It is the dreaded science question in the HSC, a page full of lines that reads Evaluate…. for 7-9 marks. There is little to no guidance on how to answer this question and many students often don’t practise these due to the daunting nature of blank lines staring back at you. However I hope to provide some guidance and a methodical way to answer these questions.

Planning is the most important thing in this scenario. It might seem obvious but planning helps to break mental blocks by just putting words on the page. In this way, you somewhat start the question breaking that ‘blank page’ fear. Secondly, planning also shows the marker that you have thought about this question. Markers will see your planning and before going into reading your response, will have a positive assumption that you have a meaningful thought out response.

The first thing you should look at when planning is the HSC verb. This sounds a lot like it’s straight out of a textbook but the HSC verb is really important. The verb will tell you how much depth is required whether it be an ‘outline’ or ‘describe’ but also whether a judgement is required such as ‘evaluate’ or ‘assess.’ Understanding the HSC verbs is crucial when answering long response questions as entire marks can come from one point such as a judgement or including the effect.

The second thing you should look at is the breakdown of marks in the question and then ask what does this mean? Maybe a 7 mark evaluate question is one mark for a judgement and 3 points of evidence. Breaking this down further so that each point of evidence is 2 marks each accounting for the cause and effect of each example/point. Understanding what each mark corresponds to will help to keep your responses as concise as possible.

The next thing you should think about is structure: How can this be structured in a way to show the marker I know what they are asking for. A very important consideration is: Could this be in a table? In science, the amount of words won’t get you the marks, it is the clarity and how organised your points are. Therefore, tables can be really great ideas where they use half the amount of words but maximise the marks in an organised fashion.

Alana O’Sullivan