgment.) (Miller and Webb 286-7)

Example: Part of an Outline for an Evaluation

The following is a portion of an outline for an evaluation, organized by way of supporting judgments or reasons. Notice that this pattern would need to be repeated (using criteria other than the fieriness of the green chile) in order to constitute a complete evaluation proving that "Although La Cocina is not without its faults, it is the best Mexican restaurant in town."

Evaluation of La Cocina, a Mexican Restaurant

Intro Paragraph Leading to Overall Judgment: "Although La Cocina is not without its faults, it is the best Mexican restaurant in town."

Supporting Judgment: "La Cocina's green chile is superb."

Criterion used to make this judgment: "Good green chile is so fiery that you can barely eat it."

Evidence in support of this judgment: "I drank an entire pitcher of water on my own during the course of the meal" or "Though my friend wouldn't admit that the chile was challenging for him, I saw beads of sweat form on his brow."

Supporting Judgment made by way of Comparison and Contrast: "La Cocina's chile is even more fiery and flavorful than Manuel's, which is by no means a walk in the park itself."

Evidence in support of this judgment: "Manuel's chile relies heavily on a tomato base, giving it an Italian flavor. La Cocina follows a more traditional recipe which uses little tomato, and instead flavors the chile with shredded pork, a dash of vinegar, and a bit of red chile to give it a piquant taste."

Writing the Draft

If you have an outline to follow, writing a draft of a written evaluation is simple. Stephen Reid, in his Prentice Hall Guide for College Writers , recommends that writers maintain focus on both the audience they are addressing and the central criteria they want to include. Such a focus will help writers remember what their audience expects and values and what is most important in constructing an effective and persuasive evaluation.

Guidelines for Revision

In his Prentice Hall Guide for College Writers , 4th ed., Stephen Reid offers some helpful tips for revising written evaluations. These guidelines are reproduced here and grouped as follows:

Examining Criteria

Criteria are standards of value . They contain categories and judgments, as in "good fuel economy," "good reliability," or "powerful use of light and shade in painting." Some categories, such as "price," have clearly implied judgments ("low price"), but make sure that your criteria refer implicitly or explicitly to a standard of value.

Examine your criteria from your audience's point of view. Which criteria are most important in evaluating your subject? Will your readers agree that the criteria you select are indeed the most important ones? Will changing the order in which you present your criteria make your evaluation more convincing? (Reid 342)

Balancing the Evaluation

Include both positive and negative evaluations of your subject. If all of your judgments are positive, your evaluation will sound like an advertisement. If all of your judgments are negative, your readers may think you are too critical (Reid 342).

Using Evidence

Be sure to include supporting evidence for each criterion. Without any data or support, your evaluation will be just an opinion that will not persuade your reader.

If you need additional evidence to persuade your readers, [go back to the "Collecting" stage of this process] (Reid 343).

Avoiding Overgeneralization

Avoid overgeneralizing your claims. If you are evaluating only three software programs, you cannot say that Lotus 1-2-3 is the best business program around. You can say only that it is the best among the group or the best in the particular class that you measured (Reid 343).

Making Appropriate Comparisons

Unless your goal is humor or irony, compare subjects that belong in the same class. Comparing a Yugo to a BMW is absurd because they are not similar cars in terms of cost, design, or purpose (Reid 343).

Checking for Accuracy

If you are citing other people's data or quoting sources, check to make sure your summaries and data are accurate (Reid 343).

Working on Transitions, Clarity, and Style

Signal the major divisions in your evaluation to your reader using clear transitions, key words, and paragraph hooks. At the beginning of new paragraphs or sections of your essay, let your reader know where you are going.

Revise sentences for directness and clarity.

Edit your evaluation for correct spelling, appropriate word choice, punctuation, usage, and grammar (343).

Nesbitt, Laurel, Kathy Northcut, & Kate Kiefer. (1997). Academic Evaluations. Writing@CSU . Colorado State University. https://writing.colostate.edu/guides/guide.cfm?guideid=47

Essays: task words

Written Assignments

Explore what different task words mean and how they apply to your assignments

You'll need to understand what your assignments are asking you to do throughout your studies. Your assessments use 'task words' that explain what you need to do in your work.  

Task words are the words or phrases in a brief that tell you what to do. Common examples of task words are 'discuss', 'evaluate', 'compare and contrast', and 'critically analyse'. These words are used in assessment marking criteria and will showcase how well you've answered the question.

None of these words have a fixed meaning. Your lecturers may have specific definitions for your subject or task so you should make sure you have a good idea of what these terms mean in your field. You can check this by speaking to your lecturer, checking your course handbook and reading your marking criteria carefully.

Task words and descriptions

• Account for : Similar to ‘explain’ but with a heavier focus on reasons why something is or is not the way it is.
• Analyse : This term has the widest range of meanings according to the subject. Make a justified selection of some of the essential features of an artefact, idea or issue. Examine how these relate to each other and to other ideas, in order to help better understand the topic. See ideas and problems in different ways, and provide evidence for those ways of seeing them. 
• Assess : This has very different meanings in different disciplines. Measure or evaluate one or more aspect of something (for example, the effectiveness, significance or 'truth' of something). Show in detail the outcomes of these evaluations.
• Compare : Show how two or more things are similar.
• Compare and contrast : Show similarities and differences between two or more things.
• Contrast : Show how two or more things are different.
• Critically analyse : As with analysis, but questioning and testing the strength of your and others’ analyses from different perspectives. This often means using the process of analysis to make the whole essay an objective, reasoned argument for your overall case or position.
• Critically assess : As with “assess”, but emphasising your judgments made about arguments by others, and about what you are assessing from different perspectives. This often means making the whole essay a reasoned argument for your overall case, based on your judgments.
• Critically evaluate : As with 'evaluate', but showing how judgments vary from different perspectives and how some judgments are stronger than others. This often means creating an objective, reasoned argument for your overall case, based on the evaluation from different perspectives.
• Define : Present a precise meaning. 
• Describe : Say what something is like. Give its relevant qualities. Depending on the nature of the task, descriptions may need to be brief or the may need to be very detailed.
• Discuss : Provide details about and evidence for or against two or more different views or ideas, often with reference to a statement in the title. Discussion often includes explaining which views or ideas seem stronger.
• Examine : Look closely at something. Think and write about the detail, and question it where appropriate.
• Explain : Give enough description or information to make something clear or easy to understand.
• Explore : Consider an idea or topic broadly, searching out related and/or particularly relevant, interesting or debatable points.
• Evaluate : Similar to “assess”, this often has more emphasis on an overall judgement of something, explaining the extent to which it is, for example, effective, useful, or true. Evaluation is therefore sometimes more subjective and contestable than some kinds of pure assessment.
• Identify : Show that you have recognised one or more key or significant piece of evidence, thing, idea, problem, fact, theory, or example.
• Illustrate : Give selected examples of something to help describe or explain it, or use diagrams or other visual aids to help describe or explain something.
• Justify : Explain the reasons, usually “good” reasons, for something being done or believed, considering different possible views and ideas.
• Outline : Provide the main points or ideas, normally without going into detail.
• Summarise : This is similar to 'outline'. State, or re-state, the most important parts of something so that it is represented 'in miniature'. It should be concise and precise.
• State : Express briefly and clearly. 

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What Does It Mean to Synthesize for Writing Assignments?

Synthesis Writing – What It Means and How to Do it!

Have you been asked to synthesize material for a writing assignment? Are you taking a college course where your instructor doesn’t want you to use quotes but instead, write in your own words?

If the answer is yes, you’ve come to the right place. This post is all about that word “synthesize” with a specific focus on essay based writing for college students.

On this page, you will learn:

• The definition of synthesis
• What synthesis means in the context of writing assignments.
• How synthesizing looks in essays.
• How to synthesize the material you are reading and apply to your paper.
• See an example college essay written entirely through synthesis.
• Additional writing tips to help you earn the highest possible score on college papers.

You may be wondering what qualifies me to author this piece? It’s simple – I’m a college professor who has been teaching business and psychology courses at for almost twenty years. In my work, I evaluate writing submitted by students and assignment a grade.

So the bottom line is this: I know exactly what your professor is looking for when ask you to synthesize.  I require the same approach to writing for my learners.

OK – now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s jump right in.

What does synthesis or synthesize mean?

Synthesis is a ten-dollar word to describe the combination of two or more ideas or concepts into your writing using your own words .

Think of this as a way of bringing together different themes that you observe from your reading material and then writing about it in your own voice.

Example of synthesis in everyday life

If a friend asked you to explain the similarities and differences between Star Trek and Star Wars, how would you respond?

Whatever your answer might be, you will be synthesizing .

Here is how I might answer that question in casual conversation.

Star Trek is similar to Star Wars in that both take place in the future and presented as science fiction. Additionally, both draw upon age-old concepts of a shared journey.  

But the two shows differ in that Star Trek is heavily focused on exploration. Star Wars, on the other hand, is all about survival.

See how this works? Simple, huh?

Notice how I talked about both shows without quoting anyone else. In addition, did you see how I pulled in other material I knew about (“age-old concepts”) as part of the dynamic?

Folks, I promise you synthesis is not complicated. The problem is college educators, like English professors and business instructors, don’t take the time to explain what this term means or how it works.

In fact, the very reason I am blogging about this topic is that there’s not a lot of useful resources on the web that explains – with examples – how synthesis looks.

Most sites engage in babble and use a bunch of fancy words that don’t get to the heart of what you are looking for.

What does synthesis mean when I write essays?

When your professor or teacher asks you to write an essay and synthesize , here is what they are really saying to you:

• Discuss your understanding of the material in your own words.
• Demonstrate your knowledge of key concepts in your own words.
• Apply that knowledge to your writing in your own words.

As you will see, the “in your own words” is critical. To help draw a mental picture, let’s have a little fun and go camping.

Campfire Analogy

I’d like you to imagine that we are sitting around a campfire with your fellow classmates, roasting marshmallows.

As you take in the smell of burning wood and watch golden ambers float into the air, one of your classmates asks the group a question.

“ I wonder where marshmallows come from?”

Let’s assume you know the answer to this question. How would you respond?

Would you quote, verbatim, the words of someone else or would you simply start talking about your knowledge of marshmallows?

Hopefully, the answer to that question is the later. In other words, you might say something like:

Marshmallows are kind of amazing. They have been with us for nearly 2000 years, dating back to the early Egyptians.

Believe it or not, they are made from a combination of sap from the mallow plant – plus egg whites and a little sugar. They even make them in different colors, thanks to dyes. How cool is that?

Notice how you gave that answer is a very conversational way?

While you may not have recognized it, you were synthesizing!

Just for the sake of demonstration, here’s how you wouldn’t answer that question:

According to the Encyclopedia, “Marshmallows are a sugar-based confectionery that in its modern form typically consists of sugar, water and gelatin whipped to a squishy consistency, molded into small cylindrical pieces, and coated with corn starch. Additives may be included to change the color-scheme”

The reasons you wouldn’t answer it this way is because:

1)  Nobody talks like that unless they are an android.

2) Quoting doesn’t demonstrate you really know the answer. All it shows is that somebody else knows the answer and you don’t.

My point is this  – Your professor will be grading you on your ability to explain different concepts in your own words.

That’s synthesis.

Let’s look at another example but this time, something more complex. Again, I’d like you to pretend we are all sitting around the campfire.

As your fellow students gossip about the latest rumors, somebody points to the sky and shouts, “Holy crap – look, it’s a shooting star!”

Suddenly you gaze towards the heavens. Your eye catches a fast-moving white light racing from east to west. Seconds later, it’s gone.

Excited, everyone starts talking about where comets come from and if they present a risk to earth. Mesmerized by the conversation, you find yourself sucked in.

That’s when somebody asks:

“Do you think an asteroid killed the dinosaurs?”

Based on your knowledge of this topic, how might you respond? Well, assuming you knew the answer, you might say something like:

A lot of people say that the dinosaurs were killed off by a huge asteroid, which blocked the sun and triggered a mass extinction event.

The problem is not everyone agrees.

There are some scientists who believe the dinosaurs died off because of massive volcanic eruptions, which made the air unbeathable. 

What you just read above is an example of synthesis. In your own words, you explained two theories in a straightforward, easy to understand way.

Not so difficult, is it?

How does synthesis look in a writing assignment?

Now that you’ve grasped the basics, let’s look at an example for a writing assignment.

Pretend your instructor gives you this as homework.

Assignment Directions:

Define Freud’s theory of denial. Discuss what denial is used for. Apply denial to a hypothetical situation. Write out your thoughts about denial by answering the question: Do you believe denial serves a purpose?

Right off the top, the first thing you’ll want to do is underline the action words in the directions.

– Define

– Discuss

– Apply

Once you’ve done this, it’s time to formulate a reply using synthesis. Here’s what you might write:

Sigmund Freud is considered the father of modern psychotherapy and one of the most important contributors to the field of psychology.

As part of his extensive body of work, he postulated that human beings use various kinds of defense mechanisms as tools for coping with unpleasant life situations (Smith, 2017).

One of those defense mechanisms is called denial.

In Freudian psychology, denial simply means that a person is unable to acknowledge something negative.

For example, a college student named Ed gets caught plagiarizing on an essay. As a result, he fails the course and is told by student services that his scholarship will be canceled.

To deal with the bad news, Ed pretends everything is fine. He even registers for new courses as part of his degree program.

But the reality of his situation sets in days later.

That’s when Ed receives an email from the registrar informing him that he must use a credit card to pay for his classes. Additionally, the email states that because of plagiarism, his scholarship is no longer active.

Suddenly, he starts to feel deep shame, particularly when it dawns on him that he’ll have to beg his parents for money. 

In short, denial acts as a kind of subconscious shield against psychological or emotional trauma. Sometimes, the shield is short term.

Other times, it can be extended for many years (Davis, 2018). Much depends on the person, the events, and the individual’s life history.

In the narrow sense, I believe denial allows a person to get through the present moment. The problem, however, occurs when denial is left unchecked and doesn’t allow space for the person to take responsibility for their actions.

Notice how I wrote the response. Using the action words from the directions, I synthesized material from various sources and applied it to my writing.

That’s called synthesizing.

By writing in your own voice, you demonstrate to your instructor that:

• You can define a topic
• You can discuss a concept coherently.
• You can apply the construct to a hypothetical situation.
• You can pull together different theories.

Synthesizing is not the same summarizing

I am often asked if synthesis is the same as summarizing. The answer to that question is a solid no .

When you are asked to summarize, your instructor is requesting that you break down the major highlights of a theory, case study, concept or news story.

Here’s an example of summarizing, using Freud’s theory of denial.

Freud believed that people employ denial as a shield against emotional or psychological trauma.

All I’ve done with the above example is provided a quick snapshot about Freud’s theory. In short, I’m reiterating a main point.

With synthesis, I’m pulling on different areas to create a meaningful answer. I’m also expanding the conversation with different ideas.

Additional tips when asked to synthesize

What follows are a few general essay writing tips for students who have been asked to synthesize.

• Underline all action words in the directions.
• Use those action words as a guide for what you will write.
• Never start your essay off with a quote.
• Unless absolutely necessary, don’t use quotes at all.
• NEVER copy and paste from the web and try to pass it off as your writing. With today’s plagiarism technology, there’s a good chance you will get busted.
• Write your essays in a conversational tone. This will help you to synthesize, much like the campfire examples mentioned earlier.
• When referencing the work of others, speak in your own voice and then cite at the end of the sentence.
• Break up paragraphs to help with flow
• Ask your professor if you can write in the first person.
• Expand on the topic you have been asked to write about and go beyond simply answering the essay question.

Example essay using synthesis

Because I understand it helps to see real life examples, I’m sharing an essay with you that I wrote using synthesis. Notice that I never quote in this document.

Instead, I speak in my own voice (third person) and cite where necessary.

By the way, I don’t pretend to be the perfect writer. Use the downloadable PDF below as an example of what synthesizing looks like.

Click for Example Synthesis Writing Essay

Questions about synthesis?

Are you struggling with writing in synthesis? Share your questions below and let others respond.

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2.2: The Prompt: What Does “Analyze” Mean Anyway?

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Often, the handout or other written text explaining the assignment—what professors call the assignment prompt —will explain the purpose of the assignment, the required parameters (length, number and type of sources, referencing style, etc.), and the criteria for evaluation. Sometimes, though—especially when you are new to a field—you will encounter the baffling situation in which you comprehend every single sentence in the prompt but still have absolutely no idea how to approach the assignment. No one is doing anything wrong in a situation like that. It just means that further discussion of the assignment is in order. Here are some tips:

• Focus on the verbs . Look for verbs like “compare,” “explain,” “justify,” “reflect” or the all-purpose “analyze.” You’re not just producing a paper as an artifact; you’re conveying, in written communication, some intellectual work you have done. So the question is, what kind of thinking are you supposed to do to deepen your learning?
• Put the assignment in context . Many professors think in terms of assignment sequences . For example, a social science professor may ask you to write about a controversial issue three times: first, arguing for one side of the debate; second, arguing for another; and finally, from a more comprehensive and nuanced perspective, incorporating text produced in the first two assignments. A sequence like that is designed to help you think through a complex issue. Another common one is a scaffolded research paper sequence: you first propose a topic, then prepare an annotated bibliography, then a first draft, then a final draft, and, perhaps, a reflective paper. The preparatory assignments help ensure that you’re on the right track, beginning the research process long before the final due date, and taking the time to consider recasting your thesis, finding additional sources, or reorganizing your discussion. 5 If the assignment isn’t part of a sequence, think about where it falls in the semester, and how it relates to readings and other assignments. Are there headings on the syllabus that indicate larger units of material? For example, if you see that a paper comes at the end of a three-week unit on the role of the Internet in organizational behavior, then your professor likely wants you to synthesize that material in your own way. You should also check your notes and online course resources for any other guidelines about the workflow. Maybe you got a rubric a couple weeks ago and forgot about it. Maybe your instructor posted a link about “how to make an annotated bibliography” but then forgot to mention it in class.
• Try a free-write . When I hand out an assignment, I often ask students to do a five-minute or ten-minute free-write. A free-write is when you just write, without stopping, for a set period of time. That doesn’t sound very “free;” it actually sounds kind of coerced. The “free” part is what you write—it can be whatever comes to mind. Professional writers use free-writing to get started on a challenging (or distasteful) writing task or to overcome writers block or a powerful urge to procrastinate. The idea is that if you just make yourself write, you can’t help but produce some kind of useful nugget. Thus, even if the first eight sentences of your free write are all variations on “I don’t understand this” or “I’d really rather be doing something else,” eventually you’ll write something like “I guess the main point of this is …” and—booyah!—you’re off and running. As an instructor, I’ve found that asking students to do a brief free-write right after I hand out an assignment generates useful clarification questions. If your instructor doesn’t make time for that in class, a quick free-write on your own will quickly reveal whether you need clarification about the assignment and, often, what questions to ask.
• Ask for clarification the right way . Even the most skillfully crafted assignments may need some verbal clarification, especially because students’ familiarity with the field can vary enormously. Asking for clarification is a good thing. Be aware, though, that instructors get frustrated when they perceive that students want to skip doing their own thinking and instead receive an exact recipe for an A paper. Go ahead and ask for clarification, but try to convey that you want to learn and you’re ready to work.In general, avoid starting a question with “Do we have to …” because I can guarantee that your instructor is thinking, “You don’t have to do crap. You’re an adult. You chose college. You chose this class. You’re free to exercise your right to fail.” Similarly, avoid asking the professor about what he or she “wants.” You’re not performing some service for the professor when you write a paper. What they “want” is for you to really think about the material.

What is an Assignment in Options?

How does assignment work, what does “write an option” mean, how do you know if an option position will be assigned, what happens after an option is assigned, short put vs. short call, option assignment examples, option assignment summed up, supplemental content, what is an option assignment & how does it work.

Options assignment refers to the process in which the obligations of an options contract are fulfilled. This happens when the holder of an options contract decides to exercise their rights.

When an option holder decides to exercise, the Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) will randomly assign the exercise notice to one of the option writers.

A call option gives the holder the right to buy an underlying asset at a specified price (the strike price) within a certain period. If the holder decides to exercise a call option, the seller (writer) of the option is obligated to sell the underlying asset at the strike price. In this case, the option seller is said to be "assigned."

A put option gives the holder the right to sell an underlying asset at a specified price within a certain period. If the holder decides to exercise a put option, the seller of the option is obligated to buy the underlying asset at the strike price. Again, the option seller is "assigned" in this scenario.

Importantly, being assigned on an option can lead to significant financial obligations, particularly if the option writer does not already own the underlying asset for a call option (known as a naked call) or does not have the cash to buy the underlying asset for a put option. Therefore, option writers should be prepared for the possibility of assignment.

Options assignment works in tandem with the exercise of an options contract. It's the process of fulfilling the obligations of the options contract when the option holder decides to exercise their rights.

In general, the options assignment process includes four steps, as outlined below: 

Option Exercise : The holder of the option (the investor who purchased the option) decides to exercise the option. This decision is typically made when it is beneficial for the option holder to do so. For example, if the market price of the underlying asset is favorable compared to the strike price in the option contract.

Notification : When the option is exercised, the Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) is notified. The OCC then selects a member brokerage firm, which in turn chooses one of its clients who has written (sold) an options contract of the same series (same underlying asset, strike price, and expiration date) to be assigned.

Assignment : The selected option writer (the investor who sold the option) is then assigned by the brokerage. The assignment means that the option writer now has the obligation to fulfill the terms of the options contract.

Fulfillment : If it was a call option that was exercised, the assigned writer must sell the underlying asset to the option holder at the agreed-upon strike price. If it was a put option that was exercised, the assigned writer must buy the underlying asset from the option holder at the strike price.

Writing an option refers to the act of selling an options contract. 

This term is used because the seller is essentially creating (or "writing") a new contract that gives the buyer the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell a security at a predetermined price within a specific period.

There are two types of options that investors/traders can write: a call option or a put option. Further details for each are outlined below:

Writing a Call Option : This process involves selling someone the right to buy a security from you at a specified price (the strike price) before the option expires. If the buyer decides to exercise their right, you, as the writer, must sell them the security at that strike price, regardless of the market price. If you don't own the underlying security, this is known as writing a naked call, which can involve substantial risk.

Writing a Put Option : This process involves selling someone the right to sell a security to you at a specified price before the option expires. If the buyer decides to exercise their right, you, as the writer, must buy the security from them at that strike price, regardless of the market price.

When an investor/trader writes an option, he/she receives the option’s premium from the buyer. This premium is theirs to keep, regardless of whether the option is exercised.

However, writing options can be a highly risky endeavor, so investors and traders should be aware of these risks (and accept) them, prior to engaging in options writing activity. 

For call options, if the market price goes much higher than the strike price, the option writer (i.e. seller) is still obligated to sell at the lower strike price. For put options, if the market price goes significantly lower than the strike price, the option writer (i.e. seller) must buy the asset at the higher strike price, potentially resulting in a loss. 

As such, writing options (i.e. selling options) is typically reserved for experienced investors/traders who are comfortable with the risks involved.

It’s impossible to know for certain if a given option will be assigned.

However, there are several situations in which an option assignment becomes more likely, as detailed below:

In-the-money (ITM) Options : An option is more likely to be exercised, and therefore assigned, if it's in the money . That means the market price of the underlying asset is above the strike price for a call option, or below the strike price for a put option. This is because exercising the option in such a scenario would be profitable for the option holder.

Near Expiration : Options are also more likely to be exercised as they approach their expiration date, particularly if they are in the money. This is because the time value of the option (a component of its price) diminishes as the option nears expiration, leaving only the intrinsic value (the difference between the market price of the underlying asset and the strike price).

Dividend Payments : For call options, if the underlying security is due to pay a dividend, and the amount of the dividend is larger than the time value remaining in the option's price, it might make sense for the holder to exercise the option early to capture the dividend. This could lead to early assignment for the writer of the option.

Remember, even if the above scenarios exist, it does not guarantee assignment, as the option holder might not choose to exercise the option. The decision to exercise is entirely up to the option holder. 

Therefore, when writing (i.e. selling) options, investors and traders should be prepared for the possibility of assignment at any time until the option expires.

Remember, as the writer of the option, you receive and keep the premium regardless of whether the option is exercised or not. But this premium may not be sufficient to offset any loss from the assignment. That's why writing options involves risk and requires careful consideration.

1. Call Option Assignment:

Imagine a scenario in which you've written (sold) a call option for ABC stock. The call option has a strike price of $60 and the expiration date is in one month. For selling this option, you've received a premium of $5.

Now, let's say the stock price of ABC stock shoots up to $70 before the expiration date. The option holder can choose to exercise the option since it is now "in-the-money" (the current stock price is higher than the strike price). If the option holder decides to exercise their right, you, as the writer, are then assigned.

Being assigned means you have to sell ABC shares to the option holder for the strike price of $60, even though the current market price is $70. If you already own the ABC shares, then you simply deliver them. If you don't own them, you must buy the shares at the current market price ($70) and sell them at the strike price ($60), incurring a loss.

2. Put Option Assignment:

Suppose you've written a put option for XYZ stock. The put option has a strike price of $50 and expires in one month. You receive a premium of $5 for writing this option.

Now, if the stock price of XYZ stock drops to $40 before the option's expiration date, the option holder may choose to exercise the option since it's "in-the-money" (the current stock price is lower than the strike price). If the holder exercises the option, you, as the writer, are assigned.

Being assigned in this scenario means you have to buy XYZ shares from the option holder at the strike price of $50, even though the current market price is $40. This means you pay more for the stock than its current market value, incurring a loss.

What does an option assignment mean?

What happens when a call is assigned.

If it was a call option that was exercised, the assigned writer must sell the underlying asset to the option holder at the agreed-upon strike price.

What happens when a short option is assigned?

How often do options get assigned.

The frequency with which options get assigned can vary significantly, depending on a number of factors. These can include the type of option, its moneyness (whether it's in, at, or out of the money), time to expiration, volatility of the underlying asset, and dividends.

According to FINRA , only about 7% of options positions are typically exercised. But that does not imply that investors can expect to be assigned on only 7% of their short positions. Investors may have some, all, or none of their short options positions assigned.

How often do options get assigned early?

According to FINRA , only 7% of all options are exercised, which indicates that early assignment options constitute an even lower percentage of the total than 7%.

How late can options be assigned?

In most cases, options can be exercised (and thus assigned to the writer) at any time up to the expiration date for American style options. However, the exact timing can depend on the rules of the specific exchange where the option is traded.

Typically, the holder of an American style option has until the close of business on the expiration date to decide whether to exercise it. Once the decision is made and the exercise notice is submitted, the Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) randomly assigns the exercise notice to one of the member brokerage firms with clients who have written (sold) options in the same series. The brokerage firm then assigns one of its clients.

Do I keep the premium if I get assigned?

As the writer of the option, you receive and keep the premium regardless of whether the option is exercised or not. But this premium may not be sufficient to offset any loss from the assignment. That's why writing options involves risk and requires careful consideration.

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