I always go off on a tangent in my assignments!
Your feedback says “You have not answered the question”, and you’re like “What?! I haven’t answered the question? But what about all that stuff I wrote? I spent so long researching that!”.
You’re frustrated! You’re annoyed! You worked really hard on this assignment! Like, seriously?!
This is completely normal and it’s a stage lots of brilliant students pass through on their way to fabulous grades.
But, what’s happened here is that you’ve lost your focus, gone off on a tangent, and written about something that wasn’t directly or clearly related to the question.
It happens very easily, whilst we’re researching our assignments, we see something, think, “Ooh, that’s interesting!” and go off down a rabbit hole.
How do we stop ourselves getting distracted and disappearing down a blind alley, rabbit hole or other ‘got distracted’ analogy?
Here are my top three tips:
Number 1 - Keep a copy of the assignment title or question close to hand. Write it down. Keep it near to you whilst you’re doing your assignment. Get a sticky note and put it on your laptop, stick it on the fridge. Just keep it at the forefront of your mind.
Number 2 – As you are researching and writing your assignment, for every note you take and every paragraph you write, as yourself:
Is this helping me answer the question?
How is this helping me answer the question?
What specifically does this contribute to the answer?
Do I need to go into this level of detail?
Could I summarise it?
Could I just acknowledge that this area of the literature exists without going into all the ins and outs of it?
Have I explained how it is relevant?
Number 3 – In your assignment, use these phrases when you want to demonstrate to the marker how something it relevant. Sometimes, you need to be explicit, because relevance isn’t immediately obvious:
“It is important to consider this because …”
“To return to the question / title, this is of clear significance because …”
“Whilst this would not appear directly relevant to the question, it is pertinent to consider it because…”
That should help keep you focused whilst you’re preparing your assignments and avoid that annoying feedback of the “You haven’t answered the question” variety!
Check out my YouTube video below for more tips!