Depends on the assignment, and can easily backfire.
When I was TA'ing the CS intro class, which in my University was actually using a functional programming language (ML), I received a bunch of "working" programs from students who already knew how to program, but not with functional programming languages. They would force an imperative style into ML, which was not what the assignment was, and kind of showed that they must not have paid attention at all.
When I was TA'ing the CS intro class, which in my University was actually using a functional programming language (ML), I received a bunch of "working" programs from students who already knew how to program, but not with functional programming languages. They would force an imperative style into ML, which was not what the assignment was, and kind of showed that they must not have paid attention at all.