Biology › Command words
A-level biology command words
The words a question opens with are not interchangeable. Each one commits the mark scheme to accepting a particular shape of answer, and writing the wrong shape loses marks you knew the biology for.
What each word asks for
The commonest mark lost in this subject is a describe answered as an explain, or the reverse. “Describe what happens to the water potential of the blood” wants the change and its direction; “explain” wants the mechanism that caused it. An answer that gives both is not safe either, because the extra half is unmarked and the time it cost is gone.
- Calculate
- A number, with working and units.
- Compare
- Both things, point against point, in the same sentence.
- Complete
- Fill in a table, diagram or equation.
- Describe
- What happens, in order, without saying why.
- Discuss
- The arguments on more than one side, set out and weighed.
- Evaluate
- Both sides and a judgement supported by the evidence given.
- Explain
- Why it happens; the mark scheme will want a because.
- Give
- A fact, sometimes read off a source in the question.
- Identify
- Pick out from something supplied.
- Name
- The term itself, and nothing else earns the mark.
- Outline
- The main points only, briefly.
- State
- A fact or a name, no reasoning expected or credited.
- Suggest
- Apply what you know to a situation you have not met.
How the mark schemes here are coded
Every question in this library carries a mark scheme written point by point, one point per mark, each tagged the way examiners tag them.
- A
- Answer or accuracy point.
- B
- Independent point, standing on its own.
- M
- Method or manipulation.
Mark a written answer against the scheme point by point rather than by feel. A paragraph that reads well and makes three of the five points scores three, and finding that out on your own paper is the whole purpose of marking yourself.