Answering "Evaluate" questions

[zuriah]

I know that evaluate questions call for you to make a judgement or determine the value of something, but I'm wondering how to answer those better. I often only use the words "significant/not significant" and "effective/ineffective" when commenting on the impact/effect of something and am looking for more clear and effective words to make a judgement. Sure, some of the "judgement" words come from the context of the question but I feel like I'm being to repetitive in my word choice :// TIA

[avocadinq]

I know that evaluate questions call for you to make a judgement or determine the value of something, but I'm wondering how to answer those better. I often only use the words "significant/not significant" and "effective/ineffective" when commenting on the impact/effect of something and am looking for more clear and effective words to make a judgement. Sure, some of the "judgement" words come from the context of the question but I feel like I'm being to repetitive in my word choice :// TIA

Hi there,

Most of the judgement words do come from the context of the question but here are some other alternatives, that I found on google.

- Significant = Major, essential, fundamental
- Not significant = unimportant, minor, insignificant
- Effective = successful, beneficial, advantageous
- Ineffective = limited in effectiveness, inefficient, inadequate

Hope this helps!

[jamonwindeyer]

Hello! I think a big part of answering those questions properly is about defining what it means to be effective (for the humanities is where I'm coming from). For example, an 'effective' response in Legal Studies might be an accessible one, or an enforceable one, or whatever. If I set up those links in the intro, from that point instead of saying effective, I can say accessible and it will mean the same thing!!

[owidjaja]

I know that evaluate questions call for you to make a judgement or determine the value of something, but I'm wondering how to answer those better. I often only use the words "significant/not significant" and "effective/ineffective" when commenting on the impact/effect of something and am looking for more clear and effective words to make a judgement. Sure, some of the "judgement" words come from the context of the question but I feel like I'm being to repetitive in my word choice :// TIA

Hey there,

avocadinq and Jamon already have great responses but I'd also like to include my input. I'd also like to emphasise the difference between 'assess' and 'evaluate.' The definition you have here "to make a judgement', which is good but it's also the definition for 'assess.' The difference between 'assess' and 'evaluate' is that evaluate requires to make a judgement based on a criteria whereas 'assess' is just making a judgement.

So an example of an 'evaluate' question is this essay question: "Evaluate the view that Austria-Hungary was the most responsible of the ‘great powers’ for the outbreak of war in Europe in 1914." The 'criteria' in this question is that Austria-Hungary was the most responsible and you can't really completely disagree with this (I'm not sure if you do Modern but we have a 60:40 rule where we can agree 60% and disagree 40%). So in this essay, 3 body paragraphs I argued that Austria-Hungary was at fault but then I had 1 paragraph arguing that it was Germany's fault. On the other hand, here's an 'assess' question: "Assess the belief that the fall of the Romanov Dynasty was inevitable." Notice how this question is a lot more broad (I made it broad because I wrote this question and it gave me room to argue). In this essay, I argued that it was an accumulation of factors that led to the fall of the Romanov Dynasty. I could've listed a bunch of events that caused the fall of the Romanov Dynasty.

TL;DR, please note the differences between 'evaluate' and 'assess' because it essentially determines how you structure your response.

As for using 'assessment words', I actually had a similar issue with you how I felt like I was repeating the same words (my favourites were significant/insignificant and detrimental). I tried to get out of this habit by reading other people's essays and see how they make a judgement and hopefully learn some new terms used in the correct context (do not go to the thesaurus! Teachers will know if you're vocabulary is sophisticated or if you just swallowed a thesaurus). I've also used a few emotive terms in my assessment, not as the first line of my introduction but maybe in the opening sentence or within my paragraph. For example, I wrote: "The Holocaust was a catastrophic event as the Final Solution enabled the Nazis to commit genocide and apply their racial ideologies" (paraphrased, not quoted).

Hope this helps!