Why your answers score lower than they read

The complaint

"I knew the topic. I filled the pages. I still got a 9."

This is the most common thing we hear, and the diagnosis is almost always the same: the answer was about the topic rather than about the question.

What the examiner is doing

An examiner has a few hundred scripts and roughly ninety seconds for yours. They read the introduction, scan the headings, look for evidence, read the conclusion, and assign a mark. Everything below follows from that.

• If your headings do not map to what the question demanded, the scan finds nothing.
• If your introduction restates the question, the first ten seconds are wasted.
• If your conclusion summarises rather than concludes, the last ten are too.

The fix, in three steps

1. Underline every noun the question demands. Each becomes a heading.
2. Identify the directive and write down, in the margin, what it obliges you to do.
3. Write the conclusion before the body, so the body has somewhere to go.

None of this requires knowing more. It requires spending ninety seconds deciding what the question wants before you start filling pages.