What are assignment command words and what do they ask?

Direct answer: Assignment command words are the verbs in a question or brief that state what you must do with the topic. Universities also call them task words, instruction words or process words. They sit beside content words, which name the topic, and limiting words, which set the scope of the answer.

James Cook University Library states the mechanism plainly: "Task words are usually verbs and they tell you what to do to complete your assignment" (James Cook University Library, n.d.). The RMIT University Learning Lab lists the same idea as instructional words, and its page defines 15 of them, from analyse to summarise, including quantify, reflect and review, which the 12-word table below leaves out (RMIT University, n.d.).

A brief usually holds several kinds of word at once. The command word asks for an action, the content words say what it applies to, and the limiting words narrow it to a time period, a place or a group of people. James Cook University Library sorts them into four kinds in total, task, content, limiting and context words, and the context words frame the question without adding an instruction (James Cook University Library, n.d.).

Look for the verbs in the question itself, in the marking criteria and in the learning outcomes, because the same words usually repeat there. A verb that appears in the criteria, such as evaluate, is a strong signal about where the marks sit.

Direct answer: Each command word asks for a different kind of thinking. Describe, outline and summarise ask you to report, analyse and compare ask you to take material apart, and discuss, evaluate and justify ask you to defend a judgement. The table sets out 12 of them as two university glossaries define them.

Source: RMIT University Learning Lab and University of New South Wales, read 2026-10-27. The last column is MAAS's own grouping.

UNSW defines discuss as "To present arguments for and against a point of view and reach a conclusion" (University of New South Wales, n.d.), so a discussion that only lists viewpoints has done half the job, which is exactly what happened to the student in the opening example. The same UNSW page defines compare as "To show both the differences and the similarities" and describe as an account "in a logical sequence or story form" (University of New South Wales, n.d.). RMIT University (n.d.) defines several of the same verbs more briefly, which is why two glossaries can give two slightly different answers.

Direct answer: In a survey of 318 students, the terms where more than 25% of respondents rated their confidence below 3 included synthesise, critical, examine, interpret and assess, while define, explain and summarise were among those rated above 5 by more than 70%. The pattern suggests students feel safe with verbs that ask for recall and shaky with verbs that ask for judgement.

West et al. (2024) is the first study in this post, and it gives the most direct measurement. The team gathered 318 survey responses on a 6-point confidence scale, then held focus groups and interviews with 31 students across four institutions. From a longer list they carried 54 terms into the survey. Table 5 of the paper collects terms where more than 25% of respondents scored below 3, and it names 12 of them: synthesise, superficial analysis, abstract, critical, reflective, application of theory, carefully, examine, inform, interpret, competent and assess.

The high end looks very different. Table 6 lists terms where more than 70% of respondents scored above 5, and it includes define, explain and summarise, together with quality words such as excellent and good. The authors explain the gap in their own words: "students are more familiar with instructions where they need to fundamentally demonstrate knowledge, compared to terms such as critical, interpret, and assess where students need to apply knowledge and critically evaluate and reflect" (West et al., 2024, p. 10).

Focus groups added colour to the numbers. Students repeatedly named critical(ly), assess, synthesise and superficial as points of contention (West et al., 2024, p. 7). If your question uses one of these verbs, write down what you think it means and compare that with the marking criteria.

Direct answer: Glossaries are written once and applied everywhere, but real assessment text varies by institution and task type. In one four-university corpus the top-100 term lists overlapped by only 43.4%, and a comparison of 155 university tasks found that test questions use a narrower range of purposes.

West et al. (2024) built a corpus of 1,390,676 words from assessment documents. The smallest institutional corpus held 84,224 words and the largest held 646,776. When the researchers took the top 100 terms from each institution, the lists overlapped by 43.4%, and each institution averaged 173 distinct terms out of a potential 400. The vocabulary of assessment is therefore partly shared and partly local.

Task type matters as well as vocabulary. Moore and Morton (2005) compared 155 undergraduate and postgraduate assignment tasks with 20 IELTS Task 2 items. They found that the test items drew on a narrow range of rhetorical functions, while the university tasks varied more and often focused on abstract entities such as theories and methods. A student who has practised on IELTS prompts has therefore met a thinner set of demands than a brief that says "evaluate the theory".

Gardner and Nesi (2013) approached the same gap from the other side. According to the abstract, they classified 2,858 pieces of assessed student writing into 13 genre families, building the scheme from the texts rather than from faculty opinion or task prompts. In MAAS's reading, this means the same verb can land in different genres in different disciplines, so the safest dictionary is your own unit's marked examples.

Direct answer: The evidence points to assessment language itself. In West et al. (2024), students whose first language was English scored lower on confidence with assessment terms, so the register is hard for many groups. Russell et al. (2022) add that international students are surprised by interpretation demands that a test score does not signal.

Start with what the data does not show. No study cited here measured whether EAL students misread command words more often than other students, so nothing in this post supports that claim. What West et al. (2024) did report, for the assessment-term subset, is that students with English as a first language scored lower on confidence (z = -2.72, with the "no" group at z = +2.7, p = 0.024). Age mattered more: under-20s scored lower across all terms (z = -8.67). Other groups differed too in the assessment-term subset: students who reported a disability scored lower (z = -10.35), Level 5 students scored lower (z = -8.72) and Level 6 students scored higher (z = +11.59).

Russell et al. (2022) studied 37 EAL students in Commerce, Economics and Engineering, 79% of them from mainland China, plus 16 faculty members. Admission required an IELTS score of 6.5 overall with no band below 6.0. In the reading questionnaire (34 respondents), students rated inferential reasoning as most important (mean 5.33), then critical thinking and evaluation (5.20), then basic comprehension (4.84), F(2, 66) = 12.34. Their own competence ratings ran the other way: 4.76 for basic comprehension, 4.45 for inferential reasoning and 4.41 for critical thinking.

One Economics student put the mismatch in a sentence: "Reading (on the test) is more like collecting information. Courses are asking for interpretation." The caveat is that this study examined reading and test-score expectations, not assignment verbs. The reasonable reading is that verbs like interpret and evaluate sit exactly where the demand outruns what a language score tells anyone.

Direct answer: Decode the brief in three passes before you research. Mark the command, content and limiting words, restate the question in one plain sentence of your own, then split any question with more than one command into separate jobs. Each job gets its own planned section and its own share of the word count.

1. Mark the words. Circle the command word, underline the content words and box the limiting words.
2. Restate the question. Write it as one sentence in your own words. If you cannot do that without looking back, you have found a gap in understanding at the cheapest possible moment.
3. Split the jobs. A question such as "Analyse the policy and evaluate its impact" holds two commands. Plan one section for each, and give the evaluation more words than the description that supports it.

Then compare your restated question with the marking criteria, and check that every command word in the brief has a planned section. If the criteria reward "critical analysis" and your plan only reports, adjust the plan now. The same habit helps with other formats, as described in the guides to writing a university essay and writing a university report.

Direct answer: The command word decides how much of your answer reports, how much analyses and how much argues. A describe question rewards accuracy and coverage. An evaluate question rewards a clear judgement backed by evidence, so an answer that only reports has not yet answered it.

Take one topic from a 2,000-word business assignment: the sustainability report of a retail chain. "Describe the sustainability report" asks for what the report contains. "Analyse the report" asks you to separate its targets, methods and claims, and to show how they connect. "Evaluate the report" asks whether its claims are convincing, which needs criteria, evidence from outside the report and a verdict. The topic is identical, but the three answers share very little text.

The ladder is not unique to universities. Bloom's taxonomy orders educational verbs from recall to judgement, and the survey above fits that direction loosely, since the high-confidence verbs sit near recall and the low-confidence ones near judgement. Treat the fit as a pattern to test in your own unit, not a law.

Evaluation also depends on critical thinking, which our guide to the critical thinking framework for essays breaks into steps you can apply to a draft. Whatever the verb, the safest check is the one the marking rubric provides: if a criterion names the verb, your answer should visibly do it.

Reading the brief with a second person often exposes the verb you skimmed. Through MAAS essay and assignment support, an expert reads your brief with you in an Outline, Draft, Final sequence: first your plan, then your draft, then your final version, while the writing and the judgement stay yours. The first conversation is a free 20-minute consultation with a MAAS expert.

Bring the brief, the marking criteria and your restated question, and the expert will ask which verb each section answers, without writing any of it for you.

Each of these guides covers a task type that depends on reading the brief correctly.

• How to write a university essay: shows where each command word shapes the introduction, body and conclusion of an essay.
• Critical thinking framework for essays: turns the word critical into steps you can follow when the brief says evaluate, critique or assess.
• How to write a university report: covers the format side of a brief, including how a report answers a question differently from an essay.

Gardner, S., & Nesi, H. (2013). A classification of genre families in university student writing. Applied Linguistics, 34(1), 25-52. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/ams024

James Cook University Library. (n.d.). The writing guide: Step 1. Understanding the essay question. Retrieved October 27, 2026, from https://libguides.jcu.edu.au/writing/writing1

Moore, T., & Morton, J. (2005). Dimensions of difference: A comparison of university writing and IELTS writing. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 4(1), 43-66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2004.02.001

RMIT University. (n.d.). Meanings of instructional words. Learning Lab. Retrieved October 27, 2026, from https://learninglab.rmit.edu.au/assessments/getting-started-with-assignments/understanding-your-assignment/meanings-instructional-words/

Russell, B., Barron, C., Kim, H., & Jang, E. E. (2022). A mixed-method investigation into international university students' experience with academic language demands. Frontiers in Education, 7, Article 934692. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2022.934692

University of New South Wales. (n.d.). Answering assignment & essay questions. Current Students. Retrieved October 27, 2026, from https://www.unsw.edu.au/student/managing-your-studies/academic-skills-support/toolkit/writing/essay/answering-essay-questions

West, H., Skidmore, N., Bennett, L., Eve, J., Minett-Smith, C., & Rudge, L. (2024). The language of assessment: Identifying challenging terminology for students and exploring implications for practice. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 50(3), 381-395. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2024.2402960

This article is part of the MAAS Journal series for students. MAAS is an academic support partner: experts guide students through each stage of their own work, and we do not complete assessed work on a student's behalf.