Demonstrate your ability and command of the subject by being able to identify and explain matters in response to the question.
Analyse
Close examination of the various factors, and perceptive observations are prerequisites for the analytical essay.
Assess
Arrive at an estimation about certain factors or elements, particularly in relation to their effectiveness or
consequences.
Clarify
Make certain matters easier to understand through a logical process of explanation.
Comment (upon critically)
Make informed comments about a particular issue, factor or event.
Compare (and contrast)
Examine in order to identify similarities and differences issues, factors or ideas.
Consider
Consider the merits of a particular topic to produce an answer which is thoughtful and insightful.
Contrast
Discuss elements of an issue or topic in order to illustrate their differences.
Criticise
Examine an issue critically, giving evidence to support your opinion.
Define
Test whether a particular (often controversial) term or concept has been understood. Define is usually linked to another instruction, for example, ‘briefly define what you mean by the term … and explain the significance of…’ .
Describe
Great care should be taken with this instruction if it occurs at advanced level, particularly if it is not linked to another instruction. By itself, it merely invites a recitation of facts; if this is the case, carefully consider the whole question.
Discuss
Examine the stated aspects of a subject (often two sides) and weigh their relative merits. This involves presenting evidence, arguments and to a certain extent personal opinion.
Distinguish
This is often used in the first part of a question or instruction to obtain a clearer picture of two or more issues.
Evaluate
This calls for an examination of the merits of a particular issue or position and, consequently, reaching a considered judgement.
Examine
Conduct a logical, detailed analysis of an issue or case, highlighting elements such as cause and effect.
Explain
Clarify or account for something by selecting details you feel are important.
How
This indicates that there is perhaps no one answer to the question. So key issues have to be identified,
arguments made, evidence offered and your final position made clear.
Justify
Make out a case for a particular point of view. The use of evidence and strong argument is essential.
Outline
Select only the essential parts.This is usually followed by a second instruction requiring more detail or an
evaluation.
State
Give the main features of a topic or case briefly, but clearly.
Summarise
Bring together the main points without going into detail or giving examples.
This is really helpful for everyone who needs help breaking down what the essay question is really asking.
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About the Author Stephanie Allen read Classics and English at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, and is currently researching a PhD in Early Modern Academic Drama at the University of Fribourg.
We’ve all been there. You’ve handed in an essay and you think it’s pretty great: it shows off all your best ideas, and contains points you’re sure no one else will have thought of.
You’re not totally convinced that what you’ve written is relevant to the title you were given – but it’s inventive, original and good. In fact, it might be better than anything that would have responded to the question. But your essay isn’t met with the lavish praise you expected. When it’s tossed back onto your desk, there are huge chunks scored through with red pen, crawling with annotations like little red fire ants: ‘IRRELEVANT’; ‘A bit of a tangent!’; ‘???’; and, right next to your best, most impressive killer point: ‘Right… so?’. The grade your teacher has scrawled at the end is nowhere near what your essay deserves. In fact, it’s pretty average. And the comment at the bottom reads something like, ‘Some good ideas, but you didn’t answer the question!’.
If this has ever happened to you (and it has happened to me, a lot), you’ll know how deeply frustrating it is – and how unfair it can seem. This might just be me, but the exhausting process of researching, having ideas, planning, writing and re-reading makes me steadily more attached to the ideas I have, and the things I’ve managed to put on the page. Each time I scroll back through what I’ve written, or planned, so far, I become steadily more convinced of its brilliance. What started off as a scribbled note in the margin, something extra to think about or to pop in if it could be made to fit the argument, sometimes comes to be backbone of a whole essay – so, when a tutor tells me my inspired paragraph about Ted Hughes’s interpretation of mythology isn’t relevant to my essay on Keats, I fail to see why. Or even if I can see why, the thought of taking it out is wrenching. Who cares if it’s a bit off-topic? It should make my essay stand out, if anything! And an examiner would probably be happy not to read yet another answer that makes exactly the same points. If you recognise yourself in the above, there are two crucial things to realise. The first is that something has to change: because doing well in high school exam or coursework essays is almost totally dependent on being able to pin down and organise lots of ideas so that an examiner can see that they convincingly answer a question. And it’s a real shame to work hard on something, have good ideas, and not get the marks you deserve. Writing a top essay is a very particular and actually quite simple challenge. It’s not actually that important how original you are, how compelling your writing is, how many ideas you get down, or how beautifully you can express yourself (though of course, all these things do have their rightful place). What you’re doing, essentially, is using a limited amount of time and knowledge to really answer a question. It sounds obvious, but a good essay should have the title or question as its focus the whole way through . It should answer it ten times over – in every single paragraph, with every fact or figure. Treat your reader (whether it’s your class teacher or an external examiner) like a child who can’t do any interpretive work of their own; imagine yourself leading them through your essay by the hand, pointing out that you’ve answered the question here , and here , and here. Now, this is all very well, I imagine you objecting, and much easier said than done. But never fear! Structuring an essay that knocks a question on the head is something you can learn to do in a couple of easy steps. In the next few hundred words, I’m going to share with you what I’ve learned through endless, mindless crossings-out, rewordings, rewritings and rethinkings.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been told to ‘write the question at the top of every new page’- but for some reason, that trick simply doesn’t work for me. If it doesn’t work for you either, use this three-part process to allow the question to structure your essay:
It sounds really obvious, but lots of students have trouble answering questions because they don’t take time to figure out exactly what they’re expected to do – instead, they skim-read and then write the essay they want to write. Sussing out a question is a two-part process, and the first part is easy. It means looking at the directions the question provides as to what sort of essay you’re going to write. I call these ‘command phrases’ and will go into more detail about what they mean below. The second part involves identifying key words and phrases.
Use forceful, persuasive language to show how the points you’ve made do answer the question. My main focus so far has been on tangential or irrelevant material – but many students lose marks even though they make great points, because they don’t quite impress how relevant those points are. Again, I’ll talk about how you can do this below.
It doesn’t matter how impressive, original or interesting it is. It doesn’t matter if you’re panicking, and you can’t think of any points that do answer the question. If a point isn’t relevant, don’t bother with it. It’s a waste of time, and might actually work against you- if you put tangential material in an essay, your reader will struggle to follow the thread of your argument, and lose focus on your really good points.
Let’s imagine you’re writing an English essay about the role and importance of the three witches in Macbeth . You’re thinking about the different ways in which Shakespeare imagines and presents the witches, how they influence the action of the tragedy, and perhaps the extent to which we’re supposed to believe in them (stay with me – you don’t have to know a single thing about Shakespeare or Macbeth to understand this bit!). Now, you’ll probably have a few good ideas on this topic – and whatever essay you write, you’ll most likely use much of the same material. However, the detail of the phrasing of the question will significantly affect the way you write your essay. You would draw on similar material to address the following questions: Discuss Shakespeare’s representation of the three witches in Macbeth . How does Shakespeare figure the supernatural in Macbeth ? To what extent are the three witches responsible for Macbeth’s tragic downfall? Evaluate the importance of the three witches in bringing about Macbeth’s ruin. Are we supposed to believe in the three witches in Macbeth ? “Within Macbeth ’s representation of the witches, there is profound ambiguity about the actual significance and power of their malevolent intervention” (Stephen Greenblatt). Discuss. I’ve organised the examples into three groups, exemplifying the different types of questions you might have to answer in an exam. The first group are pretty open-ended: ‘discuss’- and ‘how’-questions leave you room to set the scope of the essay. You can decide what the focus should be. Beware, though – this doesn’t mean you don’t need a sturdy structure, or a clear argument, both of which should always be present in an essay. The second group are asking you to evaluate, constructing an argument that decides whether, and how far something is true. Good examples of hypotheses (which your essay would set out to prove) for these questions are:
The final question asks you to respond to a quotation. Students tend to find these sorts of questions the most difficult to answer, but once you’ve got the hang of them I think the title does most of the work for you – often implicitly providing you with a structure for your essay. The first step is breaking down the quotation into its constituent parts- the different things it says. I use brackets: ( Within Macbeth ’s representation of the witches, ) ( there is profound ambiguity ) about the ( actual significance ) ( and power ) of ( their malevolent intervention ) Examiners have a nasty habit of picking the most bewildering and terrifying-sounding quotations: but once you break them down, they’re often asking for something very simple. This quotation, for example, is asking exactly the same thing as the other questions. The trick here is making sure you respond to all the different parts. You want to make sure you discuss the following:
Having worked out exactly what the question is asking, write out a plan (which should be very detailed in a coursework essay, but doesn’t have to be more than a few lines long in an exam context) of the material you’ll use in each paragraph. Make sure your plan contains a sentence at the end of each point about how that point will answer the question. A point from my plan for one of the topics above might look something like this:
To what extent are we supposed to believe in the three witches in Macbeth ? Hypothesis: The witches’ role in Macbeth’s downfall is deliberately unclear. Their claim to reality is uncertain – finally, they’re part of an uncertain tragic universe and the great illusion of the theatre. Para.1: Context At the time Shakespeare wrote Macbeth , there were many examples of people being burned or drowned as witches There were also people who claimed to be able to exorcise evil demons from people who were ‘possessed’. Catholic Christianity leaves much room for the supernatural to exist This suggests that Shakespeare’s contemporary audience might, more readily than a modern one, have believed that witches were a real phenomenon and did exist.
My final sentence (highlighted in red) shows how the material discussed in the paragraph answers the question. Writing this out at the planning stage, in addition to clarifying your ideas, is a great test of whether a point is relevant: if you struggle to write the sentence, and make the connection to the question and larger argument, you might have gone off-topic.
The final step to making sure you pick up all the possible marks for ‘answering the question’ in an essay is ensuring that you make it explicit how your material does so. This bit relies upon getting the beginnings and endings of paragraphs just right. To reiterate what I said above, treat your reader like a child: tell them what you’re going to say; tell them how it answers the question; say it, and then tell them how you’ve answered the question. This need not feel clumsy, awkward or repetitive. The first sentence of each new paragraph or point should, without giving too much of your conclusion away, establish what you’re going to discuss, and how it answers the question. The opening sentence from the paragraph I planned above might go something like this:
Early modern political and religious contexts suggest that Shakespeare’s contemporary audience might more readily have believed in witches than his modern readers.
The sentence establishes that I’m going to discuss Jacobean religion and witch-burnings, and also what I’m going to use those contexts to show. I’d then slot in all my facts and examples in the middle of the paragraph. The final sentence (or few sentences) should be strong and decisive, making a clear connection to the question you’ve been asked:
Contemporary suspicion that witches did exist, testified to by witch-hunts and exorcisms, is crucial to our understanding of the witches in Macbeth. To the early modern consciousness, witches were a distinctly real and dangerous possibility – and the witches in the play would have seemed all-the-more potent and terrifying as a result.
The best way to get really good at making sure you always ‘answer the question’ is to write essay plans rather than whole pieces. Set aside a few hours, choose a couple of essay questions from past papers, and for each:
You can get your teacher, or a friend, to look through your plans and give you feedback. If you follow this advice, fingers crossed, next time you hand in an essay, it’ll be free from red-inked comments about irrelevance, and instead showered with praise for the precision with which you handled the topic, and how intently you focused on answering the question. It can seem depressing when your perfect question is just a minor tangent from the question you were actually asked, but trust me – high praise and good marks are all found in answering the question in front of you, not the one you would have liked to see. Teachers do choose the questions they set you with some care, after all; chances are the question you were set is the more illuminating and rewarding one as well.
Image credits: banner ; Keats ; Macbeth ; James I ; witches .
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Posted by: Sumantha McMahon at 10:00 am, March 25, 2019
There are many acronyms, such as PPE (Point, Evidence and Explanation), that can help you craft the perfect essay . And whilst it is not always suitable to take a strict formulaic approach, they are certainly useful to help ensure you meet all of your assessment objectives.
However, acronyms are useless if you do not understand the exam question in the first place!
Here is a quick guide to some of the common types of essay questions.
A strategy I suggest all of my students is to underline the key words in a question.
This not only helps you understand the question, but also ensures you stay focused on answering it. It is especially useful when you have two questions disguised as one.
Here is an example:
Starting with this speech, explain how far you think Shakespeare presents Lady Macbeth as a powerful woman.
What are the key words here? I would identify them as:
This helps you break down the question. You need to:
Essays typically have a few key words that they stick to. Let’s look at them and what they mean.
Many find this the hardest. It requires you to discuss the similarities and differences between the two sources that the essay question refers to.
A good strategy is to formulate paragraphs that start talking about one source, followed by the other. Your concluding sentences can be used to tie them together. Or, you can start with words like ‘both’ to explain a similarity’, followed by ‘having said that’ to describe a difference.
When planning a ‘compare’ essay, it is helpful to create a similarity and difference table.
These questions can feel quite open ended. To ensure that you don’t digress away from the main focus of the question, use my strategy to underline keywords.
‘Discuss’ questions require you to explore and analyse with a focus.
Usually they want you to explore different theories, interpretations and opinions such as, “I think that…because…”; “…however, some may interpret this as…”.
This is usually followed by words like ‘how’ or ‘the ways in which’. So, although they are quite open-ended like ‘discuss’ questions, you will find that the wording of the question will guide you.
‘Explain’ questions require an in-depth exploration of a topic or theme. Although you may demonstrate your understanding and analytical skills by including other topics or themes, the focus of your essay should be threaded throughout it.
These questions are not much different to the other types of questions. This is because the other types still require you to describe the ‘how’ – for instance, writer’s methods, language choices etc. They also require you to provide evidence from the text and apply your understanding to answer the question.
All in all, whatever the type of essay question, you will need to apply the same skills. They all involve an exploration of a topic or theme and need you to analyse different interpretations. The only difference between them is the wording and structure you choose for your essay.
See more by Sumantha McMahon
Sumantha is an education and training specialist with over ten years' experience in developing and delivering adult and secondary level education. Her professional journey includes a six-year stint as a secondary school teacher. She is currently a freelance content writer and learning and development consultant. Sumantha also has a portfolio of private students who she teaches up to GCSE level.
A strong analytical question
One useful starting point when you’re trying to identify an analytical question is to look for points of tension in your sources, either within one source or among sources. It can be helpful to think of those points of tension as the moments where you need to stop and think before you can move forward. Here are some examples of where you may find points of tension:
Once you’ve identified a point of tension and raised a question about it, you will try to answer that question in your essay. Your main idea or claim in answer to that question will be your thesis.
Last Updated: July 9, 2024 Fact Checked
This article was co-authored by Tristen Bonacci . Tristen Bonacci is a Licensed English Teacher with more than 20 years of experience. Tristen has taught in both the United States and overseas. She specializes in teaching in a secondary education environment and sharing wisdom with others, no matter the environment. Tristen holds a BA in English Literature from The University of Colorado and an MEd from The University of Phoenix. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 651,627 times.
Answering essay questions on an exam can be difficult and stressful, which can make it hard to provide a good answer. However, you can improve your ability to answer essay questions by learning how to understand the questions, form an answer, and stay focused. Developing your ability to give excellent answers on essay exams will take time and effort, but you can learn some good essay question practices and start improving your answers.
To write a good answer to an exam essay question, read the question carefully to find what it's asking, and follow the instructions for the essay closely. Begin your essay by rephrasing the question into a statement with your answer in the statement. Include supplemental facts and figures if necessary, or do textual analysis from a provided piece to support your argument. Make sure your writing is clear and to the point, and don't include extra information unless it supports your argument. For tips from our academic reviewer on understanding essay questions and dealing with testing nerves, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No
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Quotation + Discuss' questions
One of the most common types of essay question is a direct quotation followed by a general task word or phrase like ‘Discuss' or ‘To what extent do you agree?'.
When answering these questions, the most important thing is to work out your argument – what you think about the ideas in the quotation. Are they right, or wrong? Is there more than one side to the issue? This type of question lets you argue both sides of an argument, as long as you still come to a clear conclusion.
'Double-barrelled' questions
‘Double-barrelled' essay questions contain several issues that you need to answer separately. It's easy to miss parts of these questions – especially in an exam – but you have to answer each part in order to pass.
One way to deal with these questions is to break them into smaller, simpler questions. This makes it easy to see if you need to discuss more than one idea, and gives your research some clear goals.
Double-barrelled questions also challenge you to find relationships between different issues, and show your understanding of how they affect each other.
‘World War II saw many people question old beliefs and argue for change.' To what extent do you agree?
A good essay would talk about both issues raised in this question and talk about how they impact on each other.
Firstly, you'd write about whether WWII made people question their beliefs and if so, how their beliefs changed.
Then you would talk about whether questioning old beliefs led people to argue for change.
General questions
General questions often use task words like ‘discuss', and ask broad questions that could apply to almost any topic. This means you have to decide on the scope of your essay, and build your argument from scratch.
The good thing about general questions is that they allow you to pick a topic you know about and really show what you can do.
Were there any winners in the conflict that you studied?
This is a History question, so topics you could write about include:
The key to answering this question well is exploring the idea of what it means to ‘win', and whether there are ever any real winners when societies come into conflict.
The question is broad so you could answer it no matter what period of history you studied.
Specific questions
Specific questions are usually quite long and clearly outline what you need to cover in your essay. They're often easier to answer because they tell you exactly what to do, but they aren't very flexible – you have to be able to do everything in the question, so there can't be any gaps in your knowledge.
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Posted in: essay-writing
Instruction or command words indicate what your tutor wants you to do in your written assignment. It's vital that you understand exactly what these instruction words mean so you can answer all parts of the essay question and provide a complete response.
Here's a list of some of the most common instruction/command words you'll see in essay questions (and examination questions as well), together with an explanation of what they mean.
Describe: Give a detailed account of…
Outline: Give the main features/general principles; don't include minor details.
Explain, account for, interpret: Describe the facts but also give causes and reasons for them. Depending on the context, these words may also suggest that you need to make the possible implications clear as well. For example: 'Explain X and its importance for Y'.
Comment on, criticise, evaluate, critically evaluate, assess: Judge the value of something. But first, analyse, describe and explain. Then go through the arguments for and against, laying out the arguments neutrally until the section where you make your judgement clear. Judgements should be backed by reasons and evidence.
Discuss, consider: The least specific of the instruction words. Decide, first of all, what the main issues are. Then follow the same procedures for Comment on, Criticise, Evaluate, Critically Evaluate and Assess.
Analyse: Break down into component parts. Examine critically or closely.
How far, how true, to what extent: These suggest there are various views on and various aspects to the subject. Outline some of them, evaluate their strengths and weaknesses, explore alternatives and then give your judgement.
Justify: Explain, with evidence, why something is the case, answering the main objections to your view as you go along.
Refute: Give evidence to prove why something is not the case.
Compare, contrast, distinguish, differentiate, relate: All require that you discuss how things are related to each other. Compare suggests you concentrate on similarities, which may lead to a stated preference, the justification of which should be made clear. These words suggest that two situations or ideas can be compared in a number of different ways, or from a variety of viewpoints. Contrast suggests you concentrate on differences.
Define: Write down the precise meaning of a word or phrase. Sometimes several co-existing definitions may be used and, possibly, evaluated.
Illustrate: Make clear and explicit; usually requires the use of carefully chosen examples.
State: Give a concise, clear explanation or account of…
Summarise: Give a concise, clear explanation or account of… presenting the main factors and excluding minor detail or examples (see also Outline).
Trace: Outline or follow the development of something from its initiation or point of origin.
Devise: Think up, work out a plan, solve a problem etc.
Apply (to): Put something to use, show how something can be used in a particular situation.
Identify: Put a name to, list something.
Indicate: Point out. This does not usually involve giving too much detail.
List: Make a list of a number of things. This usually involves simply remembering or finding out a number of things and putting them down one after the other.
Plan: Think about how something is to be done, made, organised, etc.
Report on: Describe what you have seen or done.
Review: Write a report on something.
Specify: Give the details of something.
Work out: Find a solution to a problem.
Adapted from: Coles, M. (1995), A Student’s Guide to Coursework Writing, University of Stirling, Stirling
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So wonderful can anyone get the information
Thanks Josphat!
This is a life saver, do you have a youtube channel where you talk about all this stuff? If so I would love to know about it 🙂 Rachelle
Thanks for your comment. We don't have a YouTube channel but stay tuned for more posts. You will also find additional self-directed learning resources in MySkills .
Quite helpful. I would definitely check this before my next essay.
Thank you, Dan.
Very helpful now I understand how construct my assignments and how to answer exam questions
I have understood it clearly;)
it is very useful for us to understand many instruction word and what we need to write down
There are some define of some words,and I find that there do have many common things for some words,but not all the same.Such as compare, contrast, distinguish, differentiate, relate,they all need people to compare but foucs on different ways.
Very helpful. Listed most of the words that might be misunderstood by foreign students. Now I know why my score of writing IELTS test is always 6, I even didn't get the point of what I was supposed to write!
I have already read all of this. And it gave me a brief instruction.
There are varied instruction words in essay questions. It's a good chance for me to have a overview of these main command words because I could response to requirements of questions precisely and without the risk of wandering off the topic.
When i encounter with an essay title with these instruction words above,I should understand exactly what these words mean so that i could know what my tutor would like me to do in the assignments.Also,these words may help me make an outline and read academic articles with percific purposes.
These words are accurate and appropriate. It is really helpful for me to response some assignment questions and I can know the orientation of my answers . I can also use these words to make an outline of my essay. However, in my view, for some instruction words which are confusing and hard to understand, it is better to give an example to help us understand.
It's the first time for me to recognise these instruction words , some of them are really similar with each other.
it is very helpful to my future study. it will be better to have some examples with it.
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Origin of essay question 1
Any SAT essay question—whether about music, sports, or politics—will favor students with certain interests.
At university you will not be asked to write down absolutely everything you know about a topic.
Instead, you are asked to interpret a question about one aspect of that topic.
You must always answer the question as it has been asked, so analysing the question is crucial to getting the essay right. Breaking the question down into several parts can help you know how to approach the question and understand what you are being asked to do.
To do this you need to know:
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While writing essays can be difficult, it's important to do thorough research and present your arguments convincingly. However, understanding the different question words such as 'discuss', 'examine', and 'justify' is crucial to crafting a well-structured essay. Many students need help understanding the question requirements, but ...
The content words are the "meat" of the question - these are things you can research. Effective communication is considered a core skill in higher education and is usually conveyed through the medium of academic papers and essays.Discuss the process of writing academic essays and critically examine the importance of structure and content.. You will often be asked to talk about "the role ...
Learn the meaning and usage of 22 common essay question words, such as analyse, evaluate, justify, and discuss. Find out how to structure your essay according to the requirements of each question word and avoid common pitfalls.
The meaning of ESSAY QUESTION is an examination question that requires an answer in a sentence, paragraph, or short composition. ... Recent Examples on the Web Officials said the grading engine would score three-quarters of all essay questions, and human graders would continue to handle the rest.
ESSAY QUESTION definition: 1. a question in an examination whose answer is in the form of an essay (= a short piece of writing…. Learn more.
Learn how to interpret and answer essay questions by breaking them down into topic, instruction and focus (TIF). See examples of different types of essay questions and how to follow the instruction and address the focus.
Understanding the essay question is the first and most important step you will undertake with any assignment, as without fully understanding the task you cannot respond to it. Consider the key elements in the question e.g. Examine the role of women in Parliament since 1918, with reference to key Equality legislation and ask yourself: What is the main subject of the question?
Learn how to interpret and answer essay questions in different subjects by using this list of 21 terms and phrases. Find out the meanings and examples of account for, analyse, assess, comment, compare, contrast, criticise, define, describe, discuss, distinguish, evaluate, examine, explain, how, justify, outline, state, summarise and one.
Step Four: Practice makes perfect. The best way to get really good at making sure you always 'answer the question' is to write essay plans rather than whole pieces. Set aside a few hours, choose a couple of essay questions from past papers, and for each: Write a hypothesis.
Learn the meanings and uses of key terms in essay questions, such as identify, describe, analyze, evaluate, and more. See examples of questions and answers for different types of terms and how to organize your answer.
Learn how to identify the focus, structure and process of essay questions in different disciplines. Understand the common criteria and expectations of undergraduate essay writing and how to answer the question effectively.
Lady Macbeth - this character should be the focus of your essay but, you should use your understanding of the plot, themes and other characters to frame your analysis of her. Powerful woman - this is the character trait you must focus on. Even if you digress, bring your point back to this.
This guide contains key resources for analysing an essay question. Click the links below or the guide tabs above to find the following information. Learn how to analyse an essay question; Work through an example; Find additional resources; Link out to our Foundation Studies Portal
Learn how to identify and formulate a strong analytical question for your essay, based on points of tension in your sources. Find out the properties of a good analytical question and tips for writing an essay that answers it.
Start with an introductory paragraph, use 3 paragraphs in the body of the article to explain different points, and finish with a concluding paragraph. It can also be really helpful to draft a quick outline of your essay before you start writing. 3. Choose relevant facts and figures to include.
ESSAY QUESTION meaning: 1. a question in an examination whose answer is in the form of an essay (= a short piece of writing…. Learn more.
Learn how to identify and answer different types of essay questions, such as quotation + discuss, double-barrelled, general and specific. Find out how to work out your argument, break down the question and use evidence to support your points.
Learn the meaning and usage of common instruction words in essay questions, such as describe, outline, explain, comment, etc. Outline means to give the main features or general principles of something without minor details.
Learn how to design and use essay questions to assess students' thinking skills. This workbook provides training, practice, and feedback on the advantages, limitations, and criteria of effective essay questions.
Definition of 'essay question' COBUILD frequency band. essay question in American English. noun. a question on a test or examination on a given topic requiring a written analysis or explanation, usually of a specified length . ... essay question in British English (ˈɛseɪ ˈkwɛstʃən ) noun.
Essay question definition: a question on a test or examination on a given topic requiring a written analysis or explanation, usually of a specified length.. See examples of ESSAY QUESTION used in a sentence.
Instead, you are asked to interpret a question about one aspect of that topic. You must always answer the question as it has been asked, so analysing the question is crucial to getting the essay right. Breaking the question down into several parts can help you know how to approach the question and understand what you are being asked to do.
An examination question that requires an answer in the form of an essay.... Click for English pronunciations, examples sentences, video.