How To Guide - Aassignment Writing

How to Write an Assignment

Due date
As soon as you’re given a written assignment look at the due date and see how long you have until the assignment is due.  This is a crucial piece of information that can help you turn in a well completed assignment.  The due date is crucial because you don’t want to wait until the last minute to do your assignment.  You want to give yourself enough time for help, advice, editing, etc. Otherwise, if you get stuck, if you need help, if you need anything, you cannot reach out to the teacher or other students or use any available resources to help you through the assignment.  If you procrastinate doing your assignment, you will not turn in your best work.  It is impossible to do a successful assignment by looking at it only one time.

Instructions
When given an assignment, make sure that you read through the instructions multiple times.  This may be the only way the teacher can communicate with you, and he/she may have very detailed instructions which could have a strong impact on your grade.  A good guide is to read the instructions at least twice before beginning the assignment, then once while you’re doing the assignment, and finally again when you’ve completed the assignment. So often assignments are turned in that are missing a piece or two because the student didn’t thoroughly read the instructions.

Formatting
When given an assignment, you must pay particular attention to the specifications of the teacher (this is more than just the instructions).  The teacher will tell you how they want the assignment formatted, what type of layout they want you to use, what they want in the header and footer, where they want the page numbers and so on.  If a teacher says to format the assignment MLA (Modern Language Association), APA (American Psychological Association), you have a lot of online resources to help you do this. 

A very good online resource for APA , MLA and Chicago Style is the Purdue OWL or Online Writing Lab. 
The Purdue OWL is very user friendly and can guide you in how an assignment should be formatted, how to do the cover page, how it should be cited, etc.  It gives a condensed but complete instruction on the various ways to format a paper. 

Another good online resource are the websites for APA (www.apastyle.org), MLA (www.mla.org) themselves.

Answer the question(s)
When doing an assignment, make sure that you completely answer the question or questions given.  Many people will read the question, think that they know what the question is asking, and then answer incorrectly.  If you’re struggling to understand what the question(s) is asking, be sure to contact your teacher for clarification.  Teachers will want to make sure you understand the assignment before the assignment is due. Teachers are there to help you succeed.

Spelling, Punctuation & Grammar
Always be sure to turn in an assignment that has correct spelling, grammar & punctuation.  If those skills are difficult for you, there are many resources available to help you in and out of the classroom.   Your teacher is one resource, there are several online editing tools, and possibly use your friends or family.  If you type in a search such as: “online editing for writing” you will get multiple websites that will edit your work for free.  Be sure to remember that electronic editing tools, even the editing tools Microsoft, Apple, & Google give you in your documents, are not enough to ensure you’ve done a complete job.  Electronics will not know if you are using the word principle or principal correctly.  You will most likely receive a lower grade for your assignment if your spelling, grammar & punctuation are poorly done, even if all the answers are correct.