Success in Academic Writing - Trevor Day 2018

Interpreting the nature of the task
Two popular types of assignment

When given an assignment, the first step is to interpret the wording of the assignment to decide how to tackle the task. Here is an example of an assignment set on an undergraduate International Development course. Students are expected to write a 2,000-word essay in response to this guidance:

There is no universally agreed definition of sustainable development. Discuss, with examples, how the diversity of interpretations of the concept can be seen as both adding to and undermining its usefulness.

If I were responding to this task, I would then underline the key phrases I need to interpret:

There is no universally agreed definition of sustainable development. Discuss, with examples, how the diversity of interpretations of the concept can be seen as both adding to and undermining its usefulness.

Putting myself in the place of the assessor, I can see that she has started with a forceful statement and then used wording that encourages me to address both sides of an argument. There is now plentiful opportunity for me (or you) to show criticality and depth of thinking. I would probably start thinking: ’What was the original, influential definition of sustainable development?’, ’Who came up with it?’, ’How has it developed since?’ and ’How has it been interpreted, modified and criticised, and by whom?’. As for the examples I might use, I would want to pick and choose these carefully so that they do show diversity and development of ideas, that I can weigh up both sides of the argument and that I can come to an interesting conclusion that is definitely my own.

The assignment gives plentiful opportunity for students to interpret the guidance, and pick examples, to reflect their own backgrounds and interests. A student from a developing country, with experience of international development, is likely to interpret the assignment in a rather different way compared to a student from a highly industrialised country who does not have practical experience. We will return to this example later in the chapter, to see how the initial ideas evolve into a workable essay.

Your initial thoughts

Once you have interpreted the nature of the task, it’s a good idea to write down your initial thoughts. What do you already know? What questions do you have? What do you need to find out? What are the challenges? What are your next steps?

Writing down these initial thoughts achieves many things. It helps clear your mind, opening up space for other thoughts to emerge. Often, you will find you know more about the task than you thought you did. It is good to capture your initial ideas and opinions before you are influenced by what you discover during your literature research and further reading. Your initial thoughts might influence the nature of your research, e.g. the examples you might choose to include in your essay. At the very least, you will ask good questions and can start planning your next steps. You have already started, which can be confidence-building in itself, spurring you on to further action.

Although distinct kinds of assignment differ in detail, they do share some common features. One of these is in their overall structure, divided into a beginning, middle and end.