Dealing with glossary key terms

Analyse, Discuss, Evaluate, Examine, Investigate… excuse me, what?

You’re not the first person ever to pick up an exam paper, skim the question and jump into writing at 1000 miles an hour. And you won’t be the last. But a huge HSC epidemic that keeps so many students from hitting that band six range is the mistake people make when they don’t read the question properly. Or more importantly, when people don’t read the glossary key words properly.

A glossary key word isn’t a surprising revelation; these should be familiar words to you. Words like analyse, outline, examine. They’re used in every single HSC paper so they are worth knowing.

Here’s everything you need to know:

Need proof?

Well let's look at a couple of examples from different subjects, so you can see how they appear and that they’re the same style across all subjects:

• Legal Studies: ‘Outline the role of law reform in the abolition of slavery’
• Ancient History: ‘Evaluate the effectiveness of Rome’s foreign policy during this period’
• PDHPE: ‘Explain the characteristics of an effective and sustainable health promotion strategy.’

What is a glossary key word?

So now you know what they actually look like, let’s chat about what they actually mean. They’re called ‘Glossary Keywords’ because they are all contained in the Board of Studies Glossary of Key Words.

Yes, the Board of Studies actually did a nice thing for us and wrote down all of the terms we can be asked to answer in a HSC paper and chucked them into one page on the net. Check it out here.

Not only have BOSTES explained to us what terms we might be asked, but they actually defined each term too – thanks guys!

But I think the better way of naming these words is to call them ‘verbs.’ Because they are doing words. I.e. compare, explain, discuss. So remember whenever you see them that you actually have to do something about it!

What should you do about it?

When you get a question, the best practice is quickly identify the key word. Here’s how to spot them:

1. Glossary terms are usually at the start of each question
2. They are always in a ‘verb’ form
3. They are from the list on the BOSTES website
4. They always appear in the marking criteria for the question.

First you need to identify the word. Then you need to read the second half of the question which is the content side. Use your key term to guide the way you write down the sections on content.

Example:

If my question was ‘outline the role of law reform in the abolition of slavery’ from the 2015 HSC Legal Studies paper, I’d know that outline in the glossary means ‘sketch in general terms; indicate the main features of.’ That means I don’t need to go into a huge amount of depth. My answer needs to be short and I need to draw attention to role and make that clear.

Why is this important?

Right so this seems painfully simple – how am I getting a band six from this nonsense?

Well the main problem with HSC students and glossary terms is that sometimes the glossary term is so important that if you ignore it and just start talking about the content, you might end up screwing up an entire essay.

The glossary term (or what it means) will always appear in the top rows of the marking criteria. Meaning you can’t get an A-range mark if you don’t address it.

Need proof? This is the 2015 marking criteria for that Legal Studies question we looked at earlier.

See, the ability to use the verb and ‘outline’ is the only thing that’s going to get you into the A-range for that question.

Not all terms are created equal

The thing is, not all glossary key terms were born equal, and there are some that require much more attention than others.

Take identify, outline, describe, summarise: those are all super easy – you just quickly explain the content. And to be honest, you’ll probably end up getting the marks for these without even realising what you’re doing.

But stuff like synthesise, extrapolate, evaluate, critically analyse, compare, distinguish – these are the terms people ignore and suffer for. If your essay says: ‘evaluate whether the legal system is fair’ and you just explain the fairness of the legal system without making a judgment based on criteria (definition of evaluate) you’re gonna have a bad time when you get marked.

Those “higher order” glossary key words are not meant to be easy, that’s why their normally in the harder short answer questions or in the essay/long response sections.

This is why whenever we do our application videos at Atomi we spend a lot of time breaking down the glossary terms of the question before building a response. They’re just that important.

Homework: Jump straight onto the board of studies glossary of key words, print it out, stick it on your wall, learn it like the gospel and wait for those band sixes to roll in!