Writing Effective Course Assignments: A Guide to Non-Degree and Undergraduate Students

Non-degree and undergraduate students are both inexperienced essay writers who need close guidance to become effective writers. One of the puzzles which they encounter at the college and university after reporting for studies is the course assignments offered to them by their lecturers which demand them to be critical thinkers and argumentative essay writers. In most colleges and universities lecturers provide to students broad questions to answer in the form of essays either in group or individual assignments. How should they turn the broad assignment questions provided to them by their lecturers into specific researchable topics for essays? How should they handle literature in order to obtain valuable information to answer the provided question? How should they construct an informed and convincing argument using the collected information as evidence? This book concerns these and other related questions. With its clear illustrations the book is designed to be a self-study guide and to offer solutions to many struggling students in colleges and universities. At the same time the book can be helpful for lecturers to instruct their students how to write effective course assignments in their respective courses. Writing Effective Course Assignments is well written and captures the basic skills that the majority of Tanzanian students are missing. To the majority of university students organizing ideas and using literature in writing an assignment or an essay is a big challenge. I believe our students will need the knowledge presented in this book to improve not only their ways of responding to assignments but also their general writing skills. --Ayoub Cherd Kafyulilo Lecturer Dar Es Salaam University College of Education Elia Shabani Mligo (PhD University of Oslo Norway) is Senior Lecturer at Tumaini University Makumira Mbeya Center-Tanzania. He has authored many books and articles on contextual theology and research. His books include Jesus and the Stigmatized (2011) Writing Academic Papers (2012) Doing Effective Fieldwork (2013) Elements of African Traditional Religion (2013) Symbolic Interactionism in the Gospel according to John (2014) He descended into Hell (2015) and Introduction to Research Methods and Report Writing (2016).