01. Command Terms

Command Terms are the prompts that should guide the way you approach your response. You might come across the following terms when sitting an exam or a SAC. We would suggest highlighting the command term when you are reading the question to guide your response:

1. Define: Provide the precise meaning of a word, phrase, concept, or physical quantity. Your answer should be brief and to the point.

2. Describe: Give a detailed account or picture of a situation, event, pattern, or process. Don’t just list features, but also explain how they relate or what they reveal.

3. Explain: Make something clear or easy to understand by describing or giving information about it. This often involves stating reasons, causes, or how something works, with evidence or examples to support your explanation.

4. Discuss: Offer a balanced review of a particular topic. This involves presenting arguments or evidence from multiple perspectives or different sides of an issue. You should conclude by presenting your viewpoint or a summary of the evidence.

5. Compare: Highlight the similarities between two or more concepts or items. This doesn’t necessarily require mentioning differences, but rather focuses on common traits.

6. Contrast: Highlight the differences between two or more concepts or items, often while keeping their similarities in mind. This involves a direct comparison that brings out contrasts.

7. Evaluate: Make an appraisal by weighing up the strengths and limitations of different evidence and arguments. This includes considering important factors and available data to make a judgement.

8. Analyse: Break down in order to bring out the essential elements or structure of the topic. You are often asked to look deeper into the topic or concept by separating it into component parts and explaining how these parts relate to each other or to the whole.

9. Critique: This is similar to evaluate, but with a focus on judgment. You are expected to assess the merits and faults of a theory, argument, or project based on evidence, taking into account its context.

10. Summarise: Provide a brief statement of the main points of something. This should be much shorter than the original piece, covering only the main ideas without going into detail.

11. Illustrate: Make clear by using examples, charts, pictures, etc. This term asks you to explain or clarify your answer by providing concrete examples or visual aids.

12. Apply: Use an idea, equation, principle, theory, or law in a new situation. This tests your ability to understand how abstract concepts or frameworks can be used in specific contexts.

13. Justify: Give valid reasons or evidence to support an answer or conclusion. This involves presenting a case with the supporting evidence and reasoning to back up your answer.

14. Outline: When a question asks you to outline, it's asking for a brief summary or general explanation of a concept, topic, or argument. Summarise the main points and organise them logically as sometimes it may imply that there is a sequence of events involved.

15. Identify: If you are asked to identify, then you are usually expected to find something within the question. You will be expected to name a concept or select a relevant piece of data. Unless prompted further, you are not required to go into detail with an identify question

When facing these command terms in an exam, carefully consider what each term is asking you to do, and tailor your response accordingly to meet the expectations of the question.

Note the difference between the question above and the question below. The question above and the question below. Both are worth 3 marks, but require different length responses. The command term of explain is asking you to paint a picture of the external factor of stress and how that is met with a strategy, and how that strategy is context specific.

The question below, on the other hand, is asking for an outline, which is a much more concise answer. We dont need to explain the elements, we are detailing a process and as such we need to be clear of that sequence in our response. This will be a more factual and to the point answer.