Assignments are one thing that you can never get rid off during your college years. And to add to the stress, each subject demands its own numbers of assignments, out of which every assignment is based on a different topic. Tackling all of them at the same time indeed seems a frightening thought, but a student has to pass through many such tense times.

Often students work hard, really hard to get good scores in their assignments, but do not score as much as they were expecting. Scratching their heads, they think hard as to where did they go wrong, but are unable to figure out the actual problem. To make the task easier for you, we have figured out some of the common errors which students make while working on assignments. Once you get to know the errors, you will remember to avoid them the next time.

1. Keeping work for the last moment

Yes, let’s start with the most common one. Students keep on piling their work thinking, they will do it later, later, later. And the work keeps on adding up. Finally, when the day of the submission is just a day or two ahead, they start working on the assignment, which later turns out not to be as easy as they thought it would be. 

The first practice of crafting perfect assignments is to work on them when you receive them and to not keep them pending. Not only your work schedule would be more sorted, but the quality of your assignments will come out good too.

2. Ignoring the semester schedule

It is quite important to know the semester plan. You will know the order of the lessons and classes, which will help you plan your own time too. In the initial days of the semester itself, you can easily get the schedule from your college. 

Students sometimes do not pay much attention to it, and when the exams, evaluations or assignments draw near, it all turns into a mess.

3. Poor research

For a strong execution of your ideas, strong ideas need to be worked on first for which a strong research is required. Once you have zeroed down on your topic, hunt down the required facts, evidence, graphs, statistics, illustrations etc. Anything which will help you explain your work better to the readers will be essential. Thus, the more the data you collect, the better you work can come out to be.

Contrary to the above ideal habit, students scribble down whatever they can find in the last hours left before the submission of the assignment, and expect it to work wonders for them. Remember, a good research is a must.

4. Plagiarism

Say a strict “NO” to mindlessly copy-pasting an already published work. Plagiarism can ruin your work to a great extent, often to which students do not pay much attention and pick up lines from an existing website, book, magazine or anywhere else. Most of the universities all around the globe take strict actions against plagiarism. Some penalize the students severely while some even suspend them. 

The first step to avoid plagiarism is by doing an in-depth research, which gives you the ample number of ideas and facts on which you can work. Next, when you write your ideas in the final form, the execution should be original, not picking up lines from an existing source.

5. Insufficient brainstorming and mind mapping

Before you begin writing, think as much as you can about each aspect of your assignment. Students jump up to write, finish the task and get rid of it, not really planning and brainstorming much. Due to lack of brainstorming, it happens at times that students get stuck in the middle, not knowing what more to include or doubt the aptness of the topic itself. To stay away from such confusions, write down each idea that you get, whether it is about the introduction, sources for research, evidence, examples, case studies, topics or anything else. You would have a list of ideas to refer to whenever you need. 

A similar effort is required for mind mapping as well. A mind map is a chain of ideas that come from a single subject. Once you have selected the topic, write it down in the center of a paper and explore ideas further on it from various perspectives. 

Mindmap helps you think further on the topic as it opens new ways and brings out new directions to work on.

6. Poor or no planning before writing

Now, you have done enough of the research, washed out your brain during brainstorming and carved out a lot of ideas further in your mind map. Writing them all down for your final assignment is the next thing to do. But without a proper layout plan which decides the order of the ideas, how would you work ahead?

Planning your layout is one of the most crucial steps, and of those which students tend to ignore the most too. Often students hurry up to write it all and are done with it without a good plan. Such rush will reflect in the quality of your work, and eventually in your grades too! 

Hence, after you are through with your research, make a payout of your assignment, wherein you decide the sequence of the ideas, the information which is to be included in your final work, relevant examples and facts etc.

7.  Writing only to increase the number of pages

A big flaw which students often end up doing. A misbelieve goes around that the lengthier your assignment, the more it will appear that you have worked hard on it. And they scribble information that makes little or no sense into the work and gets a low in the marks due to it. It does not matter whether you write an assignment of 2 pages or 12, but it is the quality of work which matters the most. 

The content which you discuss in the assignment has the most value, not the number of words or pages used. Thus, avoid including information that is not important.

8. Keeping the toughest part for the last

Students know beforehand that which work will be easy for them and which would drive them nuts. They ignore the tough sections of the assignment and make them pending, thinking that they will do them last, let’s just finish the easy things first. And when they actually reach the last, tough questions to be solved, they are already exhausted working on the rest of the assignment. Either they chuck the remaining questions or end up making errors in it. 

To improve the situation, reverse the order or solving the questions; tackle the toughest first. When you start fresh, the tough questions will be easier to solve rather than solving them at the last. 

9. Submitting without rechecking

Such mistakes or habits come up if you work during the last moment or due to overconfidence, that you can do the perfect work in the first go itself. Once you have done the assignment, it is important to recheck it to pick out any flaws. Or else you teacher would point them out! Once you are through with your assignment, re-check it at least once to make sure everything is correct. 

Follow these simple steps and make your academic assignments error-free and impressive enough to score the desired grade!