Instructions: Review my answer and make necessary changes - Please focus on the questions that are in the Assignment Brief. Some of the resources you have used for information gathering are not authentic e.g. Quora. It is based on people’s opinions. You can use company website, journals, books, articles etc. Improve the language in the document so it flows better. Remember, when you submit your work, you’re making a declaration confirming that it does not contravene the NTIC Regulations on Academic Misconduct.

Read all instructions very carefully - Your assignment needs to be uploaded to Turnitin before the submission deadline above. On submitting, you will receive a digital receipt. Make sure you keep a screenshot or download of this for your records, as proof of your submission. You must save your work in one of the formats accepted by Turnitin, such as: Microsoft Word (doc/docx); OpenOffice Text (.odt); Plain text (.txt). NOTE: Adobe PDF (.pdf) files must contain highlightable text and Apple Pages is NOT compatible. When you upload your assignment, Turnitin will ask you to enter a ‘Submission Title’. Please enter your Submission Title as follows: Module code_Group_Assignment_Student number e.g.FC514_A_Report_97989. You should observe the word count stated on the assignment brief. A 10% margin is allowed above or below the limit. You will lose marks if this is not followed.

Please follow your assignment brief for details of the appropriate layout, font size, spacing and so on. The first page of your submission should be a cover page stating: Module, Tutor Name, Assessment Type, Student Number and Word Count. By submitting your assignment, you are confirming that all the work is your own. There are serious penalties for submitting work which is not your own, please refer to Academic Misconduct in the Programme Handbook for further information about this. If you failed to submit on time due to an Exceptional Extenuating Circumstance (EEC), you should submit an EEC form within three days of the assessment deadline. These are available from reception and may, depending on your circumstances, affect your final mark. NOTE: For any technical issues with submission to Turnitin make sure you take a screenshot of your computer screen for proof of the issue.

Marking Criteria - Marks for this report are awarded according to the following criteria: The relevance of the factors used to answer the question set. The quality and depth of the PESTLE analysis. The extent to which other analytical business concepts are introduced in order to answer the question. The extent to which the report is coherently structured. The accurate referencing of the texts and data, and variety of sources used in your analysis.

Hints and Tips - The most important thing you must do in completing this assignment is to make sure that you address/answer the task that has been set. Ensure that you remain within the word limits given for the report. The word limit is to test whether you can write concisely, thereby getting all the main points down without wandering ‘off-topic’. In presenting your answer, you should use an appropriate structure. Your tutor will advise on this. It is best to avoid using too many sub-headings and to not use lots of bullet points or the numbering of paragraphs. Otherwise your answer will look like a set of notes/instructions/textbook and appear disjointed. Using continuous prose enables you to develop arguments and to inter-link issues you are raising.

You should think very carefully about the resources you use for this assessment. Make sure that all the research you do is from academic sources. Academic sources are things like textbooks, journals and e-journals. Everything you read in an academic source will have been peer-reviewed which means that experts in the field will have seen it and agree that the ideas are reasonable and accurate. Web sites such as wikipedia are not peer reviewed and therefore do not count as academic sources. At the end of your assessment, you should list out all books to which you have referred in your work using the Harvard style.

Your list should be alphabetical by author and list out the author(s)’s surname, first name, date of publication, title of book, publisher of book and the place of the book’s publication. Examples can be found in the referencing guide that has been uploaded on Moodle. If you have used internet sources, you should give the author(s)’s name, title of web page, the full internet address of the page(s) you have used and the date(s) that they were accessed. Poorly referenced work will be penalised as the quality of referencing is part of the marking scheme (criterion).

You should not copy text from a book, another person’s work or internet sites and imply that it is your own work. This is known as plagiarism and is an academic offence. Plagiarism is the word academics use for ‘copying’. If you want to quote directly from a book, you should indicate that it is a quote (by using quotation marks “…”) and the name of the author whose work you have cited in the main body of your assignment. You should avoid excessive use of quotes as the work you submit must be your own – not simply a collection of quotes! Your report must be word-processed, using 1.5 and a 12 or 14 font size. Always leave a margin so that I have space to insert any comments I would like to make as I am reading your work.

The marking scheme that we use in the UK may be different from that which you are familiar with in your home countries. The pass mark for this assignment is equivalent to 40%. This means that you have just succeeded in meeting the criteria set out earlier in this handout. An ‘average’ mark is equivalent to 50-55%. A good mark is equivalent to 60% and above, with marks equivalent to over 70% being deemed to be of excellent quality. Do not expect to get mark equivalent to 90-100% as a matter of course. Scores such as these would be for work of the most exceptional quality. You will not get a second chance to improve on the mark that you are given for this assignment. Thus, if you are given a mark equivalent to 55%, that is the mark that will be entered onto your mark sheet. Similarly, if you are unfortunate and fail the assignment, that fail mark will be added to your other assessment marks to determine your overall score for the module.