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Top 5 Tips to Structure an Assignment with Examples

Published - 2022-10-15 Assignment Writing
Best Tips to Structure an Assignment with Examples

Writing longer assignments can call for more advanced information, communication, and critical thinking abilities than you were accustomed to in high school.

Higher education students, who usually attend universities and colleges, spend more time composing an assignment's major body than arranging it.

As a result, our professors and teachers are frequently burdened with assignments that are dense with information but lacking in clarity and structure.

A well-structured essay can assist a student in better expressing their ideas and highlighting their important points.

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Parts of an Assignment

Even though there are distinctions across disciplines in terms of the structure to be followed, there are still some crucial ideas that apply to all disciples.

  1. The Introduction
  2. The Major body
  3. The Conclusion 

Think of your essay or assignment like a three-act play. You present the topic of the assignment to your reader in the first section. You explore the assignment's primary research topic in the next section, and you conclude by summarising your results.

However, it's important to always remember the disciplinary standards. It's possible that some topics require specialized structures.

Have a look into Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) Assignment to get a better idea about the format of an assignment.

For instances: 

  • Science students typically use a three-structure approach when writing about their experiments, which includes a hypothesis, an experiment's specifics, and an inference.
  • A nursing case study should begin with the patient's medical history, then move on to the patient's pathological symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and any post-discharge medical instructions.
  • Similar to this, a marketing case study should start with a quick overview of the business, then move on to situational analysis, an examination of the external environment, and lastly, recommendations for the future.
  1. The most crucial section of any assignment is the introduction

In order to keep the reader's interest, it is crucial to develop a compelling introduction. An introduction can be written in one of two ways: deductively or inductively.

    1. Deductive Style

A researcher uses deduction to proceed from the general to the specific in a deductive style of writing. It is a "top-down" methodology where a researcher begins with a broad introduction before moving on to a particular issue. For instance, “I need to reach the airport one hour in advance in order to catch my flight late at night.”  

    1. Inductive Style

In contrast, an inductive writing style involves a researcher moving from the particular to the universal. It is a "bottom-up" strategy where a specific point or points adds up to a broad conclusion. Here is an illustration to help make your point.

  • To get to my office by 10 o'clock, I need to leave my house at least two hours in advance.
  • And, on my drive to work in the morning, there is a tonne of traffic congestion.

In the first method, we make a broad observation (such as significant traffic congestion) and use it to infer that we should leave early from home in order to arrive at the workplace on time.

However, in the second approach, we begin with a particular fact (like my early departure from home) and use it as a premise to support a generalisation. Any assignment's introduction can be written using either inductive or deductive writing techniques. There are times when the two are combined.

  1. List all of your research findings in the assignment's main body

This is significant from a disciplinary perspective since the goal of assigning a task is to evaluate students' comprehension of the material covered in class and their ability to apply it to a particular research challenge.

Students must show that they have knowledge of the subject matter they are writing about. There are three things students should always keep in mind when preparing an assignment, despite the fact that there is no one formula that will work for all disciplines:

  • You should make an effort to stay on topic
  • Analytical thinking is usually preferred to descriptive thinking.
  • You shouldn't include anything in your writing that wasn't stated in the introduction.
  1. In your conclusion, wrap up your discussion

The student should provide an overview of the major subjects covered in the assignment. They should reaffirm the essential points for the reader(s) before stating their intervention and outlining how it differs from prior works on the issue.

It's vital to keep in mind that not all essays or projects have to adhere to these guidelines in full. It's always a good idea to use creativity and edit your work to meet the demands of the course or the instructor.

However, the discussion above will aid the students in remembering a few key points that ought to be shared by all excellently produced tasks, regardless of the discipline. 

Top 5 tips to structure an assignment

Make a road map or a plan before you start writing your project to use as a reference. By doing this, you may make sure that none of the assignment's important components have been missed.

Describe the topic in general terms in the introduction. Start each paragraph of the body with the main concept you will be discussing.

Use transitional words to keep the flow of the several paragraphs consistent with the thesis statement.

Take note of the key ideas that have been raised and conclude with a suggestion.

Here are the top 5 tips for you in order to structure your assignment -

  1. Make use of all information sources accessible

Beyond instructions and deadlines, lecturers are supplying more and more materials. However, students frequently ignore these. You can look at various student-friendly software that is available to university students that will help them with all their assignment needs, for instance, to see how your assignment will be scored.

There are a few tools that students can put best to their use like discussion boards, reading lists, example assignments, and lecture recordings. Usually, all of this data is gathered via a learning management system, an online platform. According to research, students who utilise their Learning management system more regularly are likely to get better marks overall.

  1. Consider referencing while writing

Plagiarism is a serious offense at universities and is defined as the use of another person's words or ideas without giving them due credit. It represents dishonesty. But frequently, students don't even realise that this actually comes under cheating. They also lack the knowledge from citing authentic sources or the writing abilities necessary to effectively paraphrase the material from their sources.

You can talk to your university's library, which is probably going to provide in-person workshops or online materials on referencing, to avoid making this error. Academic support programmes might also help with paraphrasing. You will definitely have less time searching for and formatting references if you use this kind of software. However, you still need to review the formatting and become familiar with the citation style used in your discipline.

  1. Prepare before writing

Before starting to write, it is important to be ready with a blueprint of what you’re about. It is just the same as building a house without a foundation. This is true while writing an academic paper also. You must carefully examine the quantity of parts, their structure, and the data and sources you will use in each. A solid plan helps students produce better texts, according to study. Planning can help you get better marks and spend less time pondering what to write next while staring blankly at the computer

  1. Pick the right phrases

For instance, look at the following example and let's make out which of these phrases would sound more appropriate and be better suited for this - 

“This writing talks about the reasons for the downfall of money”

                                        OR

  “This paper investigates the causes of recession” 

In contrast to the language you typically use on social media or when chatting with your friends, written communication at the university is more formal and technical. Definitions of academic terms are typically more detailed and lengthy. More than just the earth’s “raising temperature” is implied by the term "climate change".

  1. Revise, Review and Edit

You will skip a crucial phase in the writing process if you finish the assignment's final paragraph a few minutes before the due date and that is editing and proofreading your material. A study indicated that after including the planning, drafting, and editing processes in their writing, a group of university students performed noticeably better on a test.

Written communication is a talent that takes work and commitment to master. Universities are making investments in support services to assist students in this process, including in-person workshops, one-on-one counseling, and online courses. You can also benefit from a large selection of online tools, many of which are free, like spell checkers, vocabulary builders, and referencing software.

To Sum up:

University assignments can be quite challenging but to make it an easy ride, one can always follow these given tips. Make a schedule and divide the assignment into doable portions. The ideas and main arguments can also be organised into a simple assignment structure. Start by framing the thesis statement and save the introduction for the end.

Make sure each point in your argument has a supporting example when structuring it. To save time, add sources to your reference list as you use them. In the conclusion, restate your prior points rather than introducing any new ones. To fix mistakes and properly cite all of your sources, edit and proofread your assignment.

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