20 ways to fail an assignment
This list was put together on Facebook in 2011 in the midst of a pile of marking. Many thanks to Chloe-Ann Jones, a first year student [now graduated!!] at Sheffield Hallam for co-writing this with me.
1) not using the criteria marking and level descriptors as a guidance
2) not doing any back ground or relevant reading
3) try and write it at night, preferably after a session in the nightclub
4) find all the distractions in the world....1) toilet 2) making parents a drink 3) tidying your bed room!
5) start your assignment 5 hours before its due in
6) make generic and unsubstantiated comments like 'it has been suggested' or 'research shows' without saying precisely who is speaking.
7) bung in a few references at the end, or better still, forget the references all together
8) use websites instead of journals and books. Commercial management guru websites are almost as effective as wikipedia.
9) don't provide any structuring sentences- Ignore writing about the objectives of the assignment and don't tell the reader what will happen in the assignment
10) have no apparent structure to the report
11) dont actually answer the question
12) copy and paste the whole assignment from a friend, or a student in another University, so turnitin picks you up
13) go off on a tangent on something completely different and off topic
14) don’t use standard English, use slang, street terms and emotional language
15) add in extra words just to fluff out the assignment to fit the word count
16) assume that the reader knows exactly what the subject is about and fail to explain and reference technical terms
17) dont prrof read and find out that you have 17,468,326.2 spelling or grammatical errors!
18) switch between first and third person writing, and between passive and active verbs
9) write blocks of text separately so that they have no relation to each other, making sure that there is no narrative structure or flow throughout the assignment
20) don't introduce material and learning from other assignments and modules- you can forget them after you handed that in- learning is not cumulative-it's just a bunch of tick boxes
Tim Curtis, University of Northampton Jan 2011
This list was put together on Facebook in 2011 in the midst of a pile of marking. Many thanks to Chloe-Ann Jones, a first year student [now graduated!!] at Sheffield Hallam for co-writing this with me.
1) not using the criteria marking and level descriptors as a guidance
2) not doing any back ground or relevant reading
3) try and write it at night, preferably after a session in the nightclub
4) find all the distractions in the world....1) toilet 2) making parents a drink 3) tidying your bed room!
5) start your assignment 5 hours before its due in
6) make generic and unsubstantiated comments like 'it has been suggested' or 'research shows' without saying precisely who is speaking.
7) bung in a few references at the end, or better still, forget the references all together
8) use websites instead of journals and books. Commercial management guru websites are almost as effective as wikipedia.
9) don't provide any structuring sentences- Ignore writing about the objectives of the assignment and don't tell the reader what will happen in the assignment
10) have no apparent structure to the report
11) dont actually answer the question
12) copy and paste the whole assignment from a friend, or a student in another University, so turnitin picks you up
13) go off on a tangent on something completely different and off topic
14) don’t use standard English, use slang, street terms and emotional language
15) add in extra words just to fluff out the assignment to fit the word count
16) assume that the reader knows exactly what the subject is about and fail to explain and reference technical terms
17) dont prrof read and find out that you have 17,468,326.2 spelling or grammatical errors!
18) switch between first and third person writing, and between passive and active verbs
9) write blocks of text separately so that they have no relation to each other, making sure that there is no narrative structure or flow throughout the assignment
20) don't introduce material and learning from other assignments and modules- you can forget them after you handed that in- learning is not cumulative-it's just a bunch of tick boxes
Tim Curtis, University of Northampton Jan 2011