Assignment and Report Writing: Assignment Writing

Step 1: Analyse the topic/question- when you write assignment you have to understand your assignment/topic before you can do anything else, you must know what is expected from you or firstly find what kind of assignment you are writing. Is it an essay, report, annotated bibliography, literature review, case study etc.? After that choose the language to use to both conceptualise and define the subject you require information about, look for assignment key words or phrases, after identifying them underline them and define them, these will help your thinking and your research approaches.

Step 2: Planning – it is important to plan how you are going to tackle your assignment. Planning will enable you to prepare and deliver a work that is of high quality, at the expected time. For each assignment you should have time to:

• Construe your assignment – start by trying to understand what you are being asked to do and determine the type of assignment you should produce.
• Create a schedule – creating a schedule before embarking on an assignment will enable you to have adequate time to deliver high quality piece of work.
• Plan your answers- Before   writing your assignment make sure that you have a clear picture of what you think about the answer to the question, write down the ideas or translate the topic in your own words. This will help you source the right research material and also give the correct answers of your assignment.

Step 3: Finding information- when writing an assignment, the best thing is to find information that is reliable and not outdated. This can be only fulfilled when you read different sources of information, like Encyclopaedia, textbooks, dictionaries. It is also vital to look at bibliographies in whatever you are reading to find other sources that contain the information similar to your research question or to find additional sources of information. The University Library has an array of information sources which can be searched through the catalog, there are also periodicals and online databases subscribed to in order to meet the various information needs of the library patrons. After finding the information, evaluate the information to see if it is the right one for your assignment.

Step 4: Drafting- After finding the information from different sources of information make sure that you start to take notes from each   and every source of information you are using, this will help you not to forget/miss important information and it also help you to organise the information articulately.

Step 5: Writing – This is where you start to introduce your topic, the main points of your story, the purpose of the assignment, literature review and conclusion. This is when you start to write information that address the questions of your assignment. The structure of your writing will be determined by the type of the assignment and/or questions asked. Academic integrity should be duly practiced to avoid plagiarism and academic dishonesty.

Step 6: Editing- is when you go through your work or assignment –

To check for editorial and grammatical errors, clarity of your work, to see if references are precise and arranged and the title page/cover page provided.

Step 7: Timely Submission. It is important to submit the assignment well in time before the due date/ agreed time, failure to which it should at least be on the due date. Late submission may attract penalty.