How to ask professor to explain an assignment?

What to do if you are confused about an assignment?

If you are confused about an assignment and want your professor to explain it, you need to first understand what specific questions you have and avoid asking vague questions. Instead, have direct questions ready for your professor and even complete an outline first.

I bet you are starting to work on your college assignment and your professor hasn’t given you enough instructions. Or maybe those instructions are just plain confusing.

In my experience, I know that students can totally over-analyze instructions too which leaves you with even more questions.

It is so important to complete your assignments correctly because you risk hurting your grade in the class if you do the work wrong. Don’t risk a bad grade.

Don’t worry, I am going to tell you exactly how to talk to your professor about this confusing assignment, and give you a template to use to start a conversation with your professor to get some clarification. I will give you step-by-step instructions.

As a former professor with years of experience, it was very difficult to answer students ambiguous questions about an assignment.

You don’t want to say to your professor, “can you tell me what I should be doing on this assignment” or “I don’t understand this assignment, can you explain it.”

They already explained the assignment with their instructions, and you don’t want them just repeating those instructions to you. Or worse, just directing you to their requirements again.

It is much better to say to your professor that you are having trouble understanding the assignment and need them to further explain a few of the instructions.

But that is the bare minimum that you need to do. Keep reading to learn more.

It would be even better if you knew exactly which instructions you needed clarified so they know how to best answer your questions.

Now, if you really want to impress your professor, you could have an outline of your assignment (based on what you think you should be doing) and send that to your professor to review too.

This way your professor can give you more detailed feedback on your assignment.

This will let your professor know that you have some initiative and are trying to attempt the assignment. And who knows, maybe you will be on the right track after all.

The very next thing I want you to do AND include in your communication with your professor is to ask them what a PERFECT assignment would look like to get a better understanding of what exactly it is that they are looking for.

Many students who were confused about something would ask if they could show me their drafts along the way so that I could help them during the process.

I did not necessarily like this approach because it is very time consuming, and I wanted students to really work independently on the assignment instead.

PRO-TIP : Check and see if your college has some writing assistance or academic assistance. You can bring your assignment to them and get some help.

So to re-cap everything you have learned so far, you need to do all or some of the following to get clarification about an assignment you don’t understand.

1.) Ask your professor direct and specific questions that you need more clarification on to complete the assignment. Going to visit them during office hours is better than an email.

2.) Complete an outline, draft or some attempt to work on the assignment so you can show your professor what you think you should be doing and display some initiative.

3.) Ask follow-up questions to make sure you understand the instructions and get more clarification if you still have additional concerns.

4.) Ask your professor if they would be willing to review a draft of your assignment to ensure you are completing the work correctly.

5.) Clarify what a PERFECT assignment looks like to them.

6.) Go to your college writing or academic assistance office.

PRO-TIP : Start asking these questions as early as possible so you have time to get the clarification that you need otherwise your professor won’t have time to respond to you before the deadline.

If you can’t get the assignment completed on time because you didn’t understand what the professor even wanted, you might try to submit it late, but some professors won’t accept it late.

It is important to remember that your professor wants to help you understand everything required for the assignment because the last thing they want is to fail you. So, don’t be afraid to talk to them.

How do you write an email to professor about an assignment

If you want to email your professor about an assignment to get clarification, you should start off with direct questions that you have and include your current understanding of their expectations. You could even complete an outline and include that too.

There is no reason that you should question what your professor wants from you for an assignment without doing something about it.

You definitely want to reach out to them and talk about it before you make assumptions.

I have an email template for students to get an idea of what you should say to your professor in this circumstance.

Email template sample to professor about assignment

Dear Professor Smith,

I am having some trouble understanding the assignment instructions for our research paper. I assume that you want us to discuss renaissance art and compare the early, high and late phases. Also, I was not sure what sources you wanted us to use and how much detail I should include. Can you explain what you mean by compare? Am I comparing the phases or comparing the renaissance art to other time periods? I attached an outline of my paper to this email based on my understanding of the assignment. I would appreciate it if you could review the outline and let me know if I am on the right track.

Thanks.

When you look at this email, the student explains that they are having trouble understanding the requirements. But they don’t stop there.

They tell the professor what they think their paper should include and then asked specific questions like how many sources and detail they should include.

They also asked additional questions about things they needed clarification on and made sure they were specific.

One of the most important things a student should include in this email is an outline of their assignment. An outline is just a quick draft of the main points they will include in their assignment.

After sending this email to your professor, I know you will get the answers you need to finish the assignment strong.

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