This is a human tendency to procrastinate and complete the work at the end. Most students do the same and finish their assignments a few hours before their final deadlines. It can work out for a few students, but this results in low-quality assignments, which leads to lower grades.
To avoid this, students must check in with their deadlines, make a plan for writing their assignments, and work according to that. When you work with a plan and step-by-step process, it helps you to be organised and complete your work on time. Check-in with the deadline and evaluate every step one by one, like
- Make a plan.
- Analyse the assignment.
- Research, research, research
- Craft your first draft.
- Edit and proofread.
You can also divide the time and allot a fixed amount of time to complete each part of the assignment. Breaking the assignment into small tasks can help you complete the assignment easily without getting stressed about it.
2. Analyse The Assignment And Its Requirements
Before you dive straight into writing, analyse and understand your assignment requirements first. If you start writing without understanding the requirement, it can cause you to rewrite the whole assignment, which can lead to a late submission. Read the instructions carefully, check out every little requirement detail, and identify the following pointers to ensure.
- Assignment Type: Before writing an assignment, you must know the assignment type. Is it an essay or a presentation, a case study, a dissertation, or a thesis? Your assignment type will help you outline your assignment structure.
- Instructions: Check out the instruction word. Is it asking you to discuss, explain, argue, evaluate, and summarise? It helps you understand what your assignment requires you to do.
- Word count and formatting: this point tells you how many words every section should contain, and the formatting means the font size and type and any other formatting requirements.
3. Conduct thorough research.
The next step after understanding all the requirements is that now you go for the research part. Conduct thorough research and find relevant data from reliable sources to write a compelling assignment. Identify all the credible sources and the data you want to find, such as definitions, examples, pieces of evidence, visuals, diagrams, research papers, and every other piece of data that is needed to complete your assignment and support your arguments. There are plenty of resources where you can find information, such as
- Libraries
- Journals
- Academic books
- Online, reputable websites and databases
- Sample assignments
- Research papers from your peers and seniors
Make sure that you keep a list of all the credible sources that you have found and used for your assignment. It will be helpful for you to cite all your resources later in your assignment.
4. Outline Your Structure
Every student has faced this situation where they have no idea where to start the assignment or what to write. After understanding your assignment requirements, it is time for you to plan and outline your structure. Once you know which section is going to be part of your assignment, it will be helpful for you to organise your information. Well, every assignment contains three main sections, and that is:
- An introduction
- Body paragraphs
- Conclusion
Few students consider the thesis statement as a separate section, but this is the part of the introduction that goes at the end of the introduction and contains 2-3 sentences. Body paragraphs are part of your main research work and contain your arguments, counterarguments, and pieces of evidence that support your arguments. Then you summarise the entire paper in a brief in the conclusion part.
5. Write Your First Draft
Now that you are done outlining your structure, it's time to write your first draft. Don't overthink before writing; just write your draft in your own words, using all the researched information, and try to organise it according to the structure. Don't feel any pressure about the wording, grammar, or errors, because this is the later part. Organise all the information section by section, which comes as follows:
Introduction: This will be the first paragraph of your assignment that will explain the key points of your topic, including a thesis statement at the end with the main idea behind your topic.
Body paragraph: in body paragraphs, add all the arguments and counterarguments using a heading, subheading, and shreds of evidence to support your statements. The purpose of adding body paragraphs is to answer the assignment question that you raise in your thesis by explaining facts and data you collected in your research process with examples and quotes.
Conclusion: This part briefly summarises the entire paper and recaps all the key points of your assignment topic. Remember that this part concludes everything, so do not add or share new ideas here.
6. Cite Your Sources Properly
Citation is essential in writing assignments, so don't forget to give credit to credible sources you have used in your assignment. Before citing your sources, check out all the citation requirements in your instructions and ensure what referencing style is required to be added to your assignment. You would be required to add one or more referencing styles like APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, etc.
There are a lot of referencing style management softwares available, so you can use them as well to ensure your work. However, it is good to work with different styles by yourself, but this software saves you time; otherwise, you have to search and format your sources in a referencing list.
7. Revise And Edit Your Assignment
Writing a polished assignment is a very tough and long process. It takes time and effort. You can't write the entire assignment in one go. So take your time after you draft your assignment, and then come and revise it carefully with fresh eyes. This time, you will be able to find all the mistakes and errors. Check out all the grammar and punctuation errors, as well as every other small mistake. Go through the entire paper, sentence by sentence and word by word, and make sure these are the are the following:
- First, check that you have clearly answered the questions in your paper.
- Remove all unclear and repeated text and sentences that do not relate to your arguments.
- Check the content flow and use transition words that lead you from one paragraph to the next.
- With content flow, also check for your writing style and tone. Make sure it sounds formal and technical, and avoid using jargon and slang.
- Check to see if you missed any data to add or any sections that must be part of your assignment.
- Acknowledge all your sources.
8. Proofread For Assignment Accuracy
It is the last step in writing a polished assignment. After writing and editing your entire paper, now it's time for the final proofread. This is an essential step before final submission. Proofreading is all about checking your paper twice and looking for all the mistakes that you overlooked in your first check.
Look out for every mistake that you missed in the first take and check the flow and tone after your edits and all the minute details like grammar and punctuation. Page numbers, typos, formatting style, etc. Getting an expert opinion from an assignment writing service can also be helpful for your assignment. You can ask them to proofread your paper and get suggestions to make it more refined.
Final Thoughts
Crafting a polished assignment takes time and lots of skills and academic abilities. Take the time to learn all these skills, seek guidance, and implement all eight steps while writing your assignment. I hope this blog helps you learn to analyse and structure your assignment and helps you build all the essential academic skills.
Moreover, we have talked about it before: if you get stuck with writing your assignment, you can get expert help as well. It's very smart and helpful to get expert help for writing your assignment, as long as you are getting it for learning purposes. Visit an
online assignment expert help service to write a well-organised assignment and achieve your desired grades.