If you’ve worked with me or been in my VIP community for even a short amount of time, then you’ll know I go on and on about the importance of being able to dissect the wording of any task or exam question and the ability to know exactly what it’s asking.
In particular, doing this by mastering command words.
And I make ZERO apologies for this!
Because I stand by the fact that this is one of the key issues holding so many students back AND it’s a key breakthrough to being able to tackle any question or task with confidence and clarity.
Let me explain why…
A solid knowledge and understanding of command words
AND how to respond to them
can be of benefit in multiple ways.
Firstly, it can save a lot of wasted time and effort when you know what a question is really asking. For example, I recall a Year 12 QCS paper I was marking asking students to ESTIMATE a particular figure using a graph.
Now those who went ahead and fully CALCULATED that figure precisely went to a huuuuge amount of trouble.
Some used calculus, others calculated areas of trapeziums.
And many of these students who got all the working and the end answer correct, did get full marks.
However, those that understood and had clocked the word estimate and identified that as the COMMAND WORD, simply found the points on the graph, read across to the required numbers on the axis, and added them up to give an estimate of the figure.
These students ALSO qualified for full marks AND moved on with an extra 10 or 15 minutes or so under their belt to tackle the longer, extended questions to come.
The second benefit of being proficient in identifying, understanding and responding to command words is that it can save a lot of disappointment. If your teen’s ever had that experience where they complete a test or a task thinking they’ve done pretty darn well, (you know… where they put in a good effort and wrote some accurate and detailed content), only to have it returned with a low mark or grade, they’re then left feeling totally deflated and perhaps a little upset.
And after that initial disappointment passes, they then feel the confusion seeping in. Wondering where they went wrong.
Well in almost all cases I’ve seen of this, it’s because the student didn’t respond to the command of the question, or the focus of the essay.
This isn’t the topic – that’s usually done correctly.
It’s the level and focus of the question or essay that’s not always addressed or responded to.
This can certainly be disheartening and confusing, but the problem lies in the fact that an answer can only be credited for what matched up with the mark scheme.
So if a student’s ‘stated’ rather than ‘described’, or ‘compared’ rather than ‘analysed’, then no matter how correct the information is factually or how well the answer has been written in terms of technical language or sophisticated vocabulary, there is NO way that it’s going to get full marks or probably even close to it.
So, if you want your teen to avoid all that wasted time and effort, avoid the disappointment and instead feel confident in their ability to tackle any question that’s thrown at them, then they need to get conquering those command words – the title of Catapult 7 in my flagship program – the 10 Week Grade Transformation.
Two quick tips on looking this up for yourself is to Google:
- cognitive verbs
and also
- Bloom’s Taxonomy (which you’ve also likely heard me mention before).
So go check those out, share this post with any other parents or students you think could benefit from these tips, and until next week let’s make this a fantastic week!
Yours,
Katie
