Understanding the Assignment

A writing assignment prompt may look very different depending on the goals of the assignment, the course, and the professor’s individual style. This chapter will provide some general strategies for understanding a writing assignment prompt as well as some strategies specific to Project 1 in ENGL 105.

A step-by-step guide to understanding a writing prompt :

1. Read the entire prompt carefully.
2. Highlight or record any specifications and/or requirements. This could include page length or word count, citation style (APA, MLA, etc.), number of resources you need to cite, or any formatting specifications ( title, header, margins, etc.).
3. Identify the purpose of the assignment. Ask: are you being asked to provide an objective report on a topic, create an argument, analyze data or a creative text, compare or evaluate ideas, etc.?
4. Copy down any questions or discussion points your professor provides in the prompt. You may consider turning this list into a checklist to keep track of whether or not you address these points in your writing.
5. Identify the audience for this assignment. Ask: are you writing this to your professor, or are they asking you to imagine a different audience for this project? What are your potential reader’s needs or expectations?
6. Identify what resources you may need or steps you need to take in order to get started.
7. Ask your professor any remaining questions you may have.

Now, open the prompt your instructor has provided for your ENGL 105 Project 1. If we follow the above steps, we get something like this:

1. Read it carefully, maybe even more than once.
2. Note the specifications and requirements. Keep in mind that while all 105 classes have the same major assignments, each instructor will likely tweak the prompts to better clarify their personal expectations. Make sure you pay attention to what your 105 instructor’s prompt asks for in terms of citation style, formatting, page length, and any content requirements. For example, this project asks you to discuss three different topics related to your major. That’s an important component and should be included in this list of requirements!
3. Identify the purpose of this assignment. One way to do this is to look at the verbs the instructor uses. For Project 1, the primary verbs are “explore” and “describe.” Based on these verbs, is this prompt asking you to make an argument? It doesn’t seem that way. However, the final draft will ask you to choose one of the three topics, so it seems likely that some kind of comparison or evaluation of the three topics is required. Make a note of that!
4. Does your instructor provide any questions or discussion points for you to cover as you explore each of your three topics? (again–some instructors will, some won’t). If your prompt includes any, list those!
5. Who is the audience for this assignment? While it is easy to assume the answer is simply your instructor, many instructors will have you write for a general, academic audience. Think again about the purpose of this assignment. You are meant to explore three topics and pick one to continue researching for the entire semester. So, it seems quite likely that you are also part of the audience of your own work as you set up a several-month-long research project. Who else might this be for?
6. What resources do you need to get started? It seems likely that a brainstorm session is needed in order to identify three topics related to your major that you may want to pursue as a research project this semester. Once you have those topics identified, you can begin performing preliminary research before you get started writing.
7. What questions do you still have about this assignment? Make a note of them and bring these questions to class–if you have these questions, another student may have them too!

Scope

Now that you have a better idea of what you are being asked to accomplish in this assignment, it is time to get realistic about what you can and cannot potentially research this semester. Across Projects 1, 2, and 3, you will identify your research topic, research and compile credible sources through an annotated bibliography, and finally, write an argumentative essay based on the topic. This means that you need to identify topics that have an appropriate scope to support a full semester of research and writing, and that you can form an evidence-based opinion about. In the next few sections we’ll explore ways to help ensure that the scope of your selected topics is appropriate for this class.

For example, let’s say your major is Biology. You find yourself interested in the ways that cells replicate, but don’t really know too much about that at this point. It might seem tempting to put “cell replication” as one of your research topics, but is this really something you can form an opinion about over the course of one semester? Probably not, so leave that for the advanced researchers who are discovering new information about cell replication in their labs. For your purposes, this topic likely isn’t viable with an appropriate scope for this project.

Let’s follow a more detailed example as you prepare for Project 1. Natasha is a (fictional) student of ENGL 105 and her major is Psychology. She isn’t quite sure what she wants to do with her degree once she graduates, so first she decides to take this project as an opportunity to explore a future career option. She picks therapy as one of her topics. Next, she knows that she is interested in research as well so she picks graduate school as a second topic. For the third topic, she isn’t quite sure what else to pick, so she settles for childhood development since she knows that’s something related to psychology and wants to see what that entails.

This is a great start for Natasha! Now, she needs to start identifying useful search terms.

Keywords

While we will discuss these in more detail in Chapter 3, for now keep in mind that keywords are the terms that you input into a search bar in order to get results. At this early stage in the research process, you may have to try multiple approaches to your topic in order to find keywords that provide relevant results.

The above exercise is a simplified example of the importance of varying your keywords and trying multiple synonyms or adjacent terms to help find the most useful results. You may think “red” is the best way to describe the color you are trying to research, but other authors or the search algorithm may not agree. Expanding your list of potential keywords will help you find resources that are relevant to your topic even if you did not originally think to phrase it that way.

Try to think of at least three synonyms or associated terms for each search term you use. If your keyword has multiple search terms, mix and match synonyms and see what kind of results you get!

To continue our previous example: Natasha has chosen “therapy,” “graduate school,” and “childhood development” as her three topics. She uses these terms as initial keywords, but isn’t finding the results she’s looking for. So, she makes a chart of synonyms and associated terms that she fills out as she tries new options and finds more specific terms to use.

Therapy	Graduate School	Childhood Development
Therapy Career	Psychology Graduate School	Child Psychology
Therapist Requirements	Psychology Programs	Infant Mental Health
Online Therapy Platforms	Psychology Research Labs	Mental Health Medication Children

As you can see, Natasha has added and changed some terms entirely as her research has progressed. For example, while the keyword “therapy” initially only resulted in links to therapy offices, as Natasha investigated and tried more associated terms, she found out that there is big debate going on about how online therapy platforms are changing therapy as a career. At this point, the development of Natasha’s keywords has helped her identify an avenue of research for this topic!

Research Questions

Adjusting your keywords will help you get a sense for what resources are out there and for the current state of the conversation about that topic. Developing strong keywords also helps you gather enough preliminary information to start developing a research question.

Research questions focus the point of inquiry as you begin to understand your topic a bit better. They can help you figure out what, exactly, you are hoping to learn over the course of the semester and will make for a more sustainable project overall.

A strong research question has several common features. It should be:

• Focused – on a single topic or idea
• Researchable – it can be answered with credible sources and is not based on value judgements
• Feasible – it can be answered within the scope of the project requirements and deadlines
• Arguable – cannot be answered with a simple yes/no or easily determined facts
• Relevant – appropriate for the assignment

If we return to Natasha, she is now at the point where she feels she has a better understanding of what to expect when performing a larger research project on the three topics she has chosen.

Now, she needs to narrow down a research question for each topic that meets the above criteria.

While originally Natasha was interested in pursuing “therapy” as a research topic, she found that she was most interested in the way that online therapy platforms were changing the field. She decides that she wants to know what to expect if she should pursue therapy as a career, so her research question for this topic is: “How do new online therapy platforms impact a therapist’s career choices?”

Next, Natasha thinks about the strength of this research question. The question focuses on the single idea of online therapy from a therapist’s perspective. Since Natasha is not asking whether online therapy is good or bad, the answer would not be based on value judgements. In her earlier keyword searches, Natasha noticed that there seemed to be enough articles about this topic that she feels she could answer this question with research into credible sources, and that she can read enough about this topic to find some answers by the end of the semester (researchable + feasible). Finally, it seems likely that she could create an argument about the effects of this shift once she knows a little more, and since therapy is related to her major, it is relevant to the assignment (arguable and relevant). This question passes the initial test!

Natasha then goes through the same process and identifies a strong research question for each of her other two topics as well.

Pre-research

 

The steps outlined above – understanding the assignment, brainstorming, identifying keywords, and forming a research question – are all steps in a process called pre-research. This process allows a researcher to test potential ideas for their sustainability before moving into more in-depth research.

Pre-research is a failsafe to make sure that a project has potential before a researcher dedicates too much time and energy to it. It also allows for more focused and effective research once the researcher enters that stage of the project. Project 1 is designed to model an effective pre-research process, in which multiple ideas are formed, tested, and preliminarily explored before one is selected for further pursuit. Make sure to take this project seriously, and let your professor know if you have questions along the way!

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