A written assignment is a written test or written work that involves writing with hands or typing on the laptop. Usually, many universities, schools, and colleges still recommend students to write in their own words what they have understood from a particular subject in their written assignments. Written assignments are usually written by hand in traditional universities while many online universities look forward to the typed written work of their students.
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Written assignments may involve information that is practically based as well but it doesn’t involve spoken answers or verbal communication. Written assignments test the written communication skills of the candidates by an employer or recruiter or even at universities for their admission-based entrance exams. Some of the types of written assignments include Reflective Papers, Reaction papers, Literature Reviews, and Research papers.
Reflective written assignments involve questions that analyze the psychological abilities of the candidates. For example, a student may be asked to understand a particular topic and share his or her own experience on what he thinks, views, and wants to recommend to the committee or society on important topics. So, in a way, you won’t really get ready-made answers in your textbooks if you are looking for questions that are based on reflective thought processes.
Reaction papers are usually the reactions of the students that get recorded in the answers. For example, a student may be asked to write about his review of the movie RRR that has crossed 1000 crores at the worldwide box office. Now if the student has not seen the movie, he may write the same reaction sharing how he missed watching the film as he may be busy with other work or he purposefully didn’t go to the film because he has no interest in watching movies. He may also share his reaction on what he thinks after reading the reviews of the film on the internet, word-of-mouth publicity, newspapers, etc.
Literature Reviews are based on the findings of the work of others. For example, a student may be asked to refer to magazines and journals of the last three years to know about the research done on a particular topic and present his critical review of what is being covered, what has been done, and what is yet missing in the existing literature or content.
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Research papers, as the name suggests are all about the research. The research can be done using primary methods like questionnaires, interviews, etc or it can be done using secondary methods like online research, book reviews, etc. For example, a student may be asked to write about what do you think is Salman Khan the king of Bollywood? For this topic, the student may prepare a questionnaire and talk to 25 people from various walks of life who will share their opinions on the same. He may create charts or graphs to present his findings based on the recorded answers. Then he may write an analysis of what each age group or category of people think about the superstar and come up with his unique research.
