One recipe for a great prompt

Master this and everything else in this course becomes easy. A strong prompt has four parts:

• Role — tell the AI who to be. "You are a career coach…"
• Task — say exactly what you want. "…rewrite my CV summary…"
• Context — give the background and details. "…here is my CV and the job post…"
• Format — say how the answer should look. "…give 3 versions, each under 4 lines."

See the difference

Weak prompt

write a cover letter for a job

Strong prompt (Role · Task · Context · Format)

You are a career coach. Write a short cover letter for an entry-level
marketing assistant role at an NGO in Freetown. Here is my CV and the job
advert: [paste both]. Keep it under 200 words, confident but warm, in
simple professional English.

Same goal. The second one gives the AI everything it needs to write something you could actually send.

Your turn

Take any task you want help with and write it out in four labelled lines: Role, Task, Context, Format. Paste it into your AI assistant and compare the result to a one-line version. Keep this prompt, you will reuse it in the practicals.