How to Write an Assignment?

1. How to Write an Assignment? Dr AnandMahanand Dept. of Materials Development EFL University, Hyderabad-500007

2. Selecting a topic • How do you get a topic? • How do you select? • How do you narrow it down? • What are the criteria of your selection?

3. Collection of Materials • Preparing a working bibliography including • Books, articles, abstracts, dissertations • Follow MLA style of documentation from the beginning

4. Survey of materials • First reading(go through all but select whatever is relevant to your topic. • Choose your primary texts and read them closely.

5. Prepare an outline of your paper. It may include: • Topic • Objective • Review of Literature • Your focus • Approach/theoretical framework • Texts to be used • Introduction • Argument • Conclusion • References

6. Reading and making notes • Read the primary texts again closely and • Identify important points and make notes • Don’t forget to write the page no below • If possible key in your notes on your computer • See how notes have been made from the novel Heart of Darkness

7. Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. London: Vintage,2007. Notes from the Primary Text.Note 1 “ I had then, as you remember, just returned to London after a lot of Indian Ocean, Pacific, China Seas- a regular close of the East-six years or so I was loafing about, hindering your homes, just as though I had got a heavenly mission to civilize you.”(9).

8. Note 2 “The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster but these you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were- No, they were not inhuman. Well you know that was the worst of it- this suspicion of their not being in human.” (50).

9. Note 3 “They howled and leaped, and spun and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity-like yours” (50).

10. Notes 4&5 “Mind,” he began again, lifting one arm from the elbow, the palm of the hand outwords, so that, with his legs folded before him, he had the pose of a Buddha preaching in European clothes and without a lotus flower-“ ( 8). Marlow ceased and sat apart, indistinct and silent, in the pose of a meditating Buddha.” (110).

11. Notes from critical textsNote 1 • Harold Bloom’s Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. • “Conrad like many novelists today, was both drawn to idealism repelled by its hypocritical abuse.”(6).

12. Note 2 In Under Western Eyes. Sophia Antonova makes a distinction between those who burn and those who rot, and remarks that it is some times preferable to burn. The Kurtz who had made himself literally one of the devils of the land, and who in solitude had kicked himself loose on the earth, burns while others rot.” ( qtd. In Guerard 7). “ Before the Congo I was just a mere animal”

13. Note 3 Marlow says“ Going up was like travelling back to the easiest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick , heavy and sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted , into the gloom of overshadowed distances. On silvery sand backs hippos and alligators sunned themselves side by side.” (Guerard 15).

14. Note 4 • “ Heart of Darkness nevertheless remains one of the great dark meditations in literature, and one of the purest expressions of a melancholy temperament.(16).

15. Writing the Paper Now we can go back to the outline expand it using the notes we have from the primary text and the critical materials. Let us write the first draft starting with the abstract. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1902): A Story of Inner Journey

16. Abstract Ingredients in an abstract • Objective • Methodology • Specification of texts • Approach

17. Introduction Background • Author, historical context (e.g. colonialism) • Thematic

18. Argument • Supported by evidence from texts

19. Conclusion • To be drawn from your argument • Linked to your objective statement

20. Works Cited Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. London: Vintage Books, 2007. Guerard, Albert J. “The Journey Within.” Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Ed. Harold Bloom. Delhi: Viva Books, 2007.

21. Writing an Assignment in ELT area • Selecting a topic • Survey of Materials • First Reading • Preparing an outline • Data Collection • Preparing a questionnaire • Interpretation of data • Second Reading (for theory+Review, etc.)

22. Writing the Assignment • Make a draft of your assignment • Follow APA style of documentation • Tone, Style and academic conventions • Editing- Macro and Micro

23. Sample of a questionnaire • This survey is done for a research paper to know about difficulties of students in understanding university lectures. Please feel free to give your responses. Your identity will not be disclosed. • Name………………………….. • Can you decode/understand fully what has been said in the lectures. • Yes______ • No______ • To some extend_____ • Can you identify the main and the subsidiary points in a lecture? • a. Yes_______ • b. No_______ • c. To some extend______. • Can you distinguish between important points and less important points? • Yes______ • No______ • So some extend_____ • Can you identify the topic of the lecture and follow the topic development? • Yes______ • No______ • To some extend_____ • Do you face problem in understanding the British accent? • a.Yes____ • b.No_____ • c.Not sure_____ • Do you face problem in understanding Indian (intelligible)accent ? • Yes_____ • No_____ • Not sure____ • Do you face problem in understanding regional varieties of English ? • a.Yes______ • b. No_____ • c. Not sure_____ • Are the lectures structured? • a.Yes_____ • b. No_____ • c. Not sure____ • Any suggestions you would like to give to your professor on lectures?

24. Data Interpretation • The responses that we got from our questionnaire reveal that out of twenty students, 12 are able to comprehend lectures completely. There are 8 who cannot comprehend fully. 15 students are able to identify important points and less-important points and 5 students face difficulties in identifying the main and subsidiary points. 15 students can identify the topic of the lecture successfully where as few can do it sometimes depending on the particular lecturer. But we can not say that no students has any difficulty, because there are very few (2 of them) who cannot identify the topic at all. • We can say that probably almost all (20) students can understand the British accent as well as Indian (intelligible) accent with out much difficulty. But they say that it takes some time to be familiar with it. When it comes to the regional varieties of English , many are not comfortable with it. About the organization of the lecture, 13 students are not sure. They say some lectures are well-organized where as some other lead to digressions. Students suggest that they need more examples to understand the content clearly. They don’t like long lectures and suggest for breaks in between. Perhaps some kind of interaction in between will be better.

25. AnandMahanand amahanand991@gmail.com Thank You