Understanding Exam Command Words: What GCSE and A-Level Questions Are Really Asking For
Lose marks on a GCSE or A-Level exam and it's rarely because you didn't know the content. More often, it's because you answered a different question to the one that was actually asked. The gap between "explain" and "evaluate" can be worth several marks per question — and across a whole paper, that adds up to a grade boundary. Command words are the instructions examiners use to tell you exactly what kind of answer they want. Learn to read them properly and you'll stop writing lovely, detailed answers that quietly miss the point. Why Command Words Matter More Than You Think Every exam board publishes a glossary of command words, and every mark scheme is built around them. Examiners aren't marking how much you know — they're marking whether you did what the command word asked. A student who writes a beautifully detailed description when the question said evaluate can walk away with half marks, even though every fact in their answer was c...