Instructions for an assignment

Listen to a university teacher giving instructions for an assignment to practise and improve your listening skills.

Do the preparation task first. Then listen to the audio and do the exercises.

Transcript

I want to explain a few things about your essay.

First of all, the deadline. The deadline for this essay is October the 18th. Not the 19th, not the 28th, not two days later because your dog was ill or your computer broke – the 18th. If it's late, I won't mark it. I won't even read it – you'll fail the assignment! So, please hand it in on time. You can even hand it in early, if you like!

You can email me the essays at j.hartshorn@lmu.ac.uk. That's H-A-R-T-S-H-O-R-N. I'll reply to say I've got it. If I don't reply within a day, it might mean I didn't get it, so please email me again to make sure. You can also bring a paper copy of the essay to my office, but let's be kind to the trees, OK? Email is better for the trees and for me.

Don't forget that you must reference every idea or quote you use that isn't your own idea. And the last page of your essay should be a list of all the books you used, in alphabetical order, not in the order you used them!

And lastly, make it easy for me to read! That means use a clear font. Arial is best, but Times New Roman is fine too. Not Comic Sans please! Size 12 font for the essay, and size 14 for the titles and subheadings. And use page numbers. Any questions?

Task 1

Exercise

Task 2

Exercise

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Discussion

What do you find difficult about writing essays?

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Language level

A2 English level (pre-intermediate)

what i find difficult is all about writing essay is vocabulary , so i have to repeat the words i know every time in the essay and one more thing is grammer ,

The most difficult thing about writing essays would be for me to find appropriate quotes, to structure the ideas, to find the convenient linking words and to correct the spelling on my own. Also it could be a problem for me when I can't hand it in on time.

with these technologies nothing are difficult. for example the one difficult thing for me was translate from Persian to English when I was writing ISI articles, so I used google translator service and it helped me a lot.

Well..., the thing I find difficult the most is to find the correct words or syntax to express the ideas I have, sometimes I use the same words to start the phrases when I'm describing a thought because I can't find other words more appropriate to express more complex ideas, but I recon since I'm using this site to practice I've started to use new words and elaborate longer phrases. I suppose It's a matter of practice, reading and time to get more confidence to improve the writing of essays.

Thanks for the lesson.
Great site!

What do you find difficult about writing essays?

sometimes it is hard for me to collect and organize my thoughts. ı m lucky about that ı dont have to write a essay for my job.

I haven't written an essay since I was in high school, it's a fun thing to write an essay and express your idea on it.

yeah, many things. when I have an essay I often don't know start from where sometimes I can't find any ideas for my essay and I feel stressed with that. especially, when I have an English essay I feel more and more worried because I don't have a lot of English words to write an essay so I always feel afraid of essays in English.

Stringing up the words. I am bad at that. Just imagine you have some best ideas in your head, but you can't write them down into a good sentence.

I rarely write essays. When I was learning English, I used to write. I remember having a hard time following the structure of an essays, choosing the formal words for writing and developing it into a complete sentence, moreover between sentences using conjunctions. That's really hard.

Yes, writing essays is a difficult task I'm practice more writing essays in English.

Once I learn how to write it, it's fine... :)

I didn't write the essay before when I was student, but I think it's difficult for everybody to write the essay. I think the first one to write the essay is we should have ideal and content of the essay, so we can construct step by step to complete the essay.

Whenever I write essays, I find difficult about articles and plurals. :-|

What I find a littlle bit difficult to write in a essay is the right structure of the sentences or the correct tense furthermore the punctuation is another thinng in which I make some errors.

Writing essay is such a difficult task. How to write sentence properly and correct order. You can master in writing essay. Do practice under teacher guidance is the best way.

Most difficult for me is format rules, like quota, like book which I use, like size of text, and font, like page numbers, and many many things, I hate it. But I like essay, It good way to understand things. Some time you thing like this "Oh I know this" but when you start write, and explains your understanding, you find more sense.

Hi Team ! I understand that writing essay is not only easy for me but also for every body. I wonder how we can improve the writing essay. Please guide us some methods to achieve this goal. I myself study. Beside that I only know read and write more. Thank you very much.

Hello Minh,

In my experience, the most effective way to improve your essay writing is to get feedback on your writing from a teacher, which includes implementing their advice while you're working with them, even if it is difficult and something you don't agree with at the moment.

We don't provide this kind of help at LearnEnglish, but we do have some pages that could serve as good models for you. There's an opinion essay in our B2 writing section and another couple of essays in our C1 writing section. You can also find a few models with tips in the Writing skills section of LearnEnglish Teens, especially at the B2 and C1 levels.

Good luck!

All the best,

Kirk

The LearnEnglish Team

all because an essay is too difficult

Depends on the topic. Some topics are hards to find and connect the ideas.

for me relayes the ideas and you have to read a lot of things about it which i mean being educated

Electricity or trees, which is eco-friendly?? Σ( °o°)

what does the trees word mean? sorry i don't get it

Hi opik,

The speaker means that he prefers students to email him the assignment, not to give him a paper copy. He wants to protect the environment by using less paper (which is made from trees).

Best wishes,

Jonathan

The LearnEnglish Team

oohhh i see, wow thank you so much sir

What I find difficult writing essays is to connect different ideas and thoughts about a topic

In my opinion, writing essay is not easy for me and also for everybody. If people want to write correct and attractive, people will practise to write it many times. On the other hand, you have been received the feedback from higher level as like teacher. Moreover, people should read a number of books that the best ways they recognize wrong or right sentences.

I find difficult about writing essays is how to summarise your broad Idea in few words. This takes a lot of time. If you have given a period of time to write a essay then difficulty is so high. We have a lots of ideas. So this is for me a difficult task. If you want to master in writing essays then you have to practice writing essays and reading essays. Practice is a thing that you can master in anything.

it is very hard to supply all of the instructions writing essays.

In my opinion, with front 12 Arial and 14 subheading are little bit small, and it makes difficult to read. If we want to clear, I suggest that we use front 14 and bolder for subheading.

In my opinion the most difficult part of writing an essay is that I don't know how to write a formal sentences or the way of essay writing,cause it should be inspire the boss or teacher by best words

In my opinion the first thing that would makes writing essays difficult is the level of one's English, because we could still have ideas but we are not able to express them. And this is due to lack of vocabulary.

Writing an essay with a word limit is a difficult situation. Because sometimes you have ideas' in abundance and that is hard to decide on paper what to mention and what to not, on the other hand sometimes we lack the ideas to fulfill the word limit.

One of the most weakness is writing an essay, when some asking me for write some essay, that's a very hard for me and I get a fear of the writing any essay due to my mistakes which I do them in the grammar so I'm doing my best to improve my skills in the writing, though.

Essay writing is difficult task but for me difficult thing is not exist in the world. I had participate many essay competition and i like write essay.

The topic is the most difficult for me and how to write the essay headline. I am also difficult with vocab and grammar. But we should do the assignment before the deadline is more importance than other. I find many books for the topic I choose in the library and I read more about the topic I choose. And then I write down sentence and choose the most I like. In this way, I write the essay or assignment.

it is difficult for me describe about things.

Oh, essay writing and hand in it is really difficult to time during the study seeing as some teachers can be looked at your essay very strong and critical. Although you gave the power and time to write the essay in on time. However, your essay will be facilitated by some professors. They are kind to their students.

i think the hardest thing is Organizing thoughts

Hello, everyone. :) For me, the most difficult thing about write an essay is find the topic, and sort the ideas to make sens, because sometimes we have the topic we want to writ, but not how we want to say it.

I think that the more difficult is find the inspiration, the concentration or the perfect moment. If you don't have a quiet atmosphere, you don't fell Ok or have anything that stress you, the essay will be a titanic task

I think one of the most difficult things about writing essays is first find a good topic, wichc can makes happy to the teacher, and the second is write what you really want and the other person understand. For that reason me all time I read, and read each time until I consider it´s perfect.

For me is hard to write an essay because I have to order my ideas first, and it takes me a lot of time. Also I have to read some papers of different authors before I write the essay to have different opinions about the topic I chose.

The test it was a little difficuld, but, it was funny. I always give my essays on time.

Hello! Yes. I think it is difficult but not impossible . You just have follow the teacher's instructions . And if you have and doubt email him before you send the essay

my graduation project was very hard the prof. were unstandable he wants stuff that no one else ever did i just pass it thanks god

For me, I find handwriting is not easy nowadays... :|

I am interested in the IELTS essay that structure coincides with university essays?

Hi SergeySSSS,

Yes, IELTS essays are similar to university essays in structure. Both types will start with some kind of introduction to the topic or argument, explain the topic or develop the argument in the body paragraphs, and finish with a conclusion which summarises the main ideas in the essay.

But, there will be differences as well. There are many ways and structures to write an essay. Which structure you use will depend on a lot of things, including what the topic is, what arguments you want to make, what source material you use, and what the instructor or university's requirements are. IELTS essays will also be much shorter than most essays for university.

Best wishes,

Jonathan

The LearnEnglish Team

Hello guys! How's it going? I think that to start a essay is very hard because is the introduction that will show if your essay will be good or not

Instructions for an assignment

Preparation

Transcript

Task 1

Task 2

Discussion

Language level