Finding meaninful ways to look at assignments and exams

Students often have difficulty understanding how to answer a particular question on an exam or assignment. Let's look at particular phrases and examine how they can give us clues about how we should answer a given question.

Today, the key words we will look at in exams and papers are: discuss, explain, illustrate, describe, demonstrate and outline. A question might ask you, for instance, to outline the key concepts on a particular subject in marketing or organizational behaviour. Conversely, another question might ask you to illustrate the central concepts in a particular subject with examples from your own organizational practices. How do you answer these questions?

In the first example, you will be pleased to know that key concepts, central ideas or central concepts all boil down to the same thing. The tutor wants you to pick out the important contributions from the theorists a subject such as Organizational Behaviour or Strategy. After you find these key ideas, you should describe each one briefly. Usually, questions like this also involve outlining examples of these key concepts. Moreover, you need to be clear and describe all of these major theories so that each one is clearly differentiated from the other theories. If examples are required, you need to explain how each one is an example of the theory. If you don't explain the relevance of your examples, the tutor cannot see that you know how to use critical thinking. Critical thinking, as I've explained in other blogs, is key to the educational process at University of Leicester.

You may also asked to provide illustrations, these are the same as examples. Illustrations show the module tutor that you know how to apply the theory you are discussing to real examples from journal articles or real life. You can combine ideas to synthesize new concepts and to evaluate each concept. Evaluation shows the module tutor/marker that you have considered the importance of the ideas that you are discussing relative to the discipline itself.

Let us consider the meaning of these other words:

Outline - Describe an idea briefly, showing each of its component parts or ideas
Discuss - Analyse an idea, show the reader that you understand an idea and its importance and how it works with example, this implies critical analytic thinking
Demonstrate - This assumes that you are going to provide examples. These examples must be analysed to show that you understand how they are relevant to the ideas you are discussing.

Module tutors use different words to give variety and depth to their questions. In turn, they expect that you will provide more than the facts. Facts are just the starting point for understanding and critical thinking. You need to show tutors that these goals are within your reach. If you have problems with English vocabulary, you need to get a good Oxford Dictionary. If you have problems with writing, you need to consider some of the grammar books I have cited previously in other blogs. Most of all, however, you need to maintain a positive attitude. Remember too, that there is a Skills Tutor to help you along the road.
KB