Skills for Success / Academic Skills / The Basic Steps in Doing an Assignment
Don't be tempted just to dive in to writing your assignment. Careful planning will get you better results.
You want your work to be well-structured and clear, and to make sense to the reader.
Make sure you plan appropriately for the type of assignment you are doing. Follow the links below for more information and advice about how to plan and organise the different types of assignments:
Go back and look at the thesis statement you did in stage 2. Do you need to change it? This is important as it will control what you put in your answer.
Based on your reading, decide on the key points you need to make and start to organise your answer.
Pay attention to the best way to organise your points so that the reader will understand - the order of the ideas and how you make them flow together is important. And don't miss out any steps.
Think about what to put in the introduction, body and conclusion - again, thinking about how to make things clear for the reader.
Brake down the main body into paragraphs, each paragraph making one point in your argument.
You should check out our Paragraphs Resources page for all our materials about how to write and use academic paragraphs.
As a general rule, start with the broader context and go step by step to the focus - like an upside down triangle.
It can help to imagine your reader as someone like you, but doing a different course: what will you need to tell them so they can easily follow your argument?.
