Understanding the Assignment

There are four kinds of analysis you need to do in order to fully understand an assignment: determining its purpose, understanding how to answer an assignment’s questions, recognizing implied questions in the assignment, and recognizing the expectations of the assignment, which vary depending on the discipline and subject matter. Always make sure you fully understand an assignment before you start writing!

Determine the Purpose

The wording of an assignment should suggest its purpose. Start by carefully examining the assignment’s wording, particularly looking for key verbs. These verbs indicate the type of thinking and learning the assignment expects of you, such as summarizing information (verbs like describe, summarize), analyzing ideas (evaluate, analyze, compare), taking a position (argue, justify), or synthesizing multiple sources into an original argument (discuss, construct). By identifying what the verbs are asking you to do, you can clarify the assignment’s purpose and ensure your writing demonstrates the intended skills.

Understand How to Respond

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. Usually, 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.

Recognize 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:

• Original Prompt: “Analyze the impact of climate change on agricultural practices.” Implied Question: How has climate change affected agricultural practices?
• Original Prompt: “Examine the causes of the increasing use of social media among teenagers.” Implied Question: Why are teenagers using social media more frequently?

Some assignments are explicit about what exactly you’ll need to do, in what order, and how it will be graded. Some assignments are very open-ended, leaving you to determine the best path toward answering the project. Most fall somewhere in the middle, containing details about some aspects but leaving other assumptions unstated. It’s important to remember that your first resource for getting clarification about an assignment is your instructor—they will be very willing to talk out ideas with you to be sure you’re prepared at each step to do well with the writing.

Recognize 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 citation style your instructor expects.

Getting Started

Before beginning the writing process, always establish the following:

• Is there an assigned topic, or are you free to choose your own?
• What about your subject interests you?
• Why is your subject worth reading about?
• Double-check that your subject is not too broad – narrow it down if necessary.
• Determine the purpose of the work.
• Determine the readers of the work and their level of knowledge about the topic.
• Determine where your evidence will come from.
• Decide what kind of evidence would best serve your argument.
• Identify the required style (MLA, APA, etc.) of the paper.
• Be aware of length specifications.
• Consider if visuals might be helpful in your paper.
• Will someone be reviewing drafts of your paper? Who?
• Note your deadline and how much time you have for each stage of the writing process.

This Assignment Calculator can help you plan ahead for your writing assignment. Just plug in the date you plan to get started and the date it is due, and it will help break it down into manageable chunks.

Avoid Plagiarism

All college classes will expect you to do your own work. Using another person’s words, images, or other original creations without giving proper credit is called plagiarism.

Oftentimes, as we prepare to address an assignment, we look at other material to help us with our thinking. This is research, and it’s a great thing! Professors always do research! When we do research to help us clarify our thinking, however, we need to be sure to acknowledge the sources that we have consulted and the ways in which our ideas have been influenced by others.

We use different citation guides (like APA and MLA) to format citations and lists of references. Sometimes students aren’t sure how to do these references correctly, and so they leave out the citations altogether. That’s never a good idea. Even if you aren’t sure how to create a perfect citation, always include references to all the material you’ve consulted. Otherwise, you could be committing plagiarism: taking someone else’s work (words and/or ideas) and presenting it as your own—the equivalent of cheating on a test. In order to be sure you don’t accidentally leave out a source, remember to keep track of what you consult as you begin research for a project or assignment.