Questions Which Students Should Ask Their Professor before Starting the Assignment

Writing an assignment is not simply the task of collecting facts and penning your arguments in a jiffy. When you have been assigned a topic to write on, it demands that you research on the topic and present your arguments in a logical manner. You must correctly understand the essence of the topic, the audience for whom you will be writing the assignment, the specific guidelines that you need to follow etc. Your goal should be to write a meaningful and original assignment which is written in clear lucid language so that the audience does not find it intimidating. To do so, students must know which questions to ask their instructors so that their assignments are par excellence.
Questions to ask your professors to improve the quality of your assignments:
Writing an assignment can turn out to be quite a challenge if you are not trained to approach the topic in a certain way. While essay writing or composition writing sessions in an English Language class may teach you how to write essays better, you will find that many of the principles that you follow in writing English compositions have a lot to contribute when it comes to writing assignments on any other subject. You can follow these steps to write quality assignments:
Topic interpretation before writing:
What should come to your mind first when you are handed a topic for assignment is whether you can interpret the topic in any way you want to, or whether the assignment must be approached in the manner in which your instructor has stated. It may be wise to find out if there are any sample essays that you can refer to handle the topic given to you. When you are not sure about the approach, you can request for a consultation session with your instructor or ask him if he could guide you through emails.
Understanding the essence of the topic:
You need to find out the reasons why people write on topics like this and whether it is proper for you to create your own arguments and deduce your own conclusions. It is imperative to understand whether the objective of your writing should be to compare and contrast the events as they are and highlight just the main features or whether your own interpretations should be included in the arguments. You have to understand whether your approach should be generic or specific where you must analyze the topic in depth.
Understanding your target audience:
In case your target audience is unaware of the background of the event, you may be required to provide additional information. Therefore, this is one question that you must get clarified from your teacher before you start to write an assignment. You should also find out from your teacher whether it is enough to write the assignment for an audience which is likely to conform to your point of view or whether you must include counterarguments in your writing for critics. Your teacher can also guide you on the nature of evidence that is likely to be the most appealing for your audience, whether it is logical reasoning or case studies or numbers or expert testimonies.
Understanding the differences in formatting and writing styles among different kinds of audiences:
Finally, understanding the type of format or style that the audience will prefer is of utmost importance when you write an assignment. Your audience could prefer plain and direct language to scholarly text. For some readers, shorter and information-rich paragraphs written in a straightforward manner may be more appealing. You must also ask your teacher whether to use first or second person while writing and whether it is permissible to include your own life experiences to illustrate facts. Professors are likely to have preferences for some citation formats to others. Other apparently insignificant but crucial facts to verify are whether the use of passive voice is permitted, whether you can use past tense verbs in the write-up, whether the page-length limits are stringent etc.
Using these parameters, you may be able to successfully write a meaningful and quality essay. You can ask your instructor to explain to you the common blunders which students tend to make in writing such assignments and which areas you need to focus on more when you write and edit the assignment. Worry not because in case you are finding all this too much to handle there are always useful tools available online to help you with  your assignments.
Summary: He can give you valuable inputs and suggestions on the nature of arguments you must use, the writing and referencing styles, the areas to focus on more and how to make the text more engaging for the target audience. The questions that have been listed above are only some key tricks to get you started on the right note. Using these questions, you can write better to do justice to the topic assigned to you.