Writing university-level assignments

When you have gathered notes from all your reading, the next stage involves deciding where these ideas will fit in your work.

There are many different types of assessment which you may encounter. The following guidance is for an academic essay, but do look at the related links in this module to find out more about other forms of assessment such as presentations, reflective or report writing.

Traditionally, academic essays have the following structure: introduction, main body and conclusion. In the absence of specific word counts given to you in assignment briefs, introductions and conclusions tend to take up to 10% of the total word count.

The introduction tends to present the topic, key terms and definitions and the aim and purpose of the essay.

Main body paragraphs develop the topic and are strategically ordered so that conclusions can be reached towards the end of the assignment. Many references are used in the main body to compare and contrast views, and show that your analysis of the topic is based on good quality academic evidence.

The conclusion demonstrates how the assignment aims were achieved and summarises the key messages you presented in the main body.

At this point, you should be focusing on developing a strong structure. You may want to visualise each paragraph as a set of boxes and make brief notes of what you may wish to include, making references to your reading. If you use post-it notes to do this, you can physically move paragraphs about until you have identified a clear structure. Planning your work before writing is extremely important to ensure ideas are presented in a logical order and repetition is avoided. The image below should help you visualise what planning an essay could look like:

INTRODUCTION (generally 10% of total word count)	1. General statement about the topic 2. Context 3. Specific statement (focus) 4. Purpose of the essay. For example: It is the purpose of this essay to explore the advantages and disadvantages of...
MAIN BODY PARAGRAPHS (usually 5-8 sentences long)	1. Topic sentence 2. Examples to support claims (with referencing) 3. Contrasting/comparing sentence(s) - however, in contrast, similarly, likewise 4. Concluding sentence - in sum, to sum up, in brief, in other words, in short Zheng et al. (2019) argue that... Abimbola (2017, p.2) states that '...' There is evidence to suggest that... (Thompson and Thompson, 2023).
CONCLUSION (generally 10% of total word count)	1. Recall the issues raised in the introduction 2. Summarise the main points of the essay 3. Come to a clear conlusion without introducing any new topics or ideas  To conclude, in conclusion

When you are confident that you have developed a solid structure, you should be in a good position to start writing your assignment. You can access an assignment planning and essay writing skills module to continue learning about these topics.

The process described so far demonstrates that writing an academic piece could be compared to an iceberg:

The tip of the iceberg is what we see, the final piece of writing. What we do not see, which is much deeper, is what we can find underneath the water, the process. We are often so fixated with the final product that we jump in and start writing, neglecting some of the crucial steps of the writing process: finding good academic sources, evaluating them, making good quality notes, planning and structuring the assignment.

When your first draft is ready, you will begin the editing process. More information on how to proofread your own work can be found here.

You also have a Learning Developer who can advise you on your academic writing skills.