Glasgow Caledonian University

Deconstructing the task

Before you start to write your report, essay or assignment - you need to understand exactly what you are being asked to do. To do this you need to break down the question. Watch this vidcast from the Learning Development Centre in the School of Health and Life Sciences to get you started.

Any question can be broken down into three parts:

• Directional or instructional words
• Key concepts or subject matter
• Relationship and identification words