written assignments means

Understanding Assignments

What this handout is about.

The first step in any successful college writing venture is reading the assignment. While this sounds like a simple task, it can be a tough one. This handout will help you unravel your assignment and begin to craft an effective response. Much of the following advice will involve translating typical assignment terms and practices into meaningful clues to the type of writing your instructor expects. See our short video for more tips.

Basic beginnings

Regardless of the assignment, department, or instructor, adopting these two habits will serve you well :

• Read the assignment carefully as soon as you receive it. Do not put this task off—reading the assignment at the beginning will save you time, stress, and problems later. An assignment can look pretty straightforward at first, particularly if the instructor has provided lots of information. That does not mean it will not take time and effort to complete; you may even have to learn a new skill to complete the assignment.
• Ask the instructor about anything you do not understand. Do not hesitate to approach your instructor. Instructors would prefer to set you straight before you hand the paper in. That’s also when you will find their feedback most useful.

Assignment formats

Many assignments follow a basic format. Assignments often begin with an overview of the topic, include a central verb or verbs that describe the task, and offer some additional suggestions, questions, or prompts to get you started.

An Overview of Some Kind

The instructor might set the stage with some general discussion of the subject of the assignment, introduce the topic, or remind you of something pertinent that you have discussed in class. For example:

“Throughout history, gerbils have played a key role in politics,” or “In the last few weeks of class, we have focused on the evening wear of the housefly …”

The Task of the Assignment

Pay attention; this part tells you what to do when you write the paper. Look for the key verb or verbs in the sentence. Words like analyze, summarize, or compare direct you to think about your topic in a certain way. Also pay attention to words such as how, what, when, where, and why; these words guide your attention toward specific information. (See the section in this handout titled “Key Terms” for more information.)

“Analyze the effect that gerbils had on the Russian Revolution”, or “Suggest an interpretation of housefly undergarments that differs from Darwin’s.”

Additional Material to Think about

Here you will find some questions to use as springboards as you begin to think about the topic. Instructors usually include these questions as suggestions rather than requirements. Do not feel compelled to answer every question unless the instructor asks you to do so. Pay attention to the order of the questions. Sometimes they suggest the thinking process your instructor imagines you will need to follow to begin thinking about the topic.

“You may wish to consider the differing views held by Communist gerbils vs. Monarchist gerbils, or Can there be such a thing as ‘the housefly garment industry’ or is it just a home-based craft?”

These are the instructor’s comments about writing expectations:

“Be concise”, “Write effectively”, or “Argue furiously.”

Technical Details

These instructions usually indicate format rules or guidelines.

“Your paper must be typed in Palatino font on gray paper and must not exceed 600 pages. It is due on the anniversary of Mao Tse-tung’s death.”

The assignment’s parts may not appear in exactly this order, and each part may be very long or really short. Nonetheless, being aware of this standard pattern can help you understand what your instructor wants you to do.

Interpreting the assignment

Ask yourself a few basic questions as you read and jot down the answers on the assignment sheet:

Why did your instructor ask you to do this particular task?

Who is your audience.

• What kind of evidence do you need to support your ideas?

What kind of writing style is acceptable?

• What are the absolute rules of the paper?

Try to look at the question from the point of view of the instructor. Recognize that your instructor has a reason for giving you this assignment and for giving it to you at a particular point in the semester. In every assignment, the instructor has a challenge for you. This challenge could be anything from demonstrating an ability to think clearly to demonstrating an ability to use the library. See the assignment not as a vague suggestion of what to do but as an opportunity to show that you can handle the course material as directed. Paper assignments give you more than a topic to discuss—they ask you to do something with the topic. Keep reminding yourself of that. Be careful to avoid the other extreme as well: do not read more into the assignment than what is there.

Of course, your instructor has given you an assignment so that they will be able to assess your understanding of the course material and give you an appropriate grade. But there is more to it than that. Your instructor has tried to design a learning experience of some kind. Your instructor wants you to think about something in a particular way for a particular reason. If you read the course description at the beginning of your syllabus, review the assigned readings, and consider the assignment itself, you may begin to see the plan, purpose, or approach to the subject matter that your instructor has created for you. If you still aren’t sure of the assignment’s goals, try asking the instructor. For help with this, see our handout on getting feedback .

Given your instructor’s efforts, it helps to answer the question: What is my purpose in completing this assignment? Is it to gather research from a variety of outside sources and present a coherent picture? Is it to take material I have been learning in class and apply it to a new situation? Is it to prove a point one way or another? Key words from the assignment can help you figure this out. Look for key terms in the form of active verbs that tell you what to do.

Key Terms: Finding Those Active Verbs

Here are some common key words and definitions to help you think about assignment terms:

Information words Ask you to demonstrate what you know about the subject, such as who, what, when, where, how, and why.

• define —give the subject’s meaning (according to someone or something). Sometimes you have to give more than one view on the subject’s meaning
• describe —provide details about the subject by answering question words (such as who, what, when, where, how, and why); you might also give details related to the five senses (what you see, hear, feel, taste, and smell)
• explain —give reasons why or examples of how something happened
• illustrate —give descriptive examples of the subject and show how each is connected with the subject
• summarize —briefly list the important ideas you learned about the subject
• trace —outline how something has changed or developed from an earlier time to its current form
• research —gather material from outside sources about the subject, often with the implication or requirement that you will analyze what you have found

Relation words Ask you to demonstrate how things are connected.

• compare —show how two or more things are similar (and, sometimes, different)
• contrast —show how two or more things are dissimilar
• apply—use details that you’ve been given to demonstrate how an idea, theory, or concept works in a particular situation
• cause —show how one event or series of events made something else happen
• relate —show or describe the connections between things

Interpretation words Ask you to defend ideas of your own about the subject. Do not see these words as requesting opinion alone (unless the assignment specifically says so), but as requiring opinion that is supported by concrete evidence. Remember examples, principles, definitions, or concepts from class or research and use them in your interpretation.

• assess —summarize your opinion of the subject and measure it against something
• prove, justify —give reasons or examples to demonstrate how or why something is the truth
• evaluate, respond —state your opinion of the subject as good, bad, or some combination of the two, with examples and reasons
• support —give reasons or evidence for something you believe (be sure to state clearly what it is that you believe)
• synthesize —put two or more things together that have not been put together in class or in your readings before; do not just summarize one and then the other and say that they are similar or different—you must provide a reason for putting them together that runs all the way through the paper
• analyze —determine how individual parts create or relate to the whole, figure out how something works, what it might mean, or why it is important
• argue —take a side and defend it with evidence against the other side

More Clues to Your Purpose As you read the assignment, think about what the teacher does in class:

• What kinds of textbooks or coursepack did your instructor choose for the course—ones that provide background information, explain theories or perspectives, or argue a point of view?
• In lecture, does your instructor ask your opinion, try to prove their point of view, or use keywords that show up again in the assignment?
• What kinds of assignments are typical in this discipline? Social science classes often expect more research. Humanities classes thrive on interpretation and analysis.
• How do the assignments, readings, and lectures work together in the course? Instructors spend time designing courses, sometimes even arguing with their peers about the most effective course materials. Figuring out the overall design to the course will help you understand what each assignment is meant to achieve.

Now, what about your reader? Most undergraduates think of their audience as the instructor. True, your instructor is a good person to keep in mind as you write. But for the purposes of a good paper, think of your audience as someone like your roommate: smart enough to understand a clear, logical argument, but not someone who already knows exactly what is going on in your particular paper. Remember, even if the instructor knows everything there is to know about your paper topic, they still have to read your paper and assess your understanding. In other words, teach the material to your reader.

Aiming a paper at your audience happens in two ways: you make decisions about the tone and the level of information you want to convey.

• Tone means the “voice” of your paper. Should you be chatty, formal, or objective? Usually you will find some happy medium—you do not want to alienate your reader by sounding condescending or superior, but you do not want to, um, like, totally wig on the man, you know? Eschew ostentatious erudition: some students think the way to sound academic is to use big words. Be careful—you can sound ridiculous, especially if you use the wrong big words.
• The level of information you use depends on who you think your audience is. If you imagine your audience as your instructor and they already know everything you have to say, you may find yourself leaving out key information that can cause your argument to be unconvincing and illogical. But you do not have to explain every single word or issue. If you are telling your roommate what happened on your favorite science fiction TV show last night, you do not say, “First a dark-haired white man of average height, wearing a suit and carrying a flashlight, walked into the room. Then a purple alien with fifteen arms and at least three eyes turned around. Then the man smiled slightly. In the background, you could hear a clock ticking. The room was fairly dark and had at least two windows that I saw.” You also do not say, “This guy found some aliens. The end.” Find some balance of useful details that support your main point.

You’ll find a much more detailed discussion of these concepts in our handout on audience .

The Grim Truth

With a few exceptions (including some lab and ethnography reports), you are probably being asked to make an argument. You must convince your audience. It is easy to forget this aim when you are researching and writing; as you become involved in your subject matter, you may become enmeshed in the details and focus on learning or simply telling the information you have found. You need to do more than just repeat what you have read. Your writing should have a point, and you should be able to say it in a sentence. Sometimes instructors call this sentence a “thesis” or a “claim.”

So, if your instructor tells you to write about some aspect of oral hygiene, you do not want to just list: “First, you brush your teeth with a soft brush and some peanut butter. Then, you floss with unwaxed, bologna-flavored string. Finally, gargle with bourbon.” Instead, you could say, “Of all the oral cleaning methods, sandblasting removes the most plaque. Therefore it should be recommended by the American Dental Association.” Or, “From an aesthetic perspective, moldy teeth can be quite charming. However, their joys are short-lived.”

Convincing the reader of your argument is the goal of academic writing. It doesn’t have to say “argument” anywhere in the assignment for you to need one. Look at the assignment and think about what kind of argument you could make about it instead of just seeing it as a checklist of information you have to present. For help with understanding the role of argument in academic writing, see our handout on argument .

What kind of evidence do you need?

There are many kinds of evidence, and what type of evidence will work for your assignment can depend on several factors–the discipline, the parameters of the assignment, and your instructor’s preference. Should you use statistics? Historical examples? Do you need to conduct your own experiment? Can you rely on personal experience? See our handout on evidence for suggestions on how to use evidence appropriately.

Make sure you are clear about this part of the assignment, because your use of evidence will be crucial in writing a successful paper. You are not just learning how to argue; you are learning how to argue with specific types of materials and ideas. Ask your instructor what counts as acceptable evidence. You can also ask a librarian for help. No matter what kind of evidence you use, be sure to cite it correctly—see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial .

You cannot always tell from the assignment just what sort of writing style your instructor expects. The instructor may be really laid back in class but still expect you to sound formal in writing. Or the instructor may be fairly formal in class and ask you to write a reflection paper where you need to use “I” and speak from your own experience.

Try to avoid false associations of a particular field with a style (“art historians like wacky creativity,” or “political scientists are boring and just give facts”) and look instead to the types of readings you have been given in class. No one expects you to write like Plato—just use the readings as a guide for what is standard or preferable to your instructor. When in doubt, ask your instructor about the level of formality they expect.

No matter what field you are writing for or what facts you are including, if you do not write so that your reader can understand your main idea, you have wasted your time. So make clarity your main goal. For specific help with style, see our handout on style .

Technical details about the assignment

The technical information you are given in an assignment always seems like the easy part. This section can actually give you lots of little hints about approaching the task. Find out if elements such as page length and citation format (see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial ) are negotiable. Some professors do not have strong preferences as long as you are consistent and fully answer the assignment. Some professors are very specific and will deduct big points for deviations.

Usually, the page length tells you something important: The instructor thinks the size of the paper is appropriate to the assignment’s parameters. In plain English, your instructor is telling you how many pages it should take for you to answer the question as fully as you are expected to. So if an assignment is two pages long, you cannot pad your paper with examples or reword your main idea several times. Hit your one point early, defend it with the clearest example, and finish quickly. If an assignment is ten pages long, you can be more complex in your main points and examples—and if you can only produce five pages for that assignment, you need to see someone for help—as soon as possible.

Tricks that don’t work

Your instructors are not fooled when you:

• spend more time on the cover page than the essay —graphics, cool binders, and cute titles are no replacement for a well-written paper.
• use huge fonts, wide margins, or extra spacing to pad the page length —these tricks are immediately obvious to the eye. Most instructors use the same word processor you do. They know what’s possible. Such tactics are especially damning when the instructor has a stack of 60 papers to grade and yours is the only one that low-flying airplane pilots could read.
• use a paper from another class that covered “sort of similar” material . Again, the instructor has a particular task for you to fulfill in the assignment that usually relates to course material and lectures. Your other paper may not cover this material, and turning in the same paper for more than one course may constitute an Honor Code violation . Ask the instructor—it can’t hurt.
• get all wacky and “creative” before you answer the question . Showing that you are able to think beyond the boundaries of a simple assignment can be good, but you must do what the assignment calls for first. Again, check with your instructor. A humorous tone can be refreshing for someone grading a stack of papers, but it will not get you a good grade if you have not fulfilled the task.

Critical reading of assignments leads to skills in other types of reading and writing. If you get good at figuring out what the real goals of assignments are, you are going to be better at understanding the goals of all of your classes and fields of study.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Home » Assignment – Types, Examples and Writing Guide

Assignment – Types, Examples and Writing Guide

Table of Contents

Definition:

Assignment is a task given to students by a teacher or professor, usually as a means of assessing their understanding and application of course material. Assignments can take various forms, including essays, research papers, presentations, problem sets, lab reports, and more.

Assignments are typically designed to be completed outside of class time and may require independent research, critical thinking, and analysis. They are often graded and used as a significant component of a student’s overall course grade. The instructions for an assignment usually specify the goals, requirements, and deadlines for completion, and students are expected to meet these criteria to earn a good grade.

History of Assignment

The use of assignments as a tool for teaching and learning has been a part of education for centuries. Following is a brief history of the Assignment.

• Ancient Times: Assignments such as writing exercises, recitations, and memorization tasks were used to reinforce learning.
• Medieval Period : Universities began to develop the concept of the assignment, with students completing essays, commentaries, and translations to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the subject matter.
• 19th Century : With the growth of schools and universities, assignments became more widespread and were used to assess student progress and achievement.
• 20th Century: The rise of distance education and online learning led to the further development of assignments as an integral part of the educational process.
• Present Day: Assignments continue to be used in a variety of educational settings and are seen as an effective way to promote student learning and assess student achievement. The nature and format of assignments continue to evolve in response to changing educational needs and technological innovations.

Types of Assignment

Here are some of the most common types of assignments:

An essay is a piece of writing that presents an argument, analysis, or interpretation of a topic or question. It usually consists of an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion.

Essay structure:

• Introduction : introduces the topic and thesis statement
• Body paragraphs : each paragraph presents a different argument or idea, with evidence and analysis to support it
• Conclusion : summarizes the key points and reiterates the thesis statement

Research paper

A research paper involves gathering and analyzing information on a particular topic, and presenting the findings in a well-structured, documented paper. It usually involves conducting original research, collecting data, and presenting it in a clear, organized manner.

Research paper structure:

• Title page : includes the title of the paper, author’s name, date, and institution
• Abstract : summarizes the paper’s main points and conclusions
• Introduction : provides background information on the topic and research question
• Literature review: summarizes previous research on the topic
• Methodology : explains how the research was conducted
• Results : presents the findings of the research
• Discussion : interprets the results and draws conclusions
• Conclusion : summarizes the key findings and implications

A case study involves analyzing a real-life situation, problem or issue, and presenting a solution or recommendations based on the analysis. It often involves extensive research, data analysis, and critical thinking.

Case study structure:

• Introduction : introduces the case study and its purpose
• Background : provides context and background information on the case
• Analysis : examines the key issues and problems in the case
• Solution/recommendations: proposes solutions or recommendations based on the analysis
• Conclusion: Summarize the key points and implications

A lab report is a scientific document that summarizes the results of a laboratory experiment or research project. It typically includes an introduction, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusion.

Lab report structure:

• Title page : includes the title of the experiment, author’s name, date, and institution
• Abstract : summarizes the purpose, methodology, and results of the experiment
• Methods : explains how the experiment was conducted
• Results : presents the findings of the experiment

Presentation

A presentation involves delivering information, data or findings to an audience, often with the use of visual aids such as slides, charts, or diagrams. It requires clear communication skills, good organization, and effective use of technology.

Presentation structure:

• Introduction : introduces the topic and purpose of the presentation
• Body : presents the main points, findings, or data, with the help of visual aids
• Conclusion : summarizes the key points and provides a closing statement

Creative Project

A creative project is an assignment that requires students to produce something original, such as a painting, sculpture, video, or creative writing piece. It allows students to demonstrate their creativity and artistic skills.

Creative project structure:

• Introduction : introduces the project and its purpose
• Body : presents the creative work, with explanations or descriptions as needed
• Conclusion : summarizes the key elements and reflects on the creative process.

Examples of Assignments

Following are Examples of Assignment templates samples:

Essay template:

I. Introduction

• Hook: Grab the reader’s attention with a catchy opening sentence.
• Background: Provide some context or background information on the topic.
• Thesis statement: State the main argument or point of your essay.

II. Body paragraphs

• Topic sentence: Introduce the main idea or argument of the paragraph.
• Evidence: Provide evidence or examples to support your point.
• Analysis: Explain how the evidence supports your argument.
• Transition: Use a transition sentence to lead into the next paragraph.

III. Conclusion

• Restate thesis: Summarize your main argument or point.
• Review key points: Summarize the main points you made in your essay.
• Concluding thoughts: End with a final thought or call to action.

Research paper template:

I. Title page

• Title: Give your paper a descriptive title.
• Author: Include your name and institutional affiliation.
• Date: Provide the date the paper was submitted.

II. Abstract

• Background: Summarize the background and purpose of your research.
• Methodology: Describe the methods you used to conduct your research.
• Results: Summarize the main findings of your research.
• Conclusion: Provide a brief summary of the implications and conclusions of your research.

III. Introduction

• Background: Provide some background information on the topic.
• Research question: State your research question or hypothesis.
• Purpose: Explain the purpose of your research.

IV. Literature review

• Background: Summarize previous research on the topic.
• Gaps in research: Identify gaps or areas that need further research.

V. Methodology

• Participants: Describe the participants in your study.
• Procedure: Explain the procedure you used to conduct your research.
• Measures: Describe the measures you used to collect data.

VI. Results

• Quantitative results: Summarize the quantitative data you collected.
• Qualitative results: Summarize the qualitative data you collected.

VII. Discussion

• Interpretation: Interpret the results and explain what they mean.
• Implications: Discuss the implications of your research.
• Limitations: Identify any limitations or weaknesses of your research.

VIII. Conclusion

• Review key points: Summarize the main points you made in your paper.

Case study template:

• Background: Provide background information on the case.
• Research question: State the research question or problem you are examining.
• Purpose: Explain the purpose of the case study.

II. Analysis

• Problem: Identify the main problem or issue in the case.
• Factors: Describe the factors that contributed to the problem.
• Alternative solutions: Describe potential solutions to the problem.

III. Solution/recommendations

• Proposed solution: Describe the solution you are proposing.
• Rationale: Explain why this solution is the best one.
• Implementation: Describe how the solution can be implemented.

IV. Conclusion

• Summary: Summarize the main points of your case study.

Lab report template:

• Title: Give your report a descriptive title.
• Date: Provide the date the report was submitted.
• Background: Summarize the background and purpose of the experiment.
• Methodology: Describe the methods you used to conduct the experiment.
• Results: Summarize the main findings of the experiment.
• Conclusion: Provide a brief summary of the implications and conclusions
• Background: Provide some background information on the experiment.
• Hypothesis: State your hypothesis or research question.
• Purpose: Explain the purpose of the experiment.

IV. Materials and methods

• Materials: List the materials and equipment used in the experiment.
• Procedure: Describe the procedure you followed to conduct the experiment.
• Data: Present the data you collected in tables or graphs.
• Analysis: Analyze the data and describe the patterns or trends you observed.

VI. Discussion

• Implications: Discuss the implications of your findings.
• Limitations: Identify any limitations or weaknesses of the experiment.

VII. Conclusion

• Restate hypothesis: Summarize your hypothesis or research question.
• Review key points: Summarize the main points you made in your report.

Presentation template:

• Attention grabber: Grab the audience’s attention with a catchy opening.
• Purpose: Explain the purpose of your presentation.
• Overview: Provide an overview of what you will cover in your presentation.

II. Main points

• Main point 1: Present the first main point of your presentation.
• Supporting details: Provide supporting details or evidence to support your point.
• Main point 2: Present the second main point of your presentation.
• Main point 3: Present the third main point of your presentation.
• Summary: Summarize the main points of your presentation.
• Call to action: End with a final thought or call to action.

Creative writing template:

• Setting: Describe the setting of your story.
• Characters: Introduce the main characters of your story.
• Rising action: Introduce the conflict or problem in your story.
• Climax: Present the most intense moment of the story.
• Falling action: Resolve the conflict or problem in your story.
• Resolution: Describe how the conflict or problem was resolved.
• Final thoughts: End with a final thought or reflection on the story.

How to Write Assignment

Here is a general guide on how to write an assignment:

• Understand the assignment prompt: Before you begin writing, make sure you understand what the assignment requires. Read the prompt carefully and make note of any specific requirements or guidelines.
• Research and gather information: Depending on the type of assignment, you may need to do research to gather information to support your argument or points. Use credible sources such as academic journals, books, and reputable websites.
• Organize your ideas : Once you have gathered all the necessary information, organize your ideas into a clear and logical structure. Consider creating an outline or diagram to help you visualize your ideas.
• Write a draft: Begin writing your assignment using your organized ideas and research. Don’t worry too much about grammar or sentence structure at this point; the goal is to get your thoughts down on paper.
• Revise and edit: After you have written a draft, revise and edit your work. Make sure your ideas are presented in a clear and concise manner, and that your sentences and paragraphs flow smoothly.
• Proofread: Finally, proofread your work for spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. It’s a good idea to have someone else read over your assignment as well to catch any mistakes you may have missed.
• Submit your assignment : Once you are satisfied with your work, submit your assignment according to the instructions provided by your instructor or professor.

Applications of Assignment

Assignments have many applications across different fields and industries. Here are a few examples:

• Education : Assignments are a common tool used in education to help students learn and demonstrate their knowledge. They can be used to assess a student’s understanding of a particular topic, to develop critical thinking skills, and to improve writing and research abilities.
• Business : Assignments can be used in the business world to assess employee skills, to evaluate job performance, and to provide training opportunities. They can also be used to develop business plans, marketing strategies, and financial projections.
• Journalism : Assignments are often used in journalism to produce news articles, features, and investigative reports. Journalists may be assigned to cover a particular event or topic, or to research and write a story on a specific subject.
• Research : Assignments can be used in research to collect and analyze data, to conduct experiments, and to present findings in written or oral form. Researchers may be assigned to conduct research on a specific topic, to write a research paper, or to present their findings at a conference or seminar.
• Government : Assignments can be used in government to develop policy proposals, to conduct research, and to analyze data. Government officials may be assigned to work on a specific project or to conduct research on a particular topic.
• Non-profit organizations: Assignments can be used in non-profit organizations to develop fundraising strategies, to plan events, and to conduct research. Volunteers may be assigned to work on a specific project or to help with a particular task.

Purpose of Assignment

The purpose of an assignment varies depending on the context in which it is given. However, some common purposes of assignments include:

• Assessing learning: Assignments are often used to assess a student’s understanding of a particular topic or concept. This allows educators to determine if a student has mastered the material or if they need additional support.
• Developing skills: Assignments can be used to develop a wide range of skills, such as critical thinking, problem-solving, research, and communication. Assignments that require students to analyze and synthesize information can help to build these skills.
• Encouraging creativity: Assignments can be designed to encourage students to be creative and think outside the box. This can help to foster innovation and original thinking.
• Providing feedback : Assignments provide an opportunity for teachers to provide feedback to students on their progress and performance. Feedback can help students to understand where they need to improve and to develop a growth mindset.
• Meeting learning objectives : Assignments can be designed to help students meet specific learning objectives or outcomes. For example, a writing assignment may be designed to help students improve their writing skills, while a research assignment may be designed to help students develop their research skills.

When to write Assignment

Assignments are typically given by instructors or professors as part of a course or academic program. The timing of when to write an assignment will depend on the specific requirements of the course or program, but in general, assignments should be completed within the timeframe specified by the instructor or program guidelines.

It is important to begin working on assignments as soon as possible to ensure enough time for research, writing, and revisions. Waiting until the last minute can result in rushed work and lower quality output.

It is also important to prioritize assignments based on their due dates and the amount of work required. This will help to manage time effectively and ensure that all assignments are completed on time.

In addition to assignments given by instructors or professors, there may be other situations where writing an assignment is necessary. For example, in the workplace, assignments may be given to complete a specific project or task. In these situations, it is important to establish clear deadlines and expectations to ensure that the assignment is completed on time and to a high standard.

Characteristics of Assignment

Here are some common characteristics of assignments:

• Purpose : Assignments have a specific purpose, such as assessing knowledge or developing skills. They are designed to help students learn and achieve specific learning objectives.
• Requirements: Assignments have specific requirements that must be met, such as a word count, format, or specific content. These requirements are usually provided by the instructor or professor.
• Deadline: Assignments have a specific deadline for completion, which is usually set by the instructor or professor. It is important to meet the deadline to avoid penalties or lower grades.
• Individual or group work: Assignments can be completed individually or as part of a group. Group assignments may require collaboration and communication with other group members.
• Feedback : Assignments provide an opportunity for feedback from the instructor or professor. This feedback can help students to identify areas of improvement and to develop their skills.
• Academic integrity: Assignments require academic integrity, which means that students must submit original work and avoid plagiarism. This includes citing sources properly and following ethical guidelines.
• Learning outcomes : Assignments are designed to help students achieve specific learning outcomes. These outcomes are usually related to the course objectives and may include developing critical thinking skills, writing abilities, or subject-specific knowledge.

Advantages of Assignment

There are several advantages of assignment, including:

• Helps in learning: Assignments help students to reinforce their learning and understanding of a particular topic. By completing assignments, students get to apply the concepts learned in class, which helps them to better understand and retain the information.
• Develops critical thinking skills: Assignments often require students to think critically and analyze information in order to come up with a solution or answer. This helps to develop their critical thinking skills, which are important for success in many areas of life.
• Encourages creativity: Assignments that require students to create something, such as a piece of writing or a project, can encourage creativity and innovation. This can help students to develop new ideas and perspectives, which can be beneficial in many areas of life.
• Builds time-management skills: Assignments often come with deadlines, which can help students to develop time-management skills. Learning how to manage time effectively is an important skill that can help students to succeed in many areas of life.
• Provides feedback: Assignments provide an opportunity for students to receive feedback on their work. This feedback can help students to identify areas where they need to improve and can help them to grow and develop.

Limitations of Assignment

There are also some limitations of assignments that should be considered, including:

• Limited scope: Assignments are often limited in scope, and may not provide a comprehensive understanding of a particular topic. They may only cover a specific aspect of a topic, and may not provide a full picture of the subject matter.
• Lack of engagement: Some assignments may not engage students in the learning process, particularly if they are repetitive or not challenging enough. This can lead to a lack of motivation and interest in the subject matter.
• Time-consuming: Assignments can be time-consuming, particularly if they require a lot of research or writing. This can be a disadvantage for students who have other commitments, such as work or extracurricular activities.
• Unreliable assessment: The assessment of assignments can be subjective and may not always accurately reflect a student’s understanding or abilities. The grading may be influenced by factors such as the instructor’s personal biases or the student’s writing style.
• Lack of feedback : Although assignments can provide feedback, this feedback may not always be detailed or useful. Instructors may not have the time or resources to provide detailed feedback on every assignment, which can limit the value of the feedback that students receive.

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Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

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2. Written assignments

Writing and researching, writing tools and techniques, editing and proofreading, grammar and spelling, audience, tone and purpose.

There are many different types of written assignments, including essays, reports and reviews.  Student Services  has resources to help you understand different types of written assignments and how to structure your work:

• Assignment types  — outlines the purpose, audience, tone of writing and structural features of some written assignment types, including research essays, reports, annotated bibliographies and reflective journals
• Steps for writing assignments  — breaks the assignment writing process into a series of manageable tasks
• During semester  Student Services offers workshops  to help improve your study and assignment writing skills.

Online tools and courses to improve your skills:

• The  Academic Phrasebank  — provides examples of phrases to use in academic writing, including writing introductions, describing methods, reporting results, discussing findings and writing conclusions
• Writing research papers (LinkedIn Learning course, 1h56m)  — a UQ login is required. This course covers understanding different types of research papers, researching the topic, brainstorming your focus, developing a thesis statement, writing topic sentences, composing a title, using a style guide and formatting your paper
• Improving writing through corpora (UQx free online course, 8h)   — this course aims to provide you with the tools, knowledge and skills to become a ‘language detective’, using special software to improve your academic writing. Boost your knowledge of academic words and phrases to improve your vocabulary and written fluency.

• Writing and referencing tools  has information on different tools and software to use for your written assignments
• Beginner to advanced  training in Microsoft Word  is available at the Library, including using styles, sections and tables. Knowing all the shortcuts and tricks can save you a lot of time when you are writing your document
• LinkedIn Learning has many Word tutorials. Choose one that covers the version of word you use. You may like to start with  Word Essential Training (Microsoft 365) (LinkedIn Learning, 2h 33m)  — a UQ login is required.

 Check your knowledge

Sometimes when we read aloud we say the words that should be there, even if they are not. A  text-to-speech tool  is a good way of checking the accuracy and flow of your assignment. The tool will only read what actually is written on the page.  Study hacks lists text-to-speech tools .

Student Support has information on  finding a proofreader .

You can use the spelling and grammar features in your word processing tool (e.g.  Microsoft Word  and  Google Docs ) to check what you have written. Some writing tools use generative artificial intelligence to make recommendations. Using AI tools in your studies includes information about what you should consider before using AI writing tools in assessment tasks.

Use the  Macquarie Dictionary and Thesaurus  if you are unsure about any words. It is regarded as the standard reference on Australian English.

To write effectively, you should think carefully about the intended audience and purpose of your assignment. Adjust your tone to suit your audience and the medium you are using.

The  Communication Learning in Practice for Scientists (CLIPS) website  outlines how the audience, context and purpose affects how you should communicate. The website was developed to help undergraduate science students develop their communication skills but is relevant for students in all fields.

Types of Assignments Copyright © 2023 by The University of Queensland is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Undergraduate Writing: Understanding the Assignment

Introduction, common writing terms.

Analyze = explain a multifaceted text or idea by breaking it into its parts.

Example: Analyze the relationship between hand sanitizer and disease transmission in hospitals.

Tips: Remember to state what the relationship is, but also why . The why involves critical thinking to determine all the factors in the scenario.

Assess or evaluate = determine the significance or value of something by examining it closely.

Example: Evaluate whether hand sanitizer decreases disease transmission.

Tips: Come to an overall, educated opinion on the issue based on course readings, other research, and reasoning. Write a thesis statement at the beginning of your paper to tell the reader what that opinion is.

Compare and contrast = to examine two items to discover similarities and differences.

Example : Compare and contrast three brands of hand sanitizer for effectiveness and cost.

Tips : To provide a well-rounded comparison, give equal attention to the similarities and the differences. Follow our compare/contrast guidelines before submission.

Paraphrase =  restate a passage in your own words.

Example : Paraphrase the CDC's recent announcement on the use of hand sanitizer.

Tips : It can be tempting to directly quote the statement, but paraphrasing builds your academic skills. Read the announcement carefully and then open a new document on your computer. Without looking back, reword the announcement using your own vocabulary. Finally, compare yours to the original.

Reflect =  think about an idea deeply and consider its impact.

Example : Reflect on your own use of hand sanitizer in the medical profession.

Tips : You might find that sitting in a quiet place, away from the computer, allows you to think easier. Even if you are reflecting on a bad situation in your workplace, remain neutral and objective when writing about the incident. 

Summarize =  express the main points of a reading in a shorter form.

Example : Summarize Chapter 3 of your course text on disease transmission.

Tips : While reading, pay attention to the who, what, why, where, and how in the text. It could be helpful to take notes or highlight the important information that jumps out at you.

Support your work/ideas =  justify your point of view by providing evidence.

Tips : Evidence can come in the form of statistics, examples, or other research. Such evidence is usually accompanied by a citation crediting the original source.

Once you understand the assignment instructions, jot down each component or outline the paper. Keep these tools handy as you write.

Still unsure what a word or concept means? Look it up in Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary .

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Didn't find what you need? Email us at [email protected] .

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• A step-by-step guide to the writing process

The Writing Process | 5 Steps with Examples & Tips

Published on April 24, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on December 8, 2023.

Good academic writing requires effective planning, drafting, and revision.

The writing process looks different for everyone, but there are five basic steps that will help you structure your time when writing any kind of text.

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Table of contents

Step 1: prewriting, step 2: planning and outlining, step 3: writing a first draft, step 4: redrafting and revising, step 5: editing and proofreading, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about the writing process.

Before you start writing, you need to decide exactly what you’ll write about and do the necessary research.

Coming up with a topic

If you have to come up with your own topic for an assignment, think of what you’ve covered in class— is there a particular area that intrigued, interested, or even confused you? Topics that left you with additional questions are perfect, as these are questions you can explore in your writing.

The scope depends on what type of text you’re writing—for example, an essay or a research paper will be less in-depth than a dissertation topic . Don’t pick anything too ambitious to cover within the word count, or too limited for you to find much to say.

Narrow down your idea to a specific argument or question. For example, an appropriate topic for an essay might be narrowed down like this:

Doing the research

Once you know your topic, it’s time to search for relevant sources and gather the information you need. This process varies according to your field of study and the scope of the assignment. It might involve:

• Searching for primary and secondary sources .
• Reading the relevant texts closely (e.g. for literary analysis ).
• Collecting data using relevant research methods (e.g. experiments , interviews or surveys )

From a writing perspective, the important thing is to take plenty of notes while you do the research. Keep track of the titles, authors, publication dates, and relevant quotations from your sources; the data you gathered; and your initial analysis or interpretation of the questions you’re addressing.

Check for common mistakes

Use the best grammar checker available to check for common mistakes in your text.

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Especially in academic writing , it’s important to use a logical structure to convey information effectively. It’s far better to plan this out in advance than to try to work out your structure once you’ve already begun writing.

Creating an essay outline is a useful way to plan out your structure before you start writing. This should help you work out the main ideas you want to focus on and how you’ll organize them. The outline doesn’t have to be final—it’s okay if your structure changes throughout the writing process.

Use bullet points or numbering to make your structure clear at a glance. Even for a short text that won’t use headings, it’s useful to summarize what you’ll discuss in each paragraph.

An outline for a literary analysis essay might look something like this:

• Describe the theatricality of Austen’s works
• Outline the role theater plays in Mansfield Park
• Introduce the research question: How does Austen use theater to express the characters’ morality in Mansfield Park ?
• Discuss Austen’s depiction of the performance at the end of the first volume
• Discuss how Sir Bertram reacts to the acting scheme
• Introduce Austen’s use of stage direction–like details during dialogue
• Explore how these are deployed to show the characters’ self-absorption
• Discuss Austen’s description of Maria and Julia’s relationship as polite but affectionless
• Compare Mrs. Norris’s self-conceit as charitable despite her idleness
• Summarize the three themes: The acting scheme, stage directions, and the performance of morals
• Answer the research question
• Indicate areas for further study

Once you have a clear idea of your structure, it’s time to produce a full first draft.

This process can be quite non-linear. For example, it’s reasonable to begin writing with the main body of the text, saving the introduction for later once you have a clearer idea of the text you’re introducing.

To give structure to your writing, use your outline as a framework. Make sure that each paragraph has a clear central focus that relates to your overall argument.

Hover over the parts of the example, from a literary analysis essay on Mansfield Park , to see how a paragraph is constructed.

The character of Mrs. Norris provides another example of the performance of morals in Mansfield Park . Early in the novel, she is described in scathing terms as one who knows “how to dictate liberality to others: but her love of money was equal to her love of directing” (p. 7). This hypocrisy does not interfere with her self-conceit as “the most liberal-minded sister and aunt in the world” (p. 7). Mrs. Norris is strongly concerned with appearing charitable, but unwilling to make any personal sacrifices to accomplish this. Instead, she stage-manages the charitable actions of others, never acknowledging that her schemes do not put her own time or money on the line. In this way, Austen again shows us a character whose morally upright behavior is fundamentally a performance—for whom the goal of doing good is less important than the goal of seeming good.

When you move onto a different topic, start a new paragraph. Use appropriate transition words and phrases to show the connections between your ideas.

The goal at this stage is to get a draft completed, not to make everything perfect as you go along. Once you have a full draft in front of you, you’ll have a clearer idea of where improvement is needed.

Give yourself a first draft deadline that leaves you a reasonable length of time to revise, edit, and proofread before the final deadline. For a longer text like a dissertation, you and your supervisor might agree on deadlines for individual chapters.

Now it’s time to look critically at your first draft and find potential areas for improvement. Redrafting means substantially adding or removing content, while revising involves making changes to structure and reformulating arguments.

Evaluating the first draft

It can be difficult to look objectively at your own writing. Your perspective might be positively or negatively biased—especially if you try to assess your work shortly after finishing it.

It’s best to leave your work alone for at least a day or two after completing the first draft. Come back after a break to evaluate it with fresh eyes; you’ll spot things you wouldn’t have otherwise.

When evaluating your writing at this stage, you’re mainly looking for larger issues such as changes to your arguments or structure. Starting with bigger concerns saves you time—there’s no point perfecting the grammar of something you end up cutting out anyway.

Right now, you’re looking for:

• Arguments that are unclear or illogical.
• Areas where information would be better presented in a different order.
• Passages where additional information or explanation is needed.
• Passages that are irrelevant to your overall argument.

For example, in our paper on Mansfield Park , we might realize the argument would be stronger with more direct consideration of the protagonist Fanny Price, and decide to try to find space for this in paragraph IV.

For some assignments, you’ll receive feedback on your first draft from a supervisor or peer. Be sure to pay close attention to what they tell you, as their advice will usually give you a clearer sense of which aspects of your text need improvement.

Redrafting and revising

Once you’ve decided where changes are needed, make the big changes first, as these are likely to have knock-on effects on the rest. Depending on what your text needs, this step might involve:

• Making changes to your overall argument.
• Reordering the text.
• Cutting parts of the text.
• Adding new text.

You can go back and forth between writing, redrafting and revising several times until you have a final draft that you’re happy with.

Think about what changes you can realistically accomplish in the time you have. If you are running low on time, you don’t want to leave your text in a messy state halfway through redrafting, so make sure to prioritize the most important changes.

Editing focuses on local concerns like clarity and sentence structure. Proofreading involves reading the text closely to remove typos and ensure stylistic consistency. You can check all your drafts and texts in minutes with an AI proofreader .

Editing for grammar and clarity

When editing, you want to ensure your text is clear, concise, and grammatically correct. You’re looking out for:

• Grammatical errors.
• Ambiguous phrasings.
• Redundancy and repetition .

In your initial draft, it’s common to end up with a lot of sentences that are poorly formulated. Look critically at where your meaning could be conveyed in a more effective way or in fewer words, and watch out for common sentence structure mistakes like run-on sentences and sentence fragments:

• Austen’s style is frequently humorous, her characters are often described as “witty.” Although this is less true of Mansfield Park .
• Austen’s style is frequently humorous. Her characters are often described as “witty,” although this is less true of Mansfield Park .

To make your sentences run smoothly, you can always use a paraphrasing tool to rewrite them in a clearer way.

Proofreading for small mistakes and typos

When proofreading, first look out for typos in your text:

• Spelling errors.
• Missing words.
• Confused word choices .
• Punctuation errors .
• Missing or excess spaces.

Use a grammar checker , but be sure to do another manual check after. Read through your text line by line, watching out for problem areas highlighted by the software but also for any other issues it might have missed.

For example, in the following phrase we notice several errors:

• Mary Crawfords character is a complicate one and her relationships with Fanny and Edmund undergoes several transformations through out the novel.
• Mary Crawford’s character is a complicated one, and her relationships with both Fanny and Edmund undergo several transformations throughout the novel.

Proofreading for stylistic consistency

There are several issues in academic writing where you can choose between multiple different standards. For example:

• Whether you use the serial comma .
• Whether you use American or British spellings and punctuation (you can use a punctuation checker for this).
• Where you use numerals vs. words for numbers.
• How you capitalize your titles and headings.

Unless you’re given specific guidance on these issues, it’s your choice which standards you follow. The important thing is to consistently follow one standard for each issue. For example, don’t use a mixture of American and British spellings in your paper.

Additionally, you will probably be provided with specific guidelines for issues related to format (how your text is presented on the page) and citations (how you acknowledge your sources). Always follow these instructions carefully.

If you want to know more about AI for academic writing, AI tools, or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy
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Revising, proofreading, and editing are different stages of the writing process .

• Revising is making structural and logical changes to your text—reformulating arguments and reordering information.
• Editing refers to making more local changes to things like sentence structure and phrasing to make sure your meaning is conveyed clearly and concisely.
• Proofreading involves looking at the text closely, line by line, to spot any typos and issues with consistency and correct them.

Whether you’re publishing a blog, submitting a research paper , or even just writing an important email, there are a few techniques you can use to make sure it’s error-free:

• Take a break : Set your work aside for at least a few hours so that you can look at it with fresh eyes.
• Proofread a printout : Staring at a screen for too long can cause fatigue – sit down with a pen and paper to check the final version.
• Use digital shortcuts : Take note of any recurring mistakes (for example, misspelling a particular word, switching between US and UK English , or inconsistently capitalizing a term), and use Find and Replace to fix it throughout the document.

If you want to be confident that an important text is error-free, it might be worth choosing a professional proofreading service instead.

If you’ve gone over the word limit set for your assignment, shorten your sentences and cut repetition and redundancy during the editing process. If you use a lot of long quotes , consider shortening them to just the essentials.

If you need to remove a lot of words, you may have to cut certain passages. Remember that everything in the text should be there to support your argument; look for any information that’s not essential to your point and remove it.

To make this process easier and faster, you can use a paraphrasing tool . With this tool, you can rewrite your text to make it simpler and shorter. If that’s not enough, you can copy-paste your paraphrased text into the summarizer . This tool will distill your text to its core message.

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Caulfield, J. (2023, December 08). The Writing Process | 5 Steps with Examples & Tips. Scribbr. Retrieved August 13, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-writing/writing-process/

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Assignments usually ask you to demonstrate that you have immersed yourself in the course material and that you've done some thinking on your own; questions not treated at length in class often serve as assignments. Fortunately, if you've put the time into getting to know the material, then you've almost certainly begun thinking independently. In responding to assignments, keep in mind the following advice.

• Beware of straying.  Especially in the draft stage, "discussion" and "analysis" can lead you from one intrinsically interesting problem to another, then another, and then ... You may wind up following a garden of forking paths and lose your way. To prevent this, stop periodically while drafting your essay and reread the assignment. Its purposes are likely to become clearer.
• Consider the assignment in relation to previous and upcoming assignments.  Ask yourself what is new about the task you're setting out to do. Instructors often design assignments to build in complexity. Knowing where an assignment falls in this progression can help you concentrate on the specific, fresh challenges at hand.

Understanding some key words commonly used in assignments also may simplify your task. Toward this end, let's take a look at two seemingly impenetrable instructions: "discuss" and "analyze."

1. Discuss the role of gender in bringing about the French Revolution.

• "Discuss" is easy to misunderstand because the word calls to mind the oral/spoken dimension of communication. "Discuss" suggests conversation, which often is casual and undirected. In the context of an assignment, however, discussion entails fulfilling a defined and organized task: to construct an argument that considers and responds to an ample range of materials. To "discuss," in assignment language, means to make a broad argument about a set of arguments you have studied. In the case above, you can do this by
• pointing to consistencies and inconsistencies in the evidence of gendered causes of the Revolution;
• raising the implications of these consistencies and/or inconsistencies (perhaps they suggest a limited role for gender as catalyst);
• evaluating different claims about the role of gender; and
• asking what is gained and what is lost by focusing on gendered symbols, icons and events.

A weak discussion essay in response to the question above might simply list a few aspects of the Revolution—the image of Liberty, the executions of the King and Marie Antoinette, the cry "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite!" —and make separate comments about how each, being "gendered," is therefore a powerful political force. Such an essay would offer no original thesis, but instead restate the question asked in the assignment (i.e., "The role of gender was very important in the French Revolution" or "Gender did not play a large role in the French Revolution").

In a strong discussion essay, the thesis would go beyond a basic restatement of the assignment question. You might test the similarities and differences of the revolutionary aspects being discussed. You might draw on fresh or unexpected evidence, perhaps using as a source an intriguing reading that was only briefly touched upon in lecture.

2. Analyze two of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, including one not discussed in class, as literary works and in terms of sources/analogues.

The words "analyze" and "analysis" may seem to denote highly advanced, even arcane skills, possessed in virtual monopoly by mathematicians and scientists. Happily, the terms refer to mental activity we all perform regularly; the terms just need decoding. "Analyze" means two things in this specific assignment prompt.

• First, you need to divide the two tales into parts, elements, or features. You might start with a basic approach: looking at the beginning, middle, and end. These structural features of literary works—and of historical events and many other subjects of academic study—may seem simple or even simplistic, but they can yield surprising insights when examined closely.
• Alternatively, you might begin at a more complex level of analysis. For example, you might search for and distinguish between kinds of humor in the two tales and their sources in Boccaccio or the Roman de la Rose: banter, wordplay, bawdy jokes, pranks, burlesque, satire, etc.

Second, you need to consider the two tales critically to arrive at some reward for having observed how the tales are made and where they came from (their sources/analogues). In the course of your essay, you might work your way to investigating Chaucer's broader attitude toward his sources, which alternates between playful variation and strict adherence. Your complex analysis of kinds of humor might reveal differing conceptions of masculine and feminine between Chaucer and his literary sources, or some other important cultural distinction.

Analysis involves both a set of observations about the composition or workings of your subject and a critical approach that keeps you from noticing just anything—from excessive listing or summarizing—and instead leads you to construct an interpretation, using textual evidence to support your ideas.

Some Final Advice

If, having read the assignment carefully, you're still confused by it, don't hesitate to ask for clarification from your instructor. He or she may be able to elucidate the question or to furnish some sample responses to the assignment. Knowing the expectations of an assignment can help when you're feeling puzzled. Conversely, knowing the boundaries can head off trouble if you're contemplating an unorthodox approach. In either case, before you go to your instructor, it's a good idea to list, underline or circle the specific places in the assignment where the language makes you feel uncertain.

William C. Rice, for the Writing Center at Harvard University

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Gen ed writes, writing across the disciplines at harvard college.

• Types of Assignments

Gen Ed courses transcend disciplinary boundaries in a variety of ways, so the types of writing assignments that they include also often venture outside the traditional discipline-specific essays. You may encounter a wide variety of assignment types in Gen Ed, but most can be categorized into four general types: 

• Traditional academic assignments include the short essays or research papers most commonly associated with college-level assignments. Generally speaking, these kinds of assignments are "expository" in nature, i.e., they ask you to engage with ideas through evidence-base argument, written in formal prose. The majority of essays in Expos courses fall into this category of writing assignment types.  
• Less traditional academic assignments include elements of engagement in academia not normally encountered by undergraduates. 
• Traditional non-academic assignments include types of written communication that students are likely to encounter in real world situations. 
• Less traditional non-academic assignments are those that push the boundaries of typical ‘writing’ assignments and are likely to include some kind of creative or artistic component.

Examples and Resources

Traditional academic.

For most of us, these are the most familiar types of college-level writing assignments. While they are perhaps less common in Gen Ed than in departmental courses, there are still numerous examples we could examine.

Two illustrations of common types include: 

Example 1: Short Essay  Professor Michael Sandel asks the students in his Gen Ed course on Tech Ethics to write several short essays over the course of the semester in which they make an argument in response to the course readings. Because many students will never have written a philosophy-style paper, Professor Sandel offers students a number of resources—from a guide on writing in philosophy, to sample graded essays, to a list of logical fallacies—to keep in mind. 

Example 2: Research Paper In Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Cares?, a Gen Ed course co-taught by multiple global health faculty members, students write a 12–15 page research paper on a biosocial analysis of a global health topic of their choosing for the final assignment. The assignment is broken up into two parts: (1) a proposal with annotated bibliography and (2) the final paper itself. The prompt clearly outlines the key qualities and features of a successful paper, which is especially useful for students who have not yet written a research paper in the sciences. 

Less Traditional Academic

In Gen Ed, sometimes assignments ask students to engage in academic work that, while familiar to faculty, is beyond the scope of the typical undergraduate experience. 

Here are a couple of examples from Gen Ed courses: 

Example 1: Design a conference  For the final project in her Gen Ed course, Global Feminisms, Professor Durba Mitra asks her students to imagine a dream conference  in the style of the feminist conferences they studied in class. Students are asked to imagine conference panels and events, potential speakers or exhibitions, and advertising materials. While conferences are a normal occurrence for graduate students and professors, undergraduates are much less likely to be familiar with this part of academic life, and this kind of assignment might require more specific background and instructions as part of the prompt. 

Example 2: Curate a museum exhibit In his Gen Ed class, Pyramid Schemes, Professor Peter Der Manuelian's final project offers students the option of designing a virtual museum exhibit . While exhibit curation can be a part of the academic life of an anthropologist or archaeologist, it's not often found in introductory undergraduate courses. In addition to selecting objects and creating a virtual exhibit layout, students also wrote an annotated bibliography as well as an exhibit introduction for potential visitors. 

Traditional Non-academic

One of the goals of Gen Ed is to encourage students to engage with the world around them. Sometimes writing assignments in Gen Ed directly mirror types of writing that students are likely to encounter in real-world, non-academic settings after they graduate.

The following are several examples of such assignments: 

Example 1: Policy memo In Power and Identity in the Middle East, Professor Melani Cammett assigns students a group policy memo evaluating "a major initiative aimed at promoting democracy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)." The assignment prompt is actually structured as a memo, providing context for students who likely lack experience with the format. It also outlines the key characteristics of a good memo, and it provides extensive advice on the process—especially important when students are working in groups. 

Example 2: Letter In Loss, Professor Kathleen Coleman asks students to write a letter of condolence . The letter has an unusual audience: a mother elephant who lost her calf. Since students may not have encountered this type of writing before, Professor Coleman also provides students with advice on process, pointing to some course readings that might be a good place to start. She also suggests a list of outside resources to help students get into the mindframe of addressing an elephant. 

Example 3: Podcast  Podcasts are becoming increasingly popular in Gen Ed classes, as they are in the real world. Though they're ultimately audio file outputs, they usually require writing and preparing a script ahead of time. For example, in Music from Earth, Professor Alex Rehding asks students to create a podcast in which they make an argument about a song studied in class. He usefully breaks up the assignments into two parts: (1) researching the song and preparing a script and (2) recording and making sonic choices about the presentation, offering students the opportunity to get feedback on the first part before moving onto the second. 

Less Traditional Non-academic

These are the types of assignments that perhaps are less obviously "writing" assignments. They usually involve an artistic or otherwise creative component, but they also often include some kind of written introduction or artist statement related to the work.

The following are several examples from recently offered Gen Ed courses: 

Example 1: Movie Professor Peter Der Manuelian offers students in his class, Pyramid Schemes, several options for the final project, one of which entails creating a 5–8 minute  iMovie making an argument about one of the themes of the course. Because relatively few students have prior experience making films, the teaching staff provide students with a written guide to making an iMovie as well as ample opportunities for tech support. In addition to preparing a script as part of the production, students also submit both an annotated bibliography and an artist’s statement. 

Example 2: Calligram In his course, Understanding Islam and Contemporary Muslim Societies, Professor Ali Asani asks students to browse through a provided list of resources about calligrams, which are an important traditional Islamic art form. Then they are required to "choose a concept or symbol associated with God in the Islamic tradition and attempt to represent it through a calligraphic design using the word Allah," in any medium they wish. Students also write a short explanation to accompany the design itself. 

Example 3: Soundscape In Music from Earth, Professor Alex Rehding has students create a soundscape . The soundscape is an audio file which involves layering sounds from different sources to create a single piece responding to an assigned question (e.g. "What sounds are characteristic of your current geographical region?"). Early on, as part of the development of the soundscape, students submit an artist's statement that explains the plan for the soundscape, the significance of the sounds, and the intention of the work. 

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Creating and Using Formative Writing Assignments

As writers, we know that writing is a process that takes place over time and is made up of different sorts of intellectual activities. As instructors, however, we often assign writing tasks as large, single assignments at the end of a semester. This can be too late for feedback to be meaningful or effective for future use and can encourage students to procrastinate until the last minute. By breaking up these large writing assignments into smaller “formative” assignments, you can not only provide more timely feedback but also better train students to approach writing as a process made up of different, equally important intellectual activities.

Formative assignments are low-stake, high-value smaller assignments that are later brought together into larger, cumulative assignments. For example, instead of assigning a single writing project all at once, you might schedule a series of small assignments that, for instance, require students to summarize the theories they’ve studied, analyze the evidence they will be using, and formulate and present the question and thesis to be addressed. After students have received feedback on each of these component parts, they bring them all together into the larger assignment.

There are many benefits to breaking up large assignments into smaller, formative assignments

• They encourage students to think of writing as an ongoing, developing process rather than as a single activity done all at once.
• They can keep students on track in terms of both time and content (by, for example, helping them avoid writing an entire assignment at the last minute on a bad or misguided idea).
• Rather than piling up all your own feedback work at once, they allow you to spread it out and give immediate, targeted feedback to the intellectual task at hand.
• They emphasize and target specific skills for the course or discipline (for example, source use, results discussion, and so on).

How to write formative assignments

Break a large writing assignment into its component pieces (e.g., introduction, conclusion, summary, methods, etc.).

• Prepare explicit directions for each piece. For example, provide specific explanations for what belongs in a successful introduction, or what a summary component requires, and so on. ( The best instructions also tell students why these things are required .)
• Prepare straightforward rubrics for evaluating the assignment according to the given directions.
• For example, if the first thing students need to do is analyze evidence, have them complete this assignment first; if the last thing they should do is write the introduction, have them complete this assignment last.

Use assignments to target potential stumbling blocks for students; if, for instance, you know students struggle with thesis development or counterargument, create assignments focused on these areas.

Formative assignments can also focus on specific writing conventions of the discipline, such as tone, voice, terminology, use of sources, and so on.

• WAC Clearinghouse, “Sequencing Writing Assignments”
• MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing, “Sequencing Writing Assignments”
• Kate Kiefer, “Examples of Writing ­to­ Learn Activities”
• University of Minnesota Center for Writing, “Informal, In­-class Writing Activities”

Further Support

Visit us online at http://writing.umn.edu/tww. To schedule a phone, email, or face­-to-­face teaching consultation, click here.

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52 Sample Writing Assignments

Sample writing assignments.

Curated by Amy Minervini

Rhetorical Analysis

Assignment borrowed from: https://canvas.santarosa.edu/courses/15110/pages/rhetorical-analysis-essay-prompt

Write a 4-page rhetorical analysis (analysis of the argument) of the assigned text.  You will need to complete two different tasks: (1) summarize the text’s argument and (2) explain how the text’s argument is put together.

In the  summary  section, you will need to first introduce the text you will be analyzing.  Then you will summarize  what  the text argues, noting the central claims and key evidence.

The  analysis section of the paper should take up the majority of the 4 pages.  Here you are trying to  analyze and  explain   how the argument was put together (which rhetorical strategies it uses).  How are those strategies meant to impact the reader?  In other words, how do the strategies attempt to influence the reader’s thoughts and feelings?  How do the strategies relate to and support the overall argument?  

You will need a thesis that identifies the argumentative strategies you will discuss.    Here is a sample thesis: “Author X’s argument is mainly dependent on emotional appeals, and he uses detailed description and narration to support those emotional appeals.”  For this thesis, you would then need to go on and explain and give examples of different emotional appeals that use description and narration from the text.

You need to decide which aspects of the argumentative strategy you want to focus on.  It would be impossible for you to explain all of the argumentative features of a text in 2-3 pages, so focus on the strategies that are most interesting or obvious to you, or that you think are most important to the success of the argument.  You could explain the author’s use of any one of the following rhetorical strategies and concepts we’ve discussed so far in class:

• The types of argumentative modes being used: description, narrative, comparison and contrast, definition, evaluation, and so on
• The author’s use of emotional appeals (pathos)
• How the author establishes his or her credibility (ethos)
• The how the text’s logic (logos) works (is the logic dependent upon a definition or fact? is it dependent on a cause/effect relationship? a comparison and contrast? how does the logical reasoning work?)
• How the author uses kairos

Again, rather than trying to address everything on the list above, which would be impossible, discuss what you think the text’s most important or notable rhetorical features are.  

Textual Analysis

Assignment borrowed from: https://gcccd.instructure.com/courses/20188/pages/essay-1-prompt-read-carefully

Introduction

We began our journey with “language” this semester with a couple short articles about Growth Mindset and a writing assignment targeting core academic literacy skills. College-level reading and writing can be intimidating for students because it is seen as difficult, an exclusive club to which not many people are invited. However, I would argue that once students understand the “moves,” or common practices, in academic writing, they can be successful scholars.

With this assignment, we introduce the foundational idea that academic writing is a “conversation” between scholars. In other words, intellectual writing is almost always produced in response to other texts, and does not exist as personal responses to random topics. Writing is a social, ongoing, and conversational act.

The purpose of this assignment is to:

• Read and respond to a college-level text.
• Compose college-level writing.
• Produce an academic summary of an article.
• Respond to a topic with an original argument.

• Dweck, Carol. “Brainology.”  National Association of Independent Schools.
• Hilton, Adriel. “Scholar Calls Growth Mindset a ‘Cancerous’ Idea, In Isolation.” Nov 16, 2017.
• Kohn, Alfie. “The Perils of ‘Growth Mindset’ Education: Why we’re trying to fix our kids when we should be fixing the system.” 16 August 2015.

Compose an essay, between 900-1200 words in length (about 4 pages NOT counting the Works Cited page), which answers the following question:

Is the idea of growth mindset the most effective/important way to improve our education system and student success? 

More Specifically:

• “The idea of growth mindset is the most important aspect of improving our education system because….(3 reasons you think so).  OR
• “The idea of growth mindset is not the most important aspect of improving our education system because we need to consider….. (think of what you find more important, probably from the Hilton and Kohn articles).

• Your body paragraphs should be formatted as PIEIE paragraphs. Your P should be a topic sentence (reason) in your own words, your I should be personal examples or quotes from the articles and your E should be explanations/analysis that connect back to the thesis.
• NOTE: Since you are citing the article, and possibly your own sources, don’t forget your Works Cited page.  

Literary Analysis

Assignments borrowed from: https://www.voorhees.k12.nj.us/cms/lib/NJ01000237/Centricity/Domain/2766/WW-V—Novel-Packet.pdf and Copyrighted by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston

Choose your own issue for your literary analysis of a novel, or use one of the following prompts:

Workplace Think of a novel in which the main character’s profession is integral to the story. What is the author trying to tell you about the character through the character’s profession? How would the story change if you put the character in another, very different profession? Write a literary analysis explaining what the character’s work says about him or her. Present your analysis to a group of career-minded students.

School  Select a novel that centers around events at a school. Write a literary analysis explaining how the setting affects the tone and the point of view of the story. Share your analysis with fellow students.

Psychology Select a character such as Huck Finn, Reverend Dimmesdale from The Scarlet Letter , or another character from a novel you know. List in chronological order the actions of the character. What do the actions reveal about the character? Do the character’s actions fit together, or do they contradict each other? Write an analysis of the character; be sure to include paraphrases or quotations from the text to support your analysis. Present your findings to a group of students interested in psychology.

Science Physicists think of time as a fourth dimension, coloring how we perceive the world around us. Similarly, the way time is manipulated in novels affects our perceptions of the present moment of the story. Think of a novel in which time is manipulated: Scenes may be rushed or elongated (for example, an entire novel that takes place over the course of a few hours or a battle scene that seems to flash by in mere moments), or the writer may use flashbacks to take us back in time. Write a literary analysis about how time is manipulated in a novel. Present your findings to a group of students interested in science.

History Most novels are set in specific places and historical periods that are central to the theme of the novel—for example, The Red Badge of Courage , The Grapes of Wrath , and countless others. Select a novel that is set in a historical period familiar to you. Identify the important historical details that the writer includes to bring the novel to life, and write a literary analysis explaining how those details relate to the theme. Present your analysis to group of students interested in history.

Image/Visual Analysis

Assignment borrowed from: https://phpmysql.howardcc.edu/Instructors/ENGL121/2017/08/visual-analysis-assignment-idea-jeff-moore/

In this essay, you will choose a movie poster to analyze rhetorically, arguing for at least two of the rhetorical strategies outlined in the rhetorical triangle (ethos, logos, and pathos) used in the poster, and at least two additional visual rhetorical strategies. Put another way, you will be using two of the rhetorical strategies to discuss at least three visual elements from the poster of your choice. While you are free to choose a movie poster you feel would be interesting to discuss, you’ll also want to be certain that there is enough content to write about, and that you can identify at least two rhetorical features within it. For example, the movie poster from  Titanic , seen below, can be said to rely heavily on pathos, but there are other rhetorical strategies at play (this is followed by an example of how to cite a movie poster on your Works Cited page):

Titanic . Directed by James Cameron, performances by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, Twentieth Century Fox, 1997.

Keeping the  Titanic  poster in mind, think about what this assignment is asking you to do. In addition to describing the rhetorical forces at play in your poster, you will have to choose at least two other specific criteria you believe contribute and connect to the specific rhetorical strategies. For example, in the movie poster for  Titanic,  you can talk about the use of color and how it demonstrates the pathos in the image, or how the lettering in the word Titanic resembles steel, and what this says about ethos. In creating this essay, you will want to make sure to:

• Describe in detail the way your image uses at least three visual elements (fonts, colors, framing, etc. – we will be discussing these in more detail in class, so don’t worry if these are unfamiliar concepts to you right now).
• Choose at least two of the three rhetorical strategies (ethos, logos, pathos) you believe are vital to your interpretation of the image: What does the image mean to you? What visual elements back up this claim? How information is this image trying to communicate to you?
• Support your argument with concrete details from the image, explaining them to specifically point out features of the image that are vital to your interpretation.
• Properly cite your image, and include it in your document (you can either copy the image at the end of your Works Cited page, or provide a link to the image).

What do you mean by “Visual Elements”?

A visual element is any way the movie poster engages with you in a way that you can see. Look at your image more than once. Notice what catches your eye both immediately and after some time spent gazing. What stands out to you, and why? Here are some examples:

• Camera Angle

When writing your essay, it may help to think of yourself as being in my shoes. Imagine you are trying to explain this image to a room full of people. How would you get them to see the image the same way you do? Your essay should make the point that, without analyzing these details, readers won’t know exactly what choices were made to make the image “work” rhetorically. You will be pointing out the connection between rhetorical elements and visual elements.

Questions to help you plan/think about your draft:

• Who is the intended audience for the image?
• What does the image mean to me personally?
• What other interpretations of the image could arise?
• What does my audience know about the context of the image, or other images it refers to or relies on?
• What are some visual elements used in it?

Organization:

Intro : Situate your reader to movie poster analysis; introduce the chosen movie and accompanying poster. Briefly describe what the poster looks like and its visual/rhetorical appeal. (Please note:  I DO NOT WANT A PLOT SUMMARY!  In theory, your audience – and you, for that matter – does not need to see the movie in order to understand how the movie poster functions as a rhetorical text, so the details of the movie are not needed here).

Thesis : Including at least two rhetorical elements and three visual elements. Here is an example of what an effective thesis statement for this kind of essay looks like:

“The  Titanic  movie poster from 1997 uses pathos and logos through the use of color, facial expressions/body language, and lettering made to resemble riveted steel to make a statement about elicit love among social classes in the early 1900s.”

3-4 Body Paragraphs:  Each of these paragraphs should contain at least one visual criteria connected to at least one rhetorical criteria to help present your own analysis of the movie poster. If I’m talking about the use of pathos and facial expression/body language, I might talk about how the placement of the actors’ faces contributes to a sense of both longing and separation. Maybe I will talk about the strength of love, symbolized by the riveted steel lettering in  Titanic,  or that the actual ship is used to provide a sense of authenticity. These are the kinds of issues you can explore in your body paragraphs.

Conclusion  – Reinforce your “reading” of the image –How do specific visual elements connect with specific rhetorical elements to communicate with the target audience? How is the historical context represented through the poster and what does that mean for your analysis? Are the visual/rhetorical appeals effective for the target audience?

Film Analysis

Assignment borrowed from: http://earl-brooks.com/assignment-1-rhetorical-analysis-of-a-filmdocumentary

Purpose:  A rhetorical analysis examines and explains how an author attempts to influence an audience.  That is, rhetorical analyses use specific evidence from the text to establish a generalization (thesis) about the text’s rhetoric (in short, how it persuades its audience by employing the  rhetorical appeals ,  using good reasons ,  constituting a fitting response , and  using the available means  to reach an audience). As you plan and draft your analysis, think of a specific publication that your analysis could be featured in—but in any event,  have in mind a particular way of reaching your audience as you write.

Directions : Find a documentary/film that you deem to be interesting and that features issues related to the economy, poverty, gender and income distribution, class, or any other issue that you believe relates to American or global economic issues and policies in an important way. By “interesting,” I mean that the film in question should have some sophistication about it: it should be tantalizing and potentially effective at reaching its audience. (There is no point in analyzing the obvious; pick something that makes an interesting argument that viewers might be resistant to.) No two students can choose the same film. Your analysis should not simply paraphrase or summarize the film. Assume you are writing for an audience that has already seen the film.  Your purpose is to provide a way of understanding how the film persuades its audience.  There are a number of ways to approach writing this essay, however I recommend  that you watch the whole film and then choose a scene (or a few) that you feel captures the most important aspects of the film. Remember, due to the length restrictions of the paper, you don’t have time to discuss everything so must be strategically selective about which parts you choose to write about. No matter what you choose, you will have to have your choice approved along with your proposal for this essay. So….

Step 1. Choose a film. You will submit your top four choices (ranked) in a proposal where you will briefly describe your working thesis and how you might approach analyzing the film. I will then either approve your proposal or provide you with recommendations to improve it.

Step 2. Introduce the film and identify its basic claim/thesis.

Step 3. Then write an analysis that will help your readers understand how the film works to persuade its audience. Consider what type of argument it presents and how it goes about creating that argument (Rhetorical theory!!) How does the film utilize music, set design, camera angles, etc. as tools to further develop a claim/thesis.

Step 4. Arrange the body of your paper so that the readers move through it in an orderly way.

Step 5. Throughout the body of your paper, use specific examples from your chosen film to support your claims.

Step 6. Conclude by making a judgment about the film’s rhetorical effectiveness. Invention : These questions may help you as you plan and draft your analysis: 1. Describe the circumstance – the historical situation, the issues at stake, the purpose of the argument – that make this memorable. 2. Who is the target/intended audience? 3. Pathos: What emotion does this argument generate? How does that emotion work to persuade you? 4. Ethos: Does the writer have the authority to write on the subject? Are all claims qualified reasonably? Is evidence presented in full, not tailored to his/her own agenda? Are objections acknowledged? Are sources documented? 5. Logos: What credible evidence is used to support this argument?

These questions are not meant to provide an outline for the paper; rather, they simply help you to think about the rhetorical aspects of the film.

Length:  A well-developed rhetorical analysis will be between five and six, doubled-spaced pages.

Cause and Effect

Assignment borrowed from: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-fmcc-englishcomp-1/chapter/cause-and-effect-essay-writing-prompt/

Choose one of the following questions, and answer it in an essay developed by analyzing causes  or  effects.   The question you decide on should concern a topic you care about so that the examples are a means of communicating an  idea;  not an end in themselves.

PEOPLE AND THEIR BEHAVIOR

• Why do people root for the underdog?
• How does a person’s alcohol or drug dependency affect others in his or her family?

ART AND ENTERTAINMENT

• Why do teenagers like rock music?
• Why is a particular television show so popular?

CONTEMPORARY ISSUES

• Why is a college education important?
• Why do marriages between teenagers fail more often than marriages between people in other age groups?
• The best courses are the difficult ones.
• Students at schools with enforced dress codes behave better than students at schools without such codes.

POLITICS AND SOCIAL ISSUES

• Drug and alcohol addiction does not happen just to “bad” people.

MEDIA AND CULTURE

• The Internet divides people instead of connecting them.
• Good art can be ugly.
• A craze or fad reveals something about the culture it arises in.
• The best rock musicians treat social and political issues in their songs.

RULES FOR LIVING

• Lying may be justified by the circumstances.
• Friends are people you can’t always trust.

Writing Your Cause and Effect Essay

Remember that “story starters” are everywhere. Think about it—status updates on social media websites can be a good place to start. You may have already started a “note”on Facebook, and now is your chance to develop that idea into a full narrative. If you keep a journal or diary, a simple event may unfold into a narrative. Simply said, your stories may be closer than you think!

When drafting your essay:

• Develop an enticing title.
• Use the introduction to pull the reader into your thesis with a singular experience.
• Develop an essay developed by analyzing causes  or  effects or the prompt
• Decide on something you care about so that the narration is a means of communicating an  idea
• Avoid addressing the assignment directly. (Don’t write “I am going to write about the causes and effects of ____…” – this takes the fun out of reading the work!)
• Think of things said at the moment your perspective on the topic became clear. Perhaps use a quote, or an interesting part of the experience that will grab the reader.
• Let the story reflect your own voice. Is your voice serious? Humorous? Matter-of-fact?
• Organize the essay in a way that may capture the reader, but don’t string the reader along too much with “next, next, next.”
• To avoid just telling what happens, make sure you take time to show significant details and reflect on why topic – and your experience with it – is significant.

Develop a draft of 4 typed, double-spaced pages, using MLA formatting

Media Analysis

By Abby Wolford, licensed CC BY NC 4.0

Due Dates: (include your own)

Length: 5-7 pages, plus an MLA Works Cited page

Assignment:

Write an analysis of the evolution and presentation of a news story over time and around the globe. You may either track one story as it was reported around the globe within the same 24-hour period, or you may track the way a story evolved over the course of approximately a week.  Use online news resources to track and evaluate how a fairly current story has been reported by five different media outlets, at least one of which is from outside the United States. Your thesis should assert a claim about the quality and consistency or inconsistency of the coverage.

Source Requirement:

• You must use at least five articles/stories covering the same story as it evolves over a week or as it is presented within the first 24 hours of the event’s occurrence. All of the articles must have been published in the last 12 months.
• At least one of your articles must be from a source outside the U.S., written in English. (To find English language newspapers from around the globe, go to Arts and Letters Daily ( www.aldaily.com ) and click on Newspapers on the upper lefthand column.
• One of the five texts you evaluate may be a television news broadcast or a radio news broadcast.
• One of the five texts you evaluate may be an opinion piece/commentary. Focus your analysis for this type of article primarily on how the opinion piece presents facts within the context of expressing an opinion or making an argument.
• The articles must be written in English and readily accessible via either the Internet or a library database.

Media Analysis Evaluation Sheet

90-100 (A):

• author’s discussion is sophisticated, carefully detailed, and well organized
• thorough thesis carefully reflects the assignment
• inclusive topic sentences and cohesive body paragraphs
• minimal sentence, grammatical, or syntax errors
• sources are incorporated in a sophisticated way to strengthen the author’s argument
• sources are cited correctly within the paper
• Works Cited page is done correctly
• author’s discussion is clear and detailed
• adequate thesis reflects the assignment
• generally sound body paragraphs and focused topic sentences
• some sentence, grammatical, or syntax errors
• sources are incorporated correctly for the most part and are used to strengthen the author’s argument
• sources are cited with a few errors
• Works Cited page has a few errors but is overall in the correct format
• author’s discussion is sometimes unclear
• thesis is misplaced or only minimally reflects the assignment
• topic sentences are too general and support is sometimes nearly off topic
• sources are not incorporated in a way that strengthens the author’s argument
• repetitive sentence, grammatical, or syntax errors
• sources are cited in the paper but incorrectly
• Works Cited page has many errors and the writer needs to spend some time with MLA

69 or below (F):

• essay is not the minimum page length
• author’s discussion is unclear or there is not a discussion
• thesis is not evident or does not reflect the assignment
• topic sentences are too general and support is often off topic
• sources are not used at all
• the sources are not cited at all or are cited with so many errors that it is hard to figure out where the information came from
• no Works Cited page or the writer has made minimal effort in doing a Works Cited page to go along with the essay
• extensive problems with basic writing conventions

“Media Analysis” by Abby Wolford, College of Western Idaho, is licensed CC 4.0 BY NC SA.

Write What Matters Copyright © 2020 by Liza Long; Amy Minervini; and Joel Gladd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Back to School: Using AI to Create Writing Assignments Students Actually Want to Do

You may even have fun grading them.

Getting students excited about the work you have to grade later can be one of the more frustrating things about teaching , but when an assignment hits the right chord, it has the potential to inspire and impact not just the classroom, but the whole school and beyond.

Reconciling the curriculum and assignments with standards and learning objectives sometimes established out of a teacher's control can really sap the creative side of your brain. 

Here's how artificial intelligence can help broaden your horizons when trying to create assignments that make a lasting impression and keep your classroom excited about learning. (And for more AI tips for the back-to-school season, check out CNET's guides on  how to use AI to keep up with important dates and  how to use Microsoft Copilot to create notes on pretty much anything.)

Since there will need to be a fair bit of refinement to create an assignment that is both fun to complete for students and fun to review and grade for educators, I've used ChatGPT , the AI chatbot that uses machine learning and large language models to generate conversational style answers to search queries, so that I could go back and forth brainstorming ideas.

Maintaining teacher and student sanity

My area of study is media and communications, so for this example I'm putting together an assignment on media literacy , or the ability to think and interact critically with everything from TikTok content to front-page news. 

The goal is to create an assignment that's fun, collaborative and impactful for college students who interact heavily with digital media but might not be questioning what they're consuming.

The secondary goal was to create an assignment I won't hate myself for creating when it comes time to grade it.

On my first attempt, ChatGPT gave me a fully built-out assignment according to specific learning objectives around media literacy for college-level students, but it was about as fun as you'd think writing a 500-word essay on media literacy might be -- not fun at all.

Refine for fun, collaboration and focus

Since this assignment is in part about getting students to actually interact with media online in a way that's more impactful than just lurking or liking from the digital shadows, I refined the prompt to include using the student body in the assignment somehow and requested less emphasis on written analysis that will ultimately only be seen and evaluated by the teacher.

Here's what it came back with:

I was actually impressed -- not only did ChatGPT have students interacting with and analyzing media, but it also created a multi-layered assignment that gave students the opportunity to see firsthand the impact media literacy can make on a community as well as an individual.

This assignment would also be a darn sight more enjoyable to grade than 30 to 50 500-word analytical essays about whether the source of a Brat summer post on TikTok can be trusted.

Finally, ChatGPT offered submission requirements (like linking to the social media content used in completing the assignment and screenshots of the online interactions) and grading criteria for the assignment and even some examples of how the assignment might be executed.

Its example in particular about analyzing the role of political memes was timely and felt like a fresh take on an evolving reality of campaign media.

I personally would love to see videos from students collaborating on a discussion with their peers about their perception of Kamala HQ 's content and the presence of former President Donald Trump across social media. 

And who knows -- maybe the students might actually enjoy it too.

The Definitive Guide to Gen Z Slang: Written by actual teens who think all the other guides to Gen Z slang are mid.

by Liz Gumbinner | Jun 6, 2024 | Kids , Tips + Tricks | 15 comments

When we asked our readers about your favorite Gen Z slang words , the second most popular answer was low-key. But that’s only because the first most popular answer was what the heck are you talking about?

So I reached out to my teens and their friends to put together an authentic guide to Gen Z slang words. Because to be honest, when they look at the Gen Z slang guides that you find around the web, they are like, “Who even wrote these? No one says that!” Or “WHAT? That’s low-key a Gen Alpha term.”

They helped me put together what we hope is an authentic glossary of Gen Z slang at this particular moment in time. In fact, a lot of the examples of sentences come from their own texts with friends around the country.

There are some caveats: This guide to Gen Z words was compiled by a group of teens 14-19, across the gender spectrum, with diverse backgrounds. However, they are all currently living in and around the New York City area, so the teens where you live may use phrases a little differently, or have different opinions about what a term means. Which is great! One of the cool things about slang, especially in the US, is that it can be fluid, it can be regional, and it may even change from month to month if not week to week

In other words, a fire Gen Z word can become mid, just like that.

Or wait…do we still say mid? Let’s find out….

The Ultimate Guide to Gen Z Slang

Did something well. Wait, the drummer kind of ate at the show last night

Note from the teens: If you really eat, you might say “She ate and left no crumbs” or “she devoured.”

Mainstream or unoriginal. Her outfit is so basic but she thinks she slays.

From the expression for fogginess after too much screentime, now describes nonsensical, “chronically online” gen alpha vocabulary. You don’t have to include “TikTok Rizz Party” in this list of Gen Z slang terms, that’s just brainrot.

Really good, short for bussin’. I’m sad they got rid of the charged lemonade at Panera, it was buss!

Note from the teens : More people say buss now. Bussin’ is kind of old.

A way to describe something cringe done by millennials When I see a shirt that says “It’s wine-o’clock somewhere!” it’s totally cheugy.

Note from the parent : I do not make the Gen Z slang or the sentences, forgive me millennials!

Chat, am I cooked?

Asking someone if things are bad or over for you; comes from streamer language, when someone asks their viewers (“the chat”) for feedback. Tell me honestly, chat, am I cooked?

An aesthetic, or reminiscent of something else I wanted to get that shirt but NGL it was kinda Shien-core. 

Note from the teens : “Sometimes I’ll send a video to my sister and say, “this is so you-core!”

An adjective meaning cringe-y or embarrassing. This TikTok trend of people lip-synching to little kid voices is so cringe. 

Cool, funny memes Hey, want to check out my folder of dank memes?

Note from the teens : “No one says this anymore. Maybe Millenials in like 2016.”

Drip / Dripped Out

Noun/ Adjective indicating your style is cool Okay, why are the men at the Oscars never dripped out?

Really into someone romantically My friend is so down bad for this girl, he’s always talking about her on his close friends.

Note from the parent : “Close friends” refers to a private Instagram list of close friends, who are the only ones to receive certain stories.

Stealing someone’s food (or other stuff) but in a friendly way I’m gonna’ fanum tax those Cane’s fries

Note from the teens : This originated from a Twitch streamer named Fanum .

Adjective meaning cool, alternative to lit / litty Gov Ball has a fire lineup this year.

To brag Not to flex guys, but Michelle Obama liked my post.

Note from the teens : Michelle Obama has never liked any of our posts.

Mentally or physically becoming better and more attractive. You’ve had such a glow-up from last year!

Note from the teens : “This is not just about beauty on the outside, but brands always use it like that.”

Something that’s really good. I don’t even care…Hamilton goes hard. 

A butt, but a term mostly used ironically — sometimes not even to talk about someone’s butt. Gyatt level 10!

Note from the teens: Gyatt definitely has two t’s in it. Note from the parent: A level 10 gyatt is not an insult, it’s good.

Hits Different

Feels different Wow, Challengers hits different when you’re bi.

A texting acronym pronounced eye-dee-gaff, which stands for “I don’t give a f*ck” I have no money left but IDGAF I am getting bubble tea. 

Note from the teens: Some people sound out the letters like the way people will say “loll” for LOL, but not everyone does it. We also use it to describe someone who’s really nonchalant, like “he’s winning the IDGAF war.”

It’s giving…

Resembling It’s giving baddie vibes

Leave on read

To not respond to a text or DM after it’s been received and a “read” notice shows up under it to the sender. He left me on read, should I text again or wait?

Note from the parent : A lot of people have assumed the expression is “leave on red,” and by a lot of people, I mean this is what I used to think.

Legitimately, but used like “for real” or “honestly” Please don’t send me memes about feet, l am legit so uncomfortable

Let me cook

Asking for uninterrupted time to think through an idea, with the implication that it will be worth the wait. Wait, don’t interrupt…let me cook here.

Another term for looks She’s throwing lewks in every selfie

Note from the teens: “This is a millennial term. No one says this.”

A new way of saying “lit,” or exciting; alternative to “fire.” This party is gonna’ be so litty!

Note from the teens: It’s a cringe term, so we basically use it ironically.

Low-key / High-key

Low-key: On the down-low, surprisingly so, “for real,” or “hear me out” High-key: Very much so, or “for real for real.” She just got her license, like I’m low-key afraid to be in the car with her.

Note from the teens: Sometimes people just say” low-key” on its own as a way to say “yeah” or “agree.”

A way of indicating something is not true, like an evolution of “Not!” “Most normal…in Ohio”

Note from the teens: Because of the randomness of “Ohio,” people have started using it sort of like “opposite day.” Note from the parent: This may be regional, since Ohio is definitely not random to people in Ohio. Response from the teens: Fine, it may be regional. In 49 states. And Puerto Rico.

The act of putting your tongue on the roof of your mouth and sucking in your cheeks to give yourself a sharper jawline, especially in photos. He’s mewing so hard right now.

Basic, meh. Can I have your apple? School lunch was kind of mid today and I’m starving.

No lie, for real Wait, no cap, I think I just saw Paul Rudd buying donuts.

Note from the teens : The phrase is getting kind of old, we’re more likely to just say “for real.”

I’m serious; I swear On God, I only studied the day before and aced the bio test.

Short for opposition, or your enemy. After last night, they’re my opp for life. 

Note from the teens: We might use it ironically, like a friendly rival or someone you love who’s doing better than you in something.

Verb meaning to attract someone or score a relationship How come the plot of every Adam Sandler movie is him pulling beautiful women?  

Rizz / Rizzing

Flirtatious, derived from “charisma.” Why can’t Leo rizz up someone his own age?

A reference to the surreal YouTube kids show, Skibidi Toilet . It’s a random reference, meaning “bad” or maybe meaning nothing at all. What the skibidi is going on here!?

Note from the teens: It’s just us totally making fun of Gen Alpha. Don’t even try to use it because it’s just a nonsense word.

Did something well, an alternative to “ate.” I slayed that APUSH quiz! 

Note from the parent : APUSH (pronounced Ay-Push) is an acronym for the AP U.S. History course and while not technically essential to a Gen Z slang guide, it is helpful if you’ve got kids in high school.

Sus / Sussy

Suspicious or kind of off I signed up for a bunch of sussy websites and now I think my phone has a virus. 

Touch Grass

A suggestion to get offline, put down technology, and go outside. You’re legit arguing with randos on Reddit. You need to touch grass

Note from the Teens: Fun fact: Every year at ComicCon, someone walks around holding a container of actual grass with a note on it that says “touch grass.”

Tough / Tuff

An adjective meaning good Your outfit is tough!

Note from the teens : Like the way Gen X said “bad” meaning good, Gen Z slang is doing that with “tough.”

Good (winning) or bad (losing) Pete Davidson high-key has W rizz, 

To throw, or an exclamation you say when someone is throwing something. Yeet that plastic bag, we can just carry everything.

Note from the teens : “Please don’t say this. It is so outdated and cringe, when people say “yeet’ I physically start weeping.”

Related:  Our guide to the coolest gifts for teens this year

Huge thanks to all the hilarious and helpful teens who helped me compile this list.  Did we miss your favorites? Do you use these terms differently? Let us know in the comments below.

Written by Liz Gumbinner

Liz Gumbinner is the Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Cool Mom Picks network. This makes her very happy. Bio Twitter Instagram

15 Comments

I am so grateful! Tell the kids thank you for me ! My son says alllll of these phrases and for a long time I thought he was muttering about a guy named Chad but recently realized he was talking to the Chat .

The things we need to learn! 😂 Glad to help, Tracie!

My kids say ‘period’ a lot – I think it means ‘oh, true’ or ‘huh, is that so?’

Is this a mid-Atlantic regional thing?

It means “agree.” Like “nothing further to add.” (At least in NY!)

Hey! Some of these need pronunciation guides. Lest we–meaning me–land with a Gen Z episcopical equivalent.

Ha! What do you need help with Andy… we’ve got you.

Well, I could use help with “Cheugy” XD

My 13yo says “bet” and I think it is the opposite of “cap”. Or it’s like “I’ll take that bet”, meaning “it’ll happen” or “watch me.”

Love that. I just heard an Australian guy on a video say “Oath!” like “Truth!” and that was great too. It’s endless. Thanks for sharing!

I had heard of ‘skibidi toilet’ but had no idea what it was. As a gen-x parent to 2x gen-z’s and a gen-alpha I try to keep up… So I randomly said the word to my gen-alpha 6-year old and he legit glitched out. I watched him freeze, do a double-take. His eyes darted form side to side and then he froze again. It was both hilarious and a little terrifying to watch. It’s like a secret code-word or kill-switch or something!!

I love that! Thanks for sharing that, Jane!

Thanks for this expert compendium! I love language and using slang that’s outdated (it’s the bomb) or very of the moment in a way that feels cringe to the youth 😉

My elder-Gen Z friends here in the mid-Atlantic say “heard” as an affirmation that… they heard and understand you. Not sure if the kiddos use that one, though 🙂

I decided to use some of these for my new list of literary devices for the fall. I will give you credit!

Michael, so cool! Thanks for letting me know. (But of course, the credit goes to the kids.)

Thanks so much! I am 15, and don’t know any of this except “yeet”. People annoy me so much because of my misunderstanding, and of course it’s undeserved – I am homeschooled, how am I supposed to know? Anyhow, thanks a bunch! Love your site, its sad in Ohio lol.

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What homebuyers and sellers need to know about new rules for Realtors

A new state law and a settlement in a lawsuit against the National Association of Realtors will mean big changes for Hoosiers who are buying or selling homes, including the potential for significantly lower home sales commission costs.

Whether you're thinking of buying or selling, here's what to expect.

What these changes require

The main change affecting buyers, which became law in Indiana July 1 after state legislators passed House Enrolled Act 1068 , is that they must sign a written contract with a real estate agent before touring any home. The agreement must include an end date, the law states.

Similarly, a settlement requires more than 21,000 Realtors in the group's Indiana chapter to start routinely signing such agreements by Aug. 17.

Previously, agents might tour properties with potential clients so both parties could feel out the working relationship. Now, buyers should expect to sign an agreement outlining what services agents will provide before they start house-hunting. These agreements must also detail how the agent will be paid, typically upon the purchase of a house.

Agents stressed in interviews with the IndyStar that a buyer who signs an agreement is by no means obligated to buy a home or to stay with that Realtor forever. Contracts could expire or end with the consent of both parties.

The other new rule established by the NAR settlement will affect how Realtors — a distinction meaning an agent is a member of NAR, the trade association comprising more than 1.5 million Realtors — who work with homebuyers are paid.

It's been common practice for a seller and their agent to include an offer to pay the buyer's agent. Homebuyers are shelling out a lot of money as is, the thinking goes, and sellers may have better standing in the transaction.

What's unlikely to change is that, once a deal is done, both agents will earn a commission that's a percentage of a home's selling price. But Realtors working as buyer-agents must now negotiate fees with sellers and their agents separately from a home's listing in industry databases, often referred to as Multiple Listing Services.

Lawsuit: As spring homebuying season kicks off, a NAR legal settlement could shrink realtor commissions

What these changes mean for sellers, buyers, Realtors

Sellers stand to benefit most from the new rules, industry experts told IndyStar. They should no longer take for granted that they must pay their listing agent and the buyer's agent a standard commission fee.

In class action lawsuits against NAR, attorneys representing homeowners argued that the commonly used commission rate of 5-6% — 2.5-3% for each agent, paid by the seller — was unfairly inflated by the Realtors. The Consumer Federation of America, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group, estimates the settlement will save sellers and buyers tens of billions of dollars over time as commission rates fall.

These changes are also meant to formalize the relationship between buyers and real estate agents, which can be an amorphous mix of late-night conversations and spontaneous home tours that might end without a purchase, agents said.

Annie Caruso, a real estate broker and president of the Metropolitan Indianapolis Board of Realtors , said the new law codifies what has long been best practice: Put agreements into writing.

Buyers should know they're dealing with licensed professionals who bring rigor to the home-buying process, not just touring homes on a lark, she said. Realtors and sellers should know that potential buyers have a legitimate interest in purchasing a home.

Often, "buyers out there are just like, 'Oh, I just want to see that house,' and will call their friend who's a Realtor to open the door," Caruso said. "That's not necessarily fair to the sellers who are putting their house on the market."

Buyer contracts must include a specific amount or rate of compensation for the services an agent provides — not an open-ended clause saying the buyer-agent will earn as much as a seller is willing to pay. Contracts must also include a "conspicuous" reminder that fees and commissions are fully negotiable, not set by law, NAR reports in a fact sheet .

"It gives the Realtor the chance to articulate the value in what they bring," Bernice Helman, NAR's regional vice president for Indiana, said in an interview, "and it gives the buyer the opportunity to negotiate and clearly set out the terms of that agreement and what they’re willing to compensate that agent."

Mark Fisher, CEO of the Indiana Association of Realtors , said 90% of more than 21,000 Realtors across the state had implemented both changes weeks ahead of the Aug. 17 deadline.

How Realtors are responding to new Indiana law

NAR says that, although it's not required, the vast majority of people choose to work with Realtors when buying or selling a home. Licensed real estate agents in general can support buyers facing a small inventory of homes in their price range and help sellers to fetch a good offer.

Several agents told IndyStar that the new rules heighten the stakes of initial buyer consultations. They must prove their expertise and value from the get-go, while buyers should scrutinize the fine print before signing any agreement.

Alex Montagano, an agent of more than 12 years who works with Lockstep Realty , said he and his team have met with multiple customers who weren't comfortable signing a contract since the law took effect July 1. But for the most part, he said, agents have found that explaining the new law and the terms of payment provides an early opportunity to show their chops.

"Now there's transparency in terms of how much money everyone is making and how they’re paid," he said.

Gaby Pitts, president of the local chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals , worried at first that changes in how buyer-agents got paid could overburden her Latino clients, many of whom are first-time homebuyers.

Echoing concerns from NAHREP CEO Gary Acosta , Pitts said that asking would-be buyers from cash-strapped households to pay their agent's commission on top of a new mortgage could put homeownership out of reach.

But Pitts has so far been able to negotiate fair commission rates for herself with sellers and their agents, she said. Although sellers can't include commission fees for a buyer's agent in their official home listing, they can pitch them offline to make a deal more attractive.

"If you show your value, then you’ll be fine," Pitts said of agents. "The strong ones will survive."

The Consumer Federation of America recently published detailed criteria for evaluating both buyer and seller contract forms . For more information, view the buyer's sheet and the seller's sheet on the organization's website.

Email IndyStar reporter Jordan Smith at  [email protected] . Follow him on X:  @jordantsmith09

How to cite ChatGPT

Use discount code STYLEBLOG15 for 15% off APA Style print products with free shipping in the United States.

We, the APA Style team, are not robots. We can all pass a CAPTCHA test , and we know our roles in a Turing test . And, like so many nonrobot human beings this year, we’ve spent a fair amount of time reading, learning, and thinking about issues related to large language models, artificial intelligence (AI), AI-generated text, and specifically ChatGPT . We’ve also been gathering opinions and feedback about the use and citation of ChatGPT. Thank you to everyone who has contributed and shared ideas, opinions, research, and feedback.

In this post, I discuss situations where students and researchers use ChatGPT to create text and to facilitate their research, not to write the full text of their paper or manuscript. We know instructors have differing opinions about how or even whether students should use ChatGPT, and we’ll be continuing to collect feedback about instructor and student questions. As always, defer to instructor guidelines when writing student papers. For more about guidelines and policies about student and author use of ChatGPT, see the last section of this post.

Quoting or reproducing the text created by ChatGPT in your paper

If you’ve used ChatGPT or other AI tools in your research, describe how you used the tool in your Method section or in a comparable section of your paper. For literature reviews or other types of essays or response or reaction papers, you might describe how you used the tool in your introduction. In your text, provide the prompt you used and then any portion of the relevant text that was generated in response.

Unfortunately, the results of a ChatGPT “chat” are not retrievable by other readers, and although nonretrievable data or quotations in APA Style papers are usually cited as personal communications , with ChatGPT-generated text there is no person communicating. Quoting ChatGPT’s text from a chat session is therefore more like sharing an algorithm’s output; thus, credit the author of the algorithm with a reference list entry and the corresponding in-text citation.

When prompted with “Is the left brain right brain divide real or a metaphor?” the ChatGPT-generated text indicated that although the two brain hemispheres are somewhat specialized, “the notation that people can be characterized as ‘left-brained’ or ‘right-brained’ is considered to be an oversimplification and a popular myth” (OpenAI, 2023).

OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (Mar 14 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat

You may also put the full text of long responses from ChatGPT in an appendix of your paper or in online supplemental materials, so readers have access to the exact text that was generated. It is particularly important to document the exact text created because ChatGPT will generate a unique response in each chat session, even if given the same prompt. If you create appendices or supplemental materials, remember that each should be called out at least once in the body of your APA Style paper.

When given a follow-up prompt of “What is a more accurate representation?” the ChatGPT-generated text indicated that “different brain regions work together to support various cognitive processes” and “the functional specialization of different regions can change in response to experience and environmental factors” (OpenAI, 2023; see Appendix A for the full transcript).

Creating a reference to ChatGPT or other AI models and software

The in-text citations and references above are adapted from the reference template for software in Section 10.10 of the Publication Manual (American Psychological Association, 2020, Chapter 10). Although here we focus on ChatGPT, because these guidelines are based on the software template, they can be adapted to note the use of other large language models (e.g., Bard), algorithms, and similar software.

The reference and in-text citations for ChatGPT are formatted as follows:

• Parenthetical citation: (OpenAI, 2023)
• Narrative citation: OpenAI (2023)

Let’s break that reference down and look at the four elements (author, date, title, and source):

Author: The author of the model is OpenAI.

Date: The date is the year of the version you used. Following the template in Section 10.10, you need to include only the year, not the exact date. The version number provides the specific date information a reader might need.

Title: The name of the model is “ChatGPT,” so that serves as the title and is italicized in your reference, as shown in the template. Although OpenAI labels unique iterations (i.e., ChatGPT-3, ChatGPT-4), they are using “ChatGPT” as the general name of the model, with updates identified with version numbers.

The version number is included after the title in parentheses. The format for the version number in ChatGPT references includes the date because that is how OpenAI is labeling the versions. Different large language models or software might use different version numbering; use the version number in the format the author or publisher provides, which may be a numbering system (e.g., Version 2.0) or other methods.

Bracketed text is used in references for additional descriptions when they are needed to help a reader understand what’s being cited. References for a number of common sources, such as journal articles and books, do not include bracketed descriptions, but things outside of the typical peer-reviewed system often do. In the case of a reference for ChatGPT, provide the descriptor “Large language model” in square brackets. OpenAI describes ChatGPT-4 as a “large multimodal model,” so that description may be provided instead if you are using ChatGPT-4. Later versions and software or models from other companies may need different descriptions, based on how the publishers describe the model. The goal of the bracketed text is to briefly describe the kind of model to your reader.

Source: When the publisher name and the author name are the same, do not repeat the publisher name in the source element of the reference, and move directly to the URL. This is the case for ChatGPT. The URL for ChatGPT is https://chat.openai.com/chat . For other models or products for which you may create a reference, use the URL that links as directly as possible to the source (i.e., the page where you can access the model, not the publisher’s homepage).

Other questions about citing ChatGPT

You may have noticed the confidence with which ChatGPT described the ideas of brain lateralization and how the brain operates, without citing any sources. I asked for a list of sources to support those claims and ChatGPT provided five references—four of which I was able to find online. The fifth does not seem to be a real article; the digital object identifier given for that reference belongs to a different article, and I was not able to find any article with the authors, date, title, and source details that ChatGPT provided. Authors using ChatGPT or similar AI tools for research should consider making this scrutiny of the primary sources a standard process. If the sources are real, accurate, and relevant, it may be better to read those original sources to learn from that research and paraphrase or quote from those articles, as applicable, than to use the model’s interpretation of them.

We’ve also received a number of other questions about ChatGPT. Should students be allowed to use it? What guidelines should instructors create for students using AI? Does using AI-generated text constitute plagiarism? Should authors who use ChatGPT credit ChatGPT or OpenAI in their byline? What are the copyright implications ?

On these questions, researchers, editors, instructors, and others are actively debating and creating parameters and guidelines. Many of you have sent us feedback, and we encourage you to continue to do so in the comments below. We will also study the policies and procedures being established by instructors, publishers, and academic institutions, with a goal of creating guidelines that reflect the many real-world applications of AI-generated text.

For questions about manuscript byline credit, plagiarism, and related ChatGPT and AI topics, the APA Style team is seeking the recommendations of APA Journals editors. APA Style guidelines based on those recommendations will be posted on this blog and on the APA Style site later this year.

Update: APA Journals has published policies on the use of generative AI in scholarly materials .

We, the APA Style team humans, appreciate your patience as we navigate these unique challenges and new ways of thinking about how authors, researchers, and students learn, write, and work with new technologies.

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000

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Voluntary Sodium Reduction Goals: Target Mean and Upper Bound Concentrations for Sodium in Commercially Processed, Packaged, and Prepared Foods; Draft Guidance for Industry (Edition 2); Availability

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• Document Details Published Content - Document Details Agencies Department of Health and Human Services Food and Drug Administration Agency/Docket Number Docket No. FDA-2014-D-0055 Document Citation 89 FR 66727 Document Number 2024-18261 Document Type Notice Pages 66727-66729 (3 pages) Publication Date 08/16/2024 Published Content - Document Details
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Voluntary Sodium Reduction Goals: Target Mean and Recommended Maximum Concentrations for Sodium in Commercially Processed, Packaged, and Prepared Foods

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Department of Health and Human Services

Food and drug administration.

• [Docket No. FDA-2014-D-0055]

Food and Drug Administration, HHS.

Notice of availability.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA or we) is announcing the availability of a draft guidance for industry entitled “Voluntary Sodium Reduction Goals: Target Mean and Upper Bound Concentrations for Sodium in Commercially Processed, Packaged, and Prepared Foods (Edition 2).” The draft guidance, when finalized, will describe our views on the next voluntary goals (Phase II (3-year)) for sodium reduction in a variety of identified categories of foods that are commercially processed, packaged, or prepared. These goals are intended to address the excessive intake of sodium in the current population to help reduce the burden of diet-related chronic disease, promote improvements in public health, and advance health equity by supporting a healthier food supply.

Submit either electronic or written comments on the draft guidance by November 14, 2024 to ensure that we consider your comment on the draft ( print page 66728) guidance before we begin work on the final version of the guidance.

You may submit comments on any guidance at any time as follows:

Submit electronic comments in the following way:

• Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov . Follow the instructions for submitting comments. Comments submitted electronically, including attachments, to https://www.regulations.gov will be posted to the docket unchanged. Because your comment will be made public, you are solely responsible for ensuring that your comment does not include any confidential information that you or a third party may not wish to be posted, such as medical information, your or anyone else's Social Security number, or confidential business information, such as a manufacturing process. Please note that if you include your name, contact information, or other information that identifies you in the body of your comments, that information will be posted on https://www.regulations.gov .
• If you want to submit a comment with confidential information that you do not wish to be made available to the public, submit the comment as a written/paper submission and in the manner detailed (see “Written/Paper Submissions” and “Instructions”).

Submit written/paper submissions as follows:

• Mail/Hand delivery/Courier (for written/paper submissions): Dockets Management Staff (HFA-305), Food and Drug Administration, 5630 Fishers Lane, Rm. 1061, Rockville, MD 20852.
• For written/paper comments submitted to the Dockets Management Staff, FDA will post your comment, as well as any attachments, except for information submitted, marked and identified, as confidential, if submitted as detailed in “Instructions.”

Instructions: All submissions received must include the Docket No. FDA-2014-D-0055 for “Voluntary Sodium Reduction Goals: Target Mean and Upper Bound Concentrations for Sodium in Commercially Processed, Packaged, and Prepared Foods (Edition 2).” Received comments will be placed in the docket and, except for those submitted as “Confidential Submissions,” publicly viewable at https://www.regulations.gov or at the Dockets Management Staff between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., Monday through Friday, 240-402-7500.

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Docket: For access to the docket to read background documents or the electronic and written/paper comments received, go to https://www.regulations.gov and insert the docket number, found in brackets in the heading of this document, into the “Search” box and follow the prompts and/or go to the Dockets Management Staff, 5630 Fishers Lane, Rm. 1061, Rockville, MD 20852, 240-402-7500.

You may submit comments on any guidance at any time (see 21 CFR 10.115(g)(5) ).

Submit written requests for single copies of the draft guidance to the Office of Food Additive Safety, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, Food and Drug Administration, 5001 Campus Dr., College Park, MD 20740. Send two self-addressed adhesive labels to assist that office in processing your request. See the SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION section for electronic access to the draft guidance.

Kasey Heintz, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, Office of Food Additive Safety, Food and Drug Administration, 5001 Campus Dr., College Park, MD 20740, 240-402-1376; or Holli Kubicki, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, Office of Regulations and Policy, Food and Drug Administration, 5001 Campus Dr., College Park, MD 20740, 240-402-2378.

We are announcing the availability of a draft guidance for industry entitled “Voluntary Sodium Reduction Goals: Target Mean and Upper Bound Concentrations for Sodium in Commercially Processed, Packaged, and Prepared Foods (Edition 2).” We are issuing the draft guidance consistent with our good guidance practices regulation ( 21 CFR 10.115 ). The draft guidance, when finalized, will represent the current thinking of FDA on this topic. It does not establish any rights for any person and is not binding on FDA or the public. You can use an alternate approach if it satisfies the requirements of the applicable statutes and regulations.

Sodium is widely present in the American diet (most commonly, but not exclusively, as a result of eating or drinking foods to which sodium chloride, commonly referred to as “salt,” has been added). More than 70 percent of total sodium intake is from sodium added during food manufacturing and commercial food preparation (Ref. 1). The average sodium intake for those 1 year and older in the United States is approximately 3,400 milligrams/day (mg/day) (Ref 2). The “Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2020-2025” (Ref. 2) advises individuals 14 years and older to limit their consumption to 2,300 mg/day; this aligns with recommendations from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, which set the chronic disease risk reduction intake for sodium at 2,300 mg/day for those 14 years and older (Ref. 3). The guidance aims to help Americans reduce average sodium intake to 2,750 mg/day (Phase II) by encouraging food manufacturers, restaurants, and food service operations to gradually reduce sodium in a wide variety of food categories over time. Although we recognize that a reduction even to 2,750 mg/day still would be higher than the recommended sodium limit of 2,300 mg/day, the Phase II goals are intended to balance the need for broad and gradual reductions in sodium and what is publicly known about technical and market constraints on sodium reduction and reformulation.

In the Federal Register of October 14, 2021, we announced the availability of the final guidance for industry, “Voluntary Sodium Reduction Goals: Target Mean and Upper Bound Concentrations for Sodium in Commercially Processed, Packaged, and Prepared Foods” ( 86 FR 57156 ). The ( print page 66729) draft guidance builds on the voluntary Phase I (2.5-year) sodium reduction goals issued in October 2021. When finalized, the draft guidance will describe our views on the next voluntary goals (Phase II (3-year)) for sodium reduction in a variety of identified categories of foods that are commercially processed, packaged, or prepared. The 3-year goals are intended to balance the need for broad and gradual reductions in sodium and what is publicly known about technical and market constraints on sodium reduction and reformulation. The distribution of sodium concentrations in currently available products in each category was a significant factor in developing these quantitative sodium concentration goals. We developed the goals with a particular emphasis on maintaining concentrations needed for food safety, given the function of salt as a food preservative. The Phase II goals are within the range of concentrations found in currently marketed foods and are feasible using existing technical strategies.

We note that we do not intend to finalize the draft long-term (10-year) sodium reduction goals that were included in the 2016 draft of the first edition of the guidance that we announced in the Federal Register of June 2, 2016 ( 81 FR 35363 ). We plan to announce any future sodium reduction goals via draft guidance.

While the guidance contains no collection of information, it does refer to previously approved FDA collections of information. The previously approved collections of information are subject to review by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (PRA) ( 44 U.S.C. 3501-3521 ). The collections of information in 21 CFR part 101 have been approved under OMB control number 0910-0381. The collections of information in 21 CFR 101.11 have been approved under OMB control number 0910-0782.

Persons with access to the internet may obtain the draft guidance at https://www.fda.gov/​FoodGuidances , https://www.fda.gov/​regulatory-information/​search-fda-guidance-documents , or https://www.regulations.gov . Use the FDA website listed in the previous sentence to find the most current version of the guidance.

The following references are on display at the Dockets Management Staff (see ADDRESSES ) and are available for viewing by interested persons between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., Monday through Friday; they are also available electronically at https://www.regulations.gov . Although FDA verified the website addresses in this document, please note that websites are subject to change over time.

1. Harnack L.J., M.E. Cogswell, J.M. Shikany, et al. “Sources of Sodium in U.S. Adults From 3 Geographic Regions.” Circulation, 135 (May 9, 2017): pp. 1775-1783. Available at: https://www.ahajournals.org/​doi/​10.1161/​CIRCULATIONAHA.116.024446 (accessed December 26, 2023).

2. U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2020-2025.” 9th Edition. December 2020. Available at: https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov/​ (accessed December 26, 2023).

3. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. “Dietary Reference Intakes for Sodium and Potassium” (March 2019). Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. Available at: http://www.nationalacademies.org/​hmd/​Reports/​2019/​dietary-reference-intakes-sodium-potassium.aspx (accessed December 26, 2023).

Dated: August 9, 2024.

Lauren K. Roth,

Associate Commissioner for Policy.

[ FR Doc. 2024-18261 Filed 8-15-24; 8:45 am]

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Writing Assignments

Lyle Cleeland and Lisa Moody

Introduction

Assignments are a common method of assessment at university and require careful planning and good quality research. Developing critical thinking and writing skills are also necessary to demonstrate your ability to understand and apply information about your topic. It is not uncommon to be unsure about the processes of writing assignments at university.

This chapter has a collection of resources that will provide you with the skills and strategies to understand assignment requirements and effectively plan, research, write, and edit your assignments.

Task Analysis and Deconstructing an Assignment

It is important that you spend sufficient time understanding all the requirements before you begin researching and writing your assignments.

The assessment task description (located in your subject outline) provides key information about an assessment item, including the question. It is essential to scan this document for topic, task, and limiting words. If there are any elements you do not understand, you should clarify these as early as possible.

Make sure you have a clear understanding of what the task word requires you to address.

The marking criteria or rubric , is an important document to look at before you begin your assignment. This outlines how your assignment will be marked and should be used as a checklist to make sure you have included all the information required.

The assessment task description will also include the:

• Word limit (or word count)
• Referencing style and research expectations
• Formatting requirements

For a more detailed discussion on task analysis, criteria sheets, and marking rubrics, visit the chapter Managing Assessments .

Preparing your ideas

Brainstorm or concept map:  List possible ideas to address each part of the assignment task based on what you already know about the topic from lectures and weekly readings.

Finding appropriate information: Learn how to find scholarly information for your assignments which is:

See the chapter Working With Information for a more detailed explanation .

What is Academic Writing?

Academic writing tone and style.

Many of the assessment items you prepare will require an academic writing style. Sometimes this feels awkward when you begin. However, it is good to know that practice at academic writing reduces this feeling.

Thesis statements

One of the most important steps in writing an essay is constructing your working thesis statement. A thesis statement tells the reader the purpose, argument, or direction you will take to answer your assignment question. It is found in the introduction paragraph. The thesis statement:

• Directly  relates to the task . Your thesis statement may even contain some of the key words or synonyms from the task description.
• Does more than restate the question.
• Is specific and uses precise language.
• Lets your reader know your position or the main argument that you will support with evidence throughout your assignment.
• The subject is the key content area you will be covering.
• The premise is the key argument or position.

A key element of your thesis statement should be included in the topic sentence of each paragraph.

Planning your assignment structure

When planning and drafting assignments, it is important to consider the structure of your writing. Academic writing should have a clear and logical structure and incorporate academic research to support your ideas. It can be hard to get started and at first you may feel nervous about the size of the task. This is normal. If you break your assignment into smaller pieces, it will seem more manageable as you can approach the task in sections. Refer to your brainstorm or plan. These ideas should guide your research and will also inform what you write in your draft. It is sometimes easier to draft your assignment using the 2-3-1 approach, that is, write the body paragraphs first followed by the conclusion and finally the introduction.

No one’s writing is the best quality on the first few drafts, not even professional writers. It is strongly advised that you accept that your first few drafts will feel rough. Ultimately, it is the editing and review processes which lead to good quality ideas and writing.

Writing introductions and conclusions

Clear and purposeful introductions and conclusions in assignments are fundamental to effective academic writing. Your introduction should tell the reader what is going to be covered and how you intend to approach this. Your conclusion should summarise your argument or discussion and signal to the reader that you have come to a conclusion with a final statement.

Writing introductions

An effective introduction needs to inform your reader by establishing what the paper is about and provide four basic elements:

• A brief background or overview of your assignment topic and key information that reader needs to understand your thesis statement.
• Scope of discussion (key points discussed in body paragraphs).
• A thesis statement (see section above).

The below example demonstrates the different elements of an introductory paragraph.

1) Information technology is having significant effects on the communication of individuals and organisations in different professions. 2) Digital technology is now widely utilised in health settings, by health professionals. Within the public health field, doctors and nurses need to engage with ongoing professional development relating to digital technology in order to ensure efficient delivery of services to patients and communities. 3) Clearly, information technology has significant potential to improve health care and medical education, but some health professionals are reluctant to use it.

1 Brief background/overview | 2 Scope of what will be covered |  3 The thesis statement

Writing conclusions

You should aim to end your assignments with a strong conclusion. Your conclusion should restate your thesis statement and summarise the key points you have used to prove this thesis. Finish with a key point as a final impactful statement. If your assessment task asks you to make recommendations, you may need to allocate more words to the conclusion or add a separate recommendations section before the conclusion. Use the checklist below to check your conclusion is doing the right job.

Conclusion checklist 

• Have you referred to the assignment question and restated your argument (or thesis statement), as outlined in the introduction?
• Have you pulled together all the threads of your essay into a logical ending and given it a sense of unity?
• Have you presented implications or recommendations in your conclusion? (if required by your task).
• Have you added to the overall quality and impact of your essay? This is your final statement about this topic; thus, a key take-away point can make a great impact on the reader.
• Do not add any new material or direct quotes in your conclusion.

This below example demonstrates the different elements of a concluding paragraph.

1) Clearly, communication of individuals and organisations is substantially influenced or affected by information technology across professions. 2) Managers must ensure that effective in-house training programs are provided for public health professionals, so that they become more familiar with the particular digital technologies 3) In addition, the patients and communities being served by public health professionals benefit when communication technologies are effectively implemented. 4) The Australian health system may never be completely free of communication problems, however,   ensuring appropriate and timely professional development, provision of resource sand infrastructure will enhance service provision and health outcomes. 

1  Reference to thesis statement – In this essay the writer has taken the position that training is required for both employees and employers . | 2-3 Structure overview – Here the writer pulls together the main ideas in the essay. | 4   Final summary statement that is based on the evidence.

Note: The examples in this document are adapted from the University of Canberra and used under a CC-BY-SA-3.0 licence.

Writing paragraphs

Each paragraph should have its own clearly identified Topic Sentence or main idea which relates to the argument or point (thesis) you are developing. This idea should then be explained by additional sentences which you have paraphrased from good quality sources and referenced according to the recommended guidelines of your subject (see the chapter Working with Information ). Paragraphs are characterised by moving from general information to the specific details. A common structure for paragraphs in academic writing is as follows.

Topic Sentence

The first sentence of the paragraph is the Topic Sentence. This is the main idea of the paragraph and tells the reader what you will discuss in more detail below. Each Topic Sentence should address one aspect of your overall argument.

Supporting Sentences

Supporting Sentences provide more explanation, evidence, data, analogies, and/or analysis of the main idea.

Linking/Concluding Sentence

Some paragraphs are best linked to the following paragraph through a Linking/Concluding Sentence. Not every paragraph lends itself to this type of sentence.

Use the checklist below to check your paragraphs are clear and well formed.

Paragraph checklist

• Does your paragraph have a clear main idea?
• Is everything in the paragraph related to this main idea?
• Is the main idea adequately developed and explained?
• Have you included evidence to support your ideas?
• Have you concluded the paragraph by connecting it to your overall topic (where appropriate)?

Writing sentences

Make sure all the sentences in your paragraphs make sense. Each sentence must contain a verb to be a complete sentence. Avoid incomplete sentences or ideas that are unfinished and create confusion for your reader. Also avoid overly long sentences, which happens when you join two ideas or clauses without using the appropriate punctuation. Address only one key idea per sentence. See the chapter English Language Foundations for examples and further explanation.

Use transitions (linking words and phrases) to connect your ideas between paragraphs and make your writing flow. The order that you structure the ideas in your assignment should reflect the structure you have outlined in your introduction. Refer to the transition words table in the chapter English Language Foundations .

Paraphrasing and Synthesising

What is paraphrasing.

Paraphrasing is changing the writing of another author into your words while retaining the original meaning. You must acknowledge the original author as the source of the information in your citation. Follow the steps in this table to help you build your skills in paraphrasing. Note: paraphrasing generally means that the rewritten section is the same or a similar length to the original.

Example of paraphrasing

Please note that these examples and in-text citations are for instructional purposes only.

Original text

Health care professionals   assist people, often when they are at their most vulnerable . To provide the best care and understand their needs, workers must demonstrate good communication skills .  They must develop patient trust and provide empathy   to effectively work with patients who are experiencing a variety of situations including those who may be suffering from trauma or violence, physical or mental illness or substance abuse (French & Saunders, 2018).

Poor quality paraphrase example

This is a poor example of paraphrasing. Some synonyms have been used and the order of a few words changed within the sentences. However, the colours of the sentences indicate that the paragraph follows the same structure as the original text.

Health care sector workers are often responsible for vulnerable  patients.   To understand patients and deliver good service , they need to be excellent communicators .  They must establish patient rapport and show empathy if they are to successfully care for patients from a variety of backgrounds  and with different medical, psychological and social needs (French & Saunders, 2018).

A good quality paraphrase example

This example demonstrates a better quality paraphrase. The author has demonstrated more understanding of the overall concept in the text by using the keywords as the basis to reconstruct the paragraph.

Empathetic   communication is a vital skill for health care workers.   Professionals in these fields   are often responsible for patients with complex medical, psychological and social needs. Empathetic   communication assists in building rapport and gaining the necessary trust   to assist these vulnerable patients  by providing appropriate supportive care (French & Saunders, 2018).

The good quality paraphrase example demonstrates understanding of the overall concept in the text by using key words as the basis to reconstruct the paragraph. Note how the blocks of colour have been broken up to see how much the structure has changed from the original text.

What is synthesising?

Synthesising means to bring together more than one source of information to strengthen your argument. Once you have learnt how to paraphrase the ideas of one source at a time, you can consider adding additional sources to support your argument. Synthesis demonstrates your understanding and ability to show connections between multiple pieces of evidence to support your ideas and is a more advanced academic thinking and writing skill.

Follow the steps in this table to improve your synthesis techniques.

Example of synthesis

There is a relationship between academic procrastination and mental health outcomes.  Procrastination has been found to have a negative effect on students’ well-being (Balkis, & Duru, 2016). Yerdelen et al.’s (2016) research results suggest that there is a positive association between procrastination and anxiety. This is corroborated by Custer’s (2018) findings which indicate that students with higher levels of procrastination also report greater levels of anxiety. Therefore, it could be argued that procrastination is an ineffective learning strategy that leads to increased levels of distress.

Topic sentence | Statements using paraphrased evidence | Critical thinking (student voice) | Concluding statement – linking to topic sentence

This example demonstrates a simple synthesis. The author has developed a paragraph with one central theme and included explanatory sentences complete with in-text citations from multiple sources. Note how the blocks of colour have been used to illustrate the paragraph structure and synthesis (i.e. statements using paraphrased evidence from several sources). A more complex synthesis may include more than one citation per sentence.

Paraphrasing and synthesising are powerful tools that you can use to support the main idea of a paragraph. It is likely that you will regularly use these skills at university to incorporate evidence into explanatory sentences and strengthen your essay. It is important to paraphrase and synthesise because:

• Paraphrasing is regarded more highly at university than direct quoting.
• Paraphrasing can also help you better understand the material.
• Paraphrasing and synthesising demonstrate that you have understood what you have read through your ability to summarise and combine arguments from the literature using your own words.

Creating an Argument

What does this mean.

In academic writing, if you are asked to create an argument, this means you are asked to have a position on a particular topic, and then justify your position using evidence from valid scholarly sources.

What skills do you need to create an argument?

In order to create a good and effective argument, you need to be able to:

• Read critically to find evidence.
• Plan your argument.
• Think and write critically throughout your paper to enhance your argument.

For tips on how to read and write critically, refer to the chapter Thinking for more information. A formula for developing a strong argument is presented below.

A formula for a good argument

What does an argument look like?

As can be seen from the figure above, including evidence is a key element of a good argument. While this may seem like a straightforward task, it can be difficult to think of wording to express your argument. The table below provides examples of how you can illustrate your argument in academic writing.

Editing and proofreading (reviewing)

Once you have finished writing your first draft it is recommended that you spend time revising your work. Proofreading and editing are two different stages of the revision process.

• Editing considers the overall focus or bigger picture of the assignment.
• Proofreading considers the finer details.

As can be seen in the figure above, there are four main areas that you should review during the editing phase of the revision process. The main things to consider when editing include content, structure, style, and sources. It is important to check that all the content relates to the assignment task, the structure is appropriate for the purposes of the assignment, the writing is academic in style, and that sources have been adequately acknowledged. Use the checklist below when editing your work.

Editing checklist

• Have I answered the question accurately?
• Do I have enough credible, scholarly supporting evidence?
• Is my writing tone objective and formal enough or have I used emotive and informal language?
• Have I written in third person, not first person?
• Do I have appropriate in-text citations for all my information?
• Have I included the full details for all my in-text citations in my reference list?

During proofreading, it is important to check your work for word choice, grammar and spelling, punctuation, and referencing errors. It can be easy to mis-type words like ‘from’ and ‘form’ or mix up words like ‘trail’ and ‘trial’ when writing about research, apply American rather than Australian spelling, include unnecessary commas, or incorrectly format your references list. The checklist below is a useful guide that you can use when proofreading your work.

Proofreading checklist

• Is my spelling and grammar accurate?
• Are they complete?
• Do they all make sense?
• Do the different elements (subject, verb, nouns, pronouns) within my sentences agree?
• Are my sentences too long and complicated?
• Do they contain only one idea per sentence?
• Is my writing concise? Take out words that do not add meaning to your sentences.
• Have I used appropriate discipline specific language but avoided words I don’t know or understand that could possibly be out of context?
• Have I avoided discriminatory language and colloquial expressions (slang)?
• Is my referencing formatted correctly according to my assignment guidelines? (For more information on referencing, refer to the Managing Assessment feedback section).

This chapter has examined the experience of writing assignments. It began by focusing on how to read and break down an assignment question, then highlighted the key components of essays. Next, it examined some techniques for paraphrasing and summarising, and how to build an argument. It concluded with a discussion on planning and structuring your assignment and giving it that essential polish with editing and proofreading. Combining these skills and practising them can greatly improve your success with this very common form of assessment.

• Academic writing requires clear and logical structure, critical thinking and the use of credible scholarly sources.
• A thesis statement is important as it tells the reader the position or argument you have adopted in your assignment.
• Spending time analysing your task and planning your structure before you start to write your assignment is time well spent.
• Information you use in your assignment should come from credible scholarly sources such as textbooks and peer reviewed journals. This information needs to be paraphrased and referenced appropriately.
• Paraphrasing means putting something into your own words and synthesising means to bring together several ideas from sources.
• Creating an argument is a four step process and can be applied to all types of academic writing.
• Editing and proofreading are two separate processes.

Balkis, M., & Duru, E. (2016). Procrastination, self-regulation failure, academic life satisfaction, and affective well-being: underregulation or misregulation form. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 31 (3), 439-459.

Custer, N. (2018). Test anxiety and academic procrastination among prelicensure nursing students. Nursing Education Perspectives, 39 (3), 162-163.

Yerdelen, S., McCaffrey, A., & Klassen, R. M. (2016). Longitudinal examination of procrastination and anxiety, and their relation to self-efficacy for self-regulated learning: Latent growth curve modeling. Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice, 16 (1), 5-22.

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