Tips and Tricks on Writing Better College Assignments
Failing to get a good grade on your assignments?
Not adding enough citations, using weak examples and arguments and other types of mistakes and errors can all be detrimental to the quality of your assignment.
In this post, we will discuss some tips and tricks that can help you come up with better college assignments.
Don’t Do Your Research at the Spot
It basically means that once you get a topic to write on, you should start off doing the research even if you want to postpone the actual writing for later.
Looking up papers and online sources at the same time when you are writing the assignment is not a very smart thing to do.
Your work will look rushed, and you will not have the time to properly go through the material.
One of the best ways to go about this is to dedicate your writing and researching to two different sessions.
When conducting the research, make notes of all the points and references that you want to use in your assignment.
Start With the Main Body
This is one of the most unusual yet helpful tips that you can implement when writing a college assignment.
Writing the introduction and the starting parts can get a lot easier if you work on them at the end.
When you’ll write the main body first, you will get a thorough and clear idea about what the topic is and what you have covered in your assignment.
That way, the surrounding parts like the introduction, conclusion, takeaways, abstract, etc., will be easier to write.
Break Your Assignment into Easily Readable Parts
The easier it is for your teacher to go through the assignment, the happier they will be when grading it.
And you want to keep your teacher as happy as possible.
Use headings, sub-headings, and bullets throughout the assignment. Make important words bold and underlined. Use uppercase and italics for emphasis.
All these effects essentially let your teacher know where to pay attention.
If your teacher, for some reason, is unable to read through your entire assignment, they will be able to understand your concepts by looking at the highlighted words and sentences.
Don’t Forget the Checks
Once you’re done writing out your assignment, there are three different kinds of tests that you need to put it through:
1. Grammar Checks
Having grammar errors in your assignment can have an adverse effect on your overall grade.
And even if you proofread your final work multiple times, it is possible that you could still miss some errors.
This can happen because when you read something over and over again, you somewhat memorize it.
You then start to flit through it and ignore the mistakes even though they come in front of you…multiple times.
2. Readability Checks
Having a low readability score does not matter a lot in college assignments.
But we did mention before that the happier your teacher is when going through your paper, the more lenient they will be when grading it.
So, while having high readability won’t hurt your grade, having a low one instead can be helpful for it.
3. Plagiarism Checks
In academic writing, plagiarism is one of the worst things that can come up in your writing.
It can destroy your grade, and even get you expelled if done intentionally (and if your institution is that strict against it).
In our opinion, running a plagiarism check should be at the top of your post-writing checklist.
A few grammar mistakes won’t hurt your chances of getting a good grade as much as even a single paragraph of plagiarized content would.
You can use a free plagiarism checker to check the originality of the content.
Depending on your institution’s guidelines, you could be allowed a small percentage of plagiarism in your assignment.
Refine Your Tone
If you are not in the habit of writing assignments, it can be a little difficult for you to maintain the right tone.
You don’t want to use slang when writing a college assignment. You also don’t want to use informal contractions.
Keep it crisp and formal. Before writing your draft, first, go through a couple of research papers to get a proper idea of the style that you should write in.
And after you have come up with your paper, it can be a good idea to have another person look at it.
That way, if you are using a word or phrase thinking it to be formal when it is actually the opposite, you can be corrected.
Don’t Proofread Your Assignment Instantly
This is also an excellent tip to implement when writing an assignment. We did mention this point somewhere earlier as well.
Proofreading an assignment immediately after writing it won’t be very helpful. Since you will be familiar with the words and sentences, you will quickly scan through them.
By waiting for some time before proofreading your assignment, you will be able to forget it a little and look at it afresh.
And then, you won’t skip over the errors and mistakes as easily.
Prepare Your Citations and References Beforehand
As we mentioned in the first heading, you should do your research beforehand, and come up with all the sources earlier on.
During this same research phase, you should also get all your citations and references ready.
If you put off all the citations and references up till the end, it will become a big hassle.
You will have to go back to each source, get their link or DOI numbers, and then come up with the citations/references.
You can avoid all that by generating the citations as you go along.
Conclusion
If you are writing a college assignment, be sure to keep the above points in mind.
Don’t try to show off your vocabulary. It’s not going to help you. Keep everything simple.
Stick to a low readability score and make sure that there aren’t any grammatical mistakes in your work.
