Skills for Assignments

The Library and Skills for Learning are here to help you through the assessment period. We recognise that there are several deadlines coming up, and you may be anxious to improve your submissions. Here's a summary of our service: 

  • Academic skills workshops run online, from Monday to Saturday.  You can book here: wlv.ac.uk/lib/skills-for-learning/skills-workshops-sessions/
  • Drop-ins also run from Monday to Friday. Here you can have a short chat and discuss ways to improve your writing, referencing or other academic skills. See here for details: wlv.ac.uk/lib/skills-for-learning/one-to-one-support/ 
  • Struggling to plan your time? We'd recommend speaking with us about putting together a study schedule. You can do this at the drop-in, or via email by using our skills contact form
  • Lastly, we have a collection of shorter video tutorials, if you'd prefer to learn at your own pace. For example, here's our guide on time management

Assignment Essentials

The first stage in producing a good assignment is to have a clear understanding of the assignment 
question. Our Guide to Assignment Task Words will help you identify the type of assignment you have been asked to do (available in written or audio format).

Guide to Assignment Task Words - PDF / Audio

Once you know what you are being asked to do you can begin to plan out your assignment! To help you with this we have a Planning Your Assignment study guide and we also run regular skills workshops covering how to plan your time and prepare for a piece of work or assessment (visit our Skills Workshops page and look out for our next Bitesize workshop on Exam Preparation)

Guide to Planning Your Assignment - PDF / Audio

Now you know what you need to be writing about you will need to make sure to follow the expected standards of academic writing formats so it is never to late to brush up on your academic writing skills.

Our Academic Writing Essentials video covers the basis so is a great place to start.

Then have a look on our Skills workshop page and sign up for one of our online Introduction to Academic Writing sessions. Whilst you're at it, sign up for a Bitesize Paraphrasing workshop which will help you take your writing to the next level.

We also have plenty of study guides available (in multiple formats) and we recommend that you take a look at the following:

Guide to Academic Writing - PDF / MP3

Guide to Report Writing - PDF / MP3

As you work through your assignment, always be thinking about referencing the sources that you are using as this is how you will demonstrate how widely you have researched your subject area whilst helping you to avoid plagiarism. 

Get started by visiting our dedicated Referencing Support Page which has a wealth of resources to help you reference correctly and don't forget to book onto a referencing workshop and view our Cite Them Right Quick Guide.

Cite Them Right quick guide - PDF

Harvard Referencing -  Panopto Video Guide (5 min)

A key step that must not be overlooked in any assignment is the final proofreading and editing stages. This can make all the difference and we have a helpful study guide that includes some tips for you to be thinking about when you get to this stage of your work.

Guide to Proofreading -  PDF / Audio

Discover more academic skills support from the library

Visit Skills for Learning
  • online skills workshops
  • study guides
  • referencing support
  • digital skills
  • and much more!

More exam and assessment support from the library