Identify, state, name, give and define: short, exact answers

A walker is lost in thick fog on the Talon Hills, in the fictional land of Owlobia, and phones mountain rescue. What does the rescue team need to hear? For two minutes the walker describes the fog, a stream they crossed, a gate, and a long stone wall. It feels like the more they say, the better. The team needs one thing only: a six-figure grid reference. Every extra sentence costs time, and it buries the grid reference under everything else. Some exam questions work like that phone call, and five command words ask for them.

Identify, state, name, give and define all ask for the same thing: one short, exact item for each mark, with no explanation. Over to you for this one. A question asks you to state one renewable source of energy. Answer A says: wind. Answer B says: wind is renewable because it will never run out, and turbines are spreading fast, so wind is becoming more important. Which is the better answer to that state question, A or B, and why? A is better. Both hold the same item, wind, in their first word, and everything after that in B answers a question nobody asked. One examiner's report on a state question records it: "some candidates used valuable time giving reasons for their answer where reasons were not needed." The fix is to write the item and move on, and the time you keep goes to the longer questions. The courses word these commands a little differently. Some print identify, state and name as one command, others give each its own definition, and some print no list at all and still set them, but the job is the same on every course. Some of these questions ask you to recall an item, such as one cause of flooding. Others ask you to select an item from a resource, and then the resource holds the answer: you lift the exact label, the value with its unit, or the place name, and write only that.

Selecting is a reading job. In Owlobia, the electricity in one year came from six sources. Gas gave thirty-eight per cent, wind twenty-seven per cent, and nuclear fourteen per cent. Solar gave six per cent, coal one per cent, and other sources fourteen per cent. The first question asks you to identify the renewable source that generated the most electricity. Which source is it, and what two steps did you take to find it? Wind, at twenty-seven per cent. The first step is recall, because you need to know which sources are renewable. The second step is selection, because you pick the biggest of those from the table. A fresh one now, on the same table, worded with which at the front. Which source generated the least electricity? Coal, at one per cent. A question that starts with which, or with name, is answered like identify: one item, with no sentence wrapped around it. Give has two other shapes that are not short answers. Give reasons for your answer asks you to explain, and give your answer to one decimal place is a rounding step at the end of a calculation. Each of those has its own video in this chapter: the explain video and the video on the data command words.

When a question asks for two items, it wants two separate, different ideas, and a shopping centre shows what that means. State two ways that building a large out-of-town shopping centre could harm the environment of the countryside around it. Try writing your two ways now, one on each line. Here is one pair. First, farmland and wildlife habitat are lost under the buildings and car parks. Second, extra traffic driving to the centre brings more noise and air pollution to the lanes nearby. One idea is about land and one is about traffic, so they are clearly different. Three other answers fall short in three different ways. The first student writes one word: pollution. Why is that one word not enough, and how would you fix it? It does not say what kind of pollution or where it comes from. Air pollution from traffic is the same idea made exact, and that is qualifying the item, not explaining it. One examiner's report on this kind of question says plainly: "Just writing the word 'pollution' with no context is generally not creditworthy." The habit that fixes it is to name the kind and its source in the same few words. The second student writes two lines: more cars, and more traffic. How many separate items is that? One. Both lines carry the same idea said twice, so only one item counts. The third student writes three ways, hoping one of them is right. Only the first two are read. One examiner's report gives the reason: "the first two answers would have to be taken and the rest ignored or candidates would be able to offer as many answers as they like which would be unfair on those who offer just two as instructed." The fix is to give the number asked and no more, one on each numbered line, each one different from the other.

Define asks for the exact meaning of a term in one sentence, with its key parts and with no reasons or effects. A question that asks what is meant by a term is a define question as well. Start with urbanisation. One student writes: urbanisation means more people living in cities. What is missing from that definition of urbanisation? The idea of share. Urbanisation is the increase in the proportion of a country's residents who live in towns and cities, and the word proportion carries the meaning. That matters because a whole country's population can grow. Its cities can gain people while the countryside grows even faster, and then the share living in cities has not risen at all. One examiner's report notes: "Students struggled with geographical definitions. Question 01.1, the definition of urbanisation, was answered incorrectly in the vast majority of answers." The habit that fixes it is to learn each definition by its key words, and proportion is the key word here. A new term now. Define urban sprawl, in one sentence. Try defining urban sprawl on paper, then check it against the two key parts. Urban sprawl is the spread of a built-up area outwards into the countryside around it. The two key parts are what spreads, the built-up area, and where it spreads to, the countryside around it. One wrong form rewords the term: urban sprawl is when a city sprawls. That tells the reader nothing the term did not. The other wrong form runs on: urban sprawl is when a city spreads out because people want bigger houses, which destroys farmland. Which words in that second answer would you cross out, and why? Everything from because onwards. The meaning is complete before it, and the rest gives a reason and an effect the question did not ask for. One examiner's report on a define question gives the rule: "the command word 'define' asks for a brief definition of a geographical term from the specification. There is no need for explanation." The same report adds that the question "was generally well attempted, with the majority of candidates able to provide a basic definition." So most students already have the meaning, and stopping at the meaning keeps the answer clean. Leaving out a key part is the other way a definition falls short. One examiner's report on suburbanisation says: "many candidates defined it as increase in people moving to the suburbs. As this response did not outline where the suburbs were in the city, it was not given credit." The fix is to check each part of the meaning is there before you move on, and for suburbanisation the place is a part: the outer edge of the city. Now a two-part definition with the first part done for you. Biological weathering is the breaking down of rock in place. What is the second key part that makes it biological? By the action of living things, such as plant roots or burrowing animals. Part one says what happens, and part two says what does it. Last, define the term the question names. One examiner's report on a question about immigration records: "Many candidates defined emigration or migration rather than immigration." Underline the key word in the question before you write, whether it is push or pull, cause or consequence, immigration or emigration. Immigration is moving into a country to live, and emigration is leaving it, so the one difference is into or out of.

Now the short version of the whole video, asked rather than told.

A question says state two. How many items do you give, and what happens to a third? Two different items, one on each line, and any extra item is never read.

On to sharpening. A question asks for one effect of a new factory on a town, and a student writes one word: jobs. How would you make jobs exact, for the new factory and the town? Name the kind and the place: factory jobs for people in the town. A few extra words make it an item, and they still explain nothing.

Now a fresh term, one this video never defined: what is deforestation, in one sentence? Deforestation is the cutting down and clearing of forest, usually so the land can be used for something else. Its key parts are what happens to the forest and what the land is cleared for.

Now the last row: what does a define answer always leave out? Reasons and effects. A definition gives the meaning with its key parts and then stops.

The walker in the fog had one thing the team needed to hear: a grid reference they could use at once. A state, identify, name, give or define answer is that phone call done right: one exact item for each mark, on its own line.

If you can say this one's done, give it a thumbs-up and move on. If not, save it and come back after a few practice questions, because the habit comes with the questions.

Next in the chapter is Describe and outline: characteristics, not reasons. Hopefully that's next in your feed, but if not, search for ScholaFly G E oh one, oh three.

Every other video is on scholafly.com too, easy to search by video code or by keyword. Whatever you're revising, go there and have a look, or, watch the next video.