- Target audience and topic：Aimed at first-year middle school students, explaining the Silk Road.
- Duration and activities：Full class is 40 minutes, including one 10-minute discussion.
- Delivery and check：First provide the lesson plan text, list the time for each segment, and indicate the source of materials.
Prompt: Task requirements you give to an AI. It can be a simple sentence in natural language, or include background, constraints, and output format.
For example, you type: "Help me prepare a history lesson."
The AI can start generating content, but it doesn't yet know: which grade are the students in? What topic is the lesson? How much time is available? Do you need a lesson plan, classroom activities, or a presentation?
Adding these details makes it easier for the AI to work toward your goal:
I need to teach a 40-minute history lesson for first-year middle school students on the Silk Road. Please prepare a lesson plan including learning objectives, an outline for instruction, and one classroom discussion activity.
Simple tasks can be stated in one sentence; complex tasks require key conditions to be specified. You can also review the first version and adjust gradually.
From "Can Answer" to "Fits This Particular Need"
Consider the two teaching examples below. They are written for instructional purposes, not actual model evaluation results.
| Original Request | Possible Sample Output | Why It Doesn't Match the Goal |
|---|---|---|
| Help me prepare a history lesson | Designed for high school students: 30 minutes of instruction, 20 minutes of debate, 10 minutes of summary | No grade level or class duration provided; the sample assumes a different audience and 60-minute duration, neither of which is appropriate |
| First-year students, Silk Road, 40 minutes, one discussion activity | 5-minute introduction, 12 minutes of instruction, 8 minutes of reading materials, 10 minutes of discussion, 5 minutes of review | Audience, topic, and timing can be verified item by item; accuracy of content still needs to be checked |
Clearer requirements reduce guessing about the goal; they don't guarantee that facts, teaching arrangements, and all formatting are correct on the first try.
What Information Is Worth Adding
You don't need to fill out a fixed form every time. Start by considering the conditions that would change the outcome.
- Goal: What needs to be accomplished this time? For example, enabling students to understand trade route networks and cultural exchange.
- Background: Who is the audience, and what do they already know? For example, first-year middle school students who haven't yet studied the geography along the route.
- Requirements: What are the time constraints, scope, and must-include elements? For example, 40 minutes, include discussion, don't expand to multiple historical periods.
- Output: What should you get in the end? For example, first the lesson plan text, then two slides as a sample excerpt.
If you have textbooks, examples, or reference formats, provide the relevant portions. The information the model can reference this session is called Context; mentioning a document name doesn't mean it has read the document.
Below is an example where the output can be directly checked against requirements. Using it requires providing M01–M03 materials, not just referencing the document numbers.
Based on the provided materials, prepare a 40-minute lesson plan on "The Silk Road: Movement and Exchange" for first-year middle school students. Students have a basic understanding of Han Dynasty history but have not yet systematically studied the geography along the route.
The goal is for students to explain "trade route networks" and "exchange of goods and culture." List the timing for each segment, include one 10-minute discussion activity, and keep the total duration to 40 minutes. Output the lesson plan text first. Mark any unreferenced textbook pages as "to verify."
When the First Version Isn't Right, How to Continue
Saying "make it better" makes it hard to know what to change. Describe what you observed:
The current discussion questions are too broad. Keep the 40-minute structure, but revise the discussion to two questions that can be answered using the materials. Students should cite whether they referenced M01 or M02, and not introduce dates or names that aren't in the provided materials.
This kind of feedback includes what's wrong, what to change, and what to keep. You can improve results gradually; there's no need to write a "perfect prompt" on the first try. If the goal itself isn't clear, you can also ask the AI to list key questions that would affect the plan.
Longer Requirements Aren't Always More Useful
Adding phrases like "you are a top expert" to your requirements is usually less effective than specifying the audience, materials, and success criteria. Irrelevant background makes it harder to identify what matters, and conflicting requirements can introduce errors.
There's another category of problems that prompt adjustments can't fix: if an application doesn't have a tool that generates PPT files, writing "must give me a downloadable PPT" won't magically add that capability. First confirm the required capability exists, or adjust the deliverable to what the current tools can actually produce. See PPT Capabilities and Output Comparison for details.
Going a Step Deeper: The Model Receives More Than Just Your Sentence
When people say "write a Prompt" in everyday conversation, they usually mean the task requirements the user provides. In a broader sense, prompts can also include examples and reference materials; applications may also add other instructions, conversation history, and tool outputs.
The application organizes these inputs before passing them to the model. Therefore, the same sentence in different environments may produce different results. Outputs vary and can contain errors; for important tasks, you should clearly define verification criteria and continue adjusting based on results.
This doesn't require readers to learn programming. At the usage level, doing two things is already effective: provide information that would affect the outcome, and check whether the output meets those conditions.
Think About It
Expand "Help me write a class announcement" into a more specific request. Beyond the class name, which three pieces of information would affect whether the announcement is usable?
Reference criteria: For example, who it's for, time and location, what to prepare, whether there's a deadline, what format to use for distribution. Different announcements need different information; don't add irrelevant background just to make the sentence longer.
Next Steps
To see how this requirement flows through an entire task, read Complete Lesson Planning Case Study. To learn how to reuse lesson planning methods multiple times, read Skill. To understand how to advance multi-step tasks, read Agent.
Source and Scope
Definitions and instruction hierarchy reference OpenAI Text generation, last verified: 2026-09-09. Tasks, conditions, and sample outputs in this article are for educational purposes on this site; no guarantee is made that the same request will produce identical results across all products. Readers should verify effectiveness through their own use.