The substitution problem
Almost nobody misreads an essay question. What happens instead is quieter: you read evaluate, and you write describe, because describing is what you have most material for. The substitution is invisible from the inside — the essay feels responsive, because every paragraph is about the right topic.
Markers see it immediately, because they are marking against a rubric written around the verb. If the question said evaluate, there is a band descriptor about evaluation, and an essay with no evaluative sentences cannot reach the upper bands however well informed it is.
The fix is mechanical rather than clever. Identify the verb, work out what it demands, and check that your essay contains sentences actually doing that thing.
The verbs, decoded
These are the instructions you will meet most often in UK assessment. The distinctions matter — the difference between discuss and critically evaluate is a difference in what the marker is looking for, not in tone.
| Verb | What it demands | Where marks are lost |
|---|---|---|
| Describe | An accurate account. Rare on its own beyond first year. | Adding unasked-for judgement, or padding. |
| Explain | Causes and mechanisms — why or how, not just what. | Restating the thing instead of accounting for it. |
| Compare | Similarities and differences, with a stated basis for comparison. | Two separate descriptions with no comparison between them. |
| Analyse | Break into components and show how they relate. | Summarising the whole rather than examining the parts. |
| Discuss | Set out competing positions and reach a reasoned view. | Listing views without arbitrating between them. |
| Evaluate | Judge worth or effectiveness against explicit criteria. | Judging without ever naming the criteria used. |
| Critically evaluate | As above, plus interrogating the evidence and assumptions. | Reading "critically" as "negatively". |
| Assess | Weigh significance or extent, and commit to a position. | Ending on "it depends" with no most-likely answer. |
| To what extent | A degree answer — largely, partly, only in one respect. | Answering yes or no, or refusing to say how far. |
| Justify | Argue for a position and defend it against objections. | Asserting rather than defending. |
| Account for | Explain why something is the case, not that it is. | Describing the phenomenon at length instead. |
"Critically" does not mean negatively. It means examining the basis of a claim — the quality of evidence, the assumptions, what the argument would need to be true. A critical evaluation can conclude that something is sound. What it cannot do is accept the claim without inspecting it.
"To what extent" in practice
This phrasing appears constantly across UK assessment and is the one most often mishandled. It is not asking whether something is true. It is asking how far, which means the answer sits on a scale and your job is to place it and justify the placement.
Both of these respond to To what extent was the 1832 Reform Act a democratic measure?
The 1832 Reform Act was not a democratic measure. It extended the franchise only to a small propertied minority and left the majority of adult men, and all women, without a vote. The redistribution of seats did address the worst rotten boroughs, but the Act was fundamentally limited in its democratic effect.
Why. A yes/no answer to a how-far question. It concedes a point about seats and then abandons it. The question invited a position on a scale and this takes a position at one end without measuring the distance.
The Act was democratic in mechanism but not in reach. Redistribution attacked the structural corruption of the unreformed system, which was a genuinely democratising change to how representation worked. Franchise extension, by contrast, moved the electorate in England and Wales from roughly one in ten adult men to one in five — a widening of the same propertied principle rather than a challenge to it. The measure was therefore substantially reforming and only marginally democratic.
Why. It separates two dimensions, places each on the scale, and commits to an overall position. "Substantially reforming and only marginally democratic" is an extent answer.
When the question has two verbs
Compound questions are common and routinely half-answered. "Explain the causes of X and evaluate the effectiveness of Y" is two tasks, marked separately, often with an even split of marks. An essay that explains beautifully and evaluates in one closing paragraph has capped itself at roughly half the available credit no matter how good the first half is.
Before you plan, split the question into its instructions and give each one a share of the word count proportional to its share of the marks. If the split is not stated, assume even.
Where the verb is hiding
Not every question announces itself. Some phrasings carry an instruction without a verb:
- "How far do you agree…" — an extent question wearing different clothes
- "'Quotation.' Discuss." — the quotation is the proposition; you are being asked whether it holds, not to write about its topic
- "Consider the view that…" — evaluate the view, do not simply restate it
- "What role did X play in Y?" — analyse and weigh, not just narrate
Paste a paragraph of your own. This measures how your writing behaves — sentence variety, hedging, nominalisation and the phrases that read as filler.
Results appear here. Around 60 words gives the most reliable reading — shorter passages make sentence-variety scores jumpy.
A five-minute check before you start
- Underline the verb. If there are two, number them.
- Write in your own words what that verb requires you to produce.
- Identify the scope words — dates, places, named cases, qualifiers like "in the UK" or "since 2000". These narrow the question and are marked.
- Decide roughly what your answer is before you plan. An essay written to find out what you think tends to arrive at its argument in the conclusion, where it earns least.
- Check your plan contains sentences that do the verb, not just cover the topic.
Five minutes here saves more marks than an extra hour of reading, because reading cannot fix an essay that answers an adjacent question.