Getting Students to understand HSC Verbs to Answer Questions Properly
A lot of students I've found only focus on learning the course content but that is only one part of doing well in HSC exam. Students also need to understand exactly what the question is asking them to do. Words such as outline, explain, justify, evaluate, compare and assess completely change the type of answer required, and there are easy marks to be lost of care isnt taken
For example, an explain question usually needs more than a fact or definition. It should be cause and effect of everything, and the answer should show how or why something happens, and link each fact with reason without skipping steps. In Chemistry, fpr example if a question asks to explain a Boiling Point difference, the student must make the link that BP is dependent on energy required to break the Intermolecular forces, and that greater intermolecular forces -> greater energy required to break = greater BP. A lot of students jump straight to comparing the forces and saying this leads to higher/lower BP, but they dont explain how/the link.
A justify question needs a clear answer supported by evidence, calculations or scientific ideas. For a compare question, students should discuss both similarities and differences rather than writing about each item separately. An assess question requires a judgement specifically based on evidence for and against. Simply providing evidence isnt enough, they must make that judgment based of this.
The verbs used in Maths are also important. Words such as show, prove and hence mean that the working and reasoning matter and simply writing the correct final answer may not be enough.
I always get my students to underline the key verb before starting a question and to check the number of marks can also help show how much detail is expected.
During revision, students can sort past questions by their key verbs and compare their responses with the marking guidelines to see what is expected. All of this can help students not to lose some key marks.
