Assignment preparation involves enough planning and researching that by the time you start to write, you'll be confident about what you want to say. The more pre-writing preparation you do, the better the quality of your final work will be. See some of the writing steps in this video and the tabs below for more information.
To answer the assignment question, you'll first need to understand what is being asked of you. This involves identifying the keywords (which outline the topic of the question) and operative words (which tell you what to do with the topic).
The keywords can be used to form your search strategy for when you are researching your topic. The operative words will guide the way you write the assignment. See the example question below:
More than ever before, young Australians are turning to social media as a source of political news. Analyse the reasons for this change, and examine the benefits and drawbacks of receiving news from these sources.
Start your reading by exploring any readings that have been set for the task. Following this, or if no specific texts have been set, the next step is finding information to support your topic. It’s best to avoid a haphazard approach to finding sources, but rather look to keywords from your assignment question and mind map to help to form your search strategy. To learn more, please see the Library Information Skills Checklist page on searching.
Do not limit your research and reading to just one source or author on the issue or topic. Considering that university writing often calls for an argument, wide reading helps you to consider and reflect multiple viewpoints, which ultimately will strengthen and help to substantiate the position taken in your written response.
Read with purpose. Active reading, which means intentional, focused, purposeful reading - is an acquired skill that can take practice. Active reading will save you time as well as improve your retention and understanding of the subject matter. University study involves a lot of reading and like any other skill, the more you read, the better you'll get. Have a look at our reading strategies page to learn more.
When you combine your active reading with note taking, you'll be even more effective in remembering what you've read. Your notes will provide substance for your assignment, and because you've already paraphrased the information from the text, you'll avoid plagiarism, too. See the note taking page for more information.
Keeping a record of your sources is essential at this stage, as you will need to reference the ideas and information that come from these sources as you develop your written task. Hoping to rely on a browser search history will not work; rather record the details for the sources consulted using a consistent method that you can easily refer to later. Referencing and bibliographic management tools such as Refworks or Endnote offer one solution for this and are available for all Notre Dame students. For more information, please see the Library Refworks and Endnote pages.
If you want to take a more in-depth look at the assignment planning process for students, the Getting your head around assignments presentation, which is part of the Success Now! Writing eCourse around academic writing, uses examples to provide advice on how to:
Getting your head around assignments is also available as a live online or campus-based workshop. Register here for this and other workshops on research and writing. You can also organise an individual consultation here to talk to a learning advisor about planning your assignments.