Have you ever gotten an assignment, and after you read it your mind went blank, and all you heard was the buzzing noise of imminent panic? This feeling can lead to writer’s block. It’s the big undefined unknowns that block you because you don’t know what to do or how to get started. When this happens to you, one way to tackle it is to think about the questions: Why did your instructor assign this to you? What is it they want you to learn? Hint: It's not just the subject matter.
A writing assignment consists of instructions for how to meet specific learning goals. How this is communicated (in a well-constructed assignment) is through terminology. Your task is to (a) find the magic terms, and (b) use them to figure out what learning goals the instructor is asking you to accomplish.
As you do this, MAKE NOTES. Free write everything that occurs to you as you go through this decoding process.
Remember: The learning goals of an assignment are communicated through specific terms.
Learning Goal | Demonstrate | Relate | Analyze | Evaluate |
Definition | Show what you know | Show relationship between concepts, eras, themes | Show a text’s purpose and how it achieves the purpose— | Show whether theories, claims, or positions are good or bad, proved or not proved |
Change link | define describe restate summarize | connect find an example compare/contrast classify | deconstruct organize attribute examine identify | assess explain justify opinion |
The words and goals in the chart above are examples from a political science writing center, so you might not find them in your assignment; look for terms like these. Within every discipline, and even every course, they will be different, and instructors have their favorites. Figure out what the terms are, and use them to discover what the learning goal is.
Remember to make notes as you decode. They are the foundation of what you will write.
Finally, when you are in the first steps of a writing assignment, separate the brainstorming from the editing. Reading for error and polishing can come later.
References
Rank, A., & Pool, H. (2014). Writing Better Writing Assignments. PS: Political Science & Politics, 47(3), 675-681. doi:10.1017/S1049096514000821
https://www.bloomstaxonomy.net/
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