Analyse, evaluate, discuss: what examiners actually want

A large share of the marks students lose on written answers are not lost because they did not know the content. They are lost because the question said evaluate and the answer described. The content was right there on the page and it did not score, because it was not doing the thing the question asked for.

Command words are the verbs at the front of a question, and every syllabus publishes a list of them with definitions. Those definitions are not decoration. They are close to a specification for the shape of the answer, and markers work from criteria written in the same vocabulary.

The ones that get confused

• Describe: say what it is. Features, stages, characteristics. No judgement, no causes unless asked. A complete description that stops there gets full marks on a describe question and few on an explain one.
• Explain: say why or how. Every claim needs a because. If your answer has no causal link in it, you have described.
• Analyse: break it into parts and show how they relate. The marks are in the relationships, not the list of parts.
• Evaluate: weigh it and come to a judgement. Both sides, then a position you actually commit to, with a reason. An answer that lists strengths and weaknesses and stops has not evaluated.
• Discuss: explore the range of views or factors. Broader than evaluate, and usually still expects you to land somewhere.
• Justify: you have already made a choice, now defend it against the alternatives you did not pick.
• Compare: similarities and differences, running across both things in each point. Two separate descriptions side by side is not a comparison.

The test to run on your own answer

Read your answer back and ask which verb it is doing. Not which verb the question used, which one your writing actually performs. If the question said evaluate and every sentence in your answer states a fact, you have written a description, however good the facts are.

Check the verb your answer is doing, not the verb the question asked for. They are often different.

The second check is structural. Evaluate and discuss questions usually need a position, and a position needs to appear somewhere obvious rather than being implied by the order of your paragraphs. Markers are working quickly and against criteria. Make the judgement easy to find.

Where the wording comes from

Command word lists differ between syllabuses, and they differ in ways that matter. The same verb can carry a slightly different expectation in two systems, so learn the list your own syllabus publishes rather than a generic one off the internet. Your subject's official documentation is the authority here.

That is also why generic feedback on a written answer is limited. Being told to add more analysis does not tell you which paragraph failed the command word. Edapt marks against the criteria of your own syllabus and names the specific place the answer stopped doing what the verb asked.