Understanding Your Assignment

Adapted from LOBO: Understanding Your Assignment

Instructors convey assignments in a variety of ways. Some give oral instructions. Others provide written directions on a syllabus or web page. Some outline the major requirements, while others go into detail and supply examples of the projects or papers they want you to produce.

To do well on an assignment, you must understand it completely.
To do that, you must think about:

The Assignment Description

When dissecting an assignment, pay close attention to the verbs. Instructors use words like argue, analyze, compare, or describe to guide your approach to a topic. For example, an assignment that asks you to argue requires you to take a position on an issue or idea and support your position with facts, statistics, and quotations. An assignment that requires you to analyze focuses on taking an idea or concept apart and describing the parts in detail.

Look for "multi-part" assignments. Often instructors ask you to accomplish more than one task. Listing or outlining separate parts of an assignment can help you divide a daunting assignment into manageable parts. You also may see which sections will require research beyond what is covered in class.

Take note of special instructions, including format or length restrictions, source requirements, and grading criteria.

Your Intended Audience

Find out who will actually view the finished version of your assignment. Your instructor may be your only audience, or you may be required to assume that others--your classmates or a fictional audience--will see your work.

Consider what your audience already knows about your topic. Your work may need to anticipate and reflect an audience's attitudes or biases toward your topic.

Library Resources

Most college assignments require research. A good way to begin research is to determine what you don't know and then look for resources that will fill in the gaps in your knowledge.

Choosing resources can be tricky. Some resources are better for researching current events. Others are better for researching historical topics. Some can be relied upon to present factual information; others are likely to include bias. Learning about the differences between resource types will help you decide where to begin.