Answering The Question

One of the most useful skills in doing written work for formal assessment is the ability to 'twist', 'tweak' or 'angle' the information or knowledge that you have until it is relevant to the exam question or assignment title, for example, in response to the assignment question:

Analyse the way in which Total Quality Management Interacts with other internal and external environmental influences to change the structure of businesses.

An external factor would be New Technology, which can change the structure of business dramatically, for example the introduction of computers and robots into a business would mean that the production process would be much easier to implement and work out much cheaper in the long run, rather than human workers who are prone to fall ill and prone to asking for wage increases, something a computer or a robot would never think of doing.

As it stands, apart from being very poorly written, this 'sentence' does not address the question asked in the assignment title. Indeed, the marker of the assignment might be forgiven for simply drawing a line through these words and ignoring them. However, the knowledge that the student clearly possesses can be made directly relevant to the question posed in the assignment title by simply adding a few words (without improving the quality of the written English noticeably !) to make it read something like this:

The interaction between New Technology and the Total Quality Approach can change the structure of business dramatically. The introduction of computers and robots into a business, for example, would mean that the production process would be much easier to implement and work out much cheaper in the long run, rather than human workers who are prone to fall ill and prone to asking for wage increases, something a computer or a robot would never think of doing. In this way improvements in technology would make it easier to achieve permanent, sustainable improvements in the quality of the output of the production process, thus facilitating the aims of Total Quality Management.

This remains far from exemplary English, however, a marker might reasonably conclude that the student had succeeded in applying knowledge about Technological change to the question. As you write in assignments or during examinations, it is essential that you continually ask yourself: 'Are these words contributing to an answer to the question asked ?'. If your answer is 'No'. Then there is little point in writing them. Very few markers allocate marks to irrelevancies. You should always be trying to mould your ideas and words until they address the issues posed in the assignment title or wording of the examination question.

It is essential that that you read the task or question and do precisely what it says. Rather than tackling what staff ask them to do, many students invent their own questions. When marking student work, we often find what appear to be answers to questions that students feel they can answer more easily than those posed in the assessment set by staff. This tactic is highly inadvisable. It is not safe to assume that quite a good answer to the wrong question will get you a better grade than a rather bad answer to the right question. Irrelevant, misapplied material in student work is simply ignored by markers who tend only to consider and assess the material that has been made relevant by the students to the task in hand. Thus, time and effort devoted to work on the wrong question will usually be totally wasted. Failure to answer the question asked can lead, at best to very poor grades, and at worst to outright failure.

The first example is a question about FDI (Foreign Direct Investment, and the labour markets in the four Tiger economies (Singapore, Hong-Kong, Korea and Taiwan)

Several students chose this topic, but most of them got rather a poor mark for their answer because instead of assessing the validity of the claim relating FDI to Labour Market behaviour they simply described some of the main characteristics of the labour market in one of the Tiger economies. Moreover, a good answer to the question required students to evaluate the quality of an argument (Did the relevant governments deliberately suppress their labour forces or not). There is only one way to successfully carry out this task, and that is to find some evidence for or against the claim and use it to construct an argument. Even where students had worked out what they had to do, and found some relevant information that was directly relevant to the question, many of them failed to use the information they had found to construct a coherent argument.

The next example is a question dealing with Government Intervention in the Tiger Economies. Students were offered the following quotation :

But many simply described some of the more obvious features of Government intervention in one or two of the economies and did not bother to focus on the question of whether or not that quality or quantity of that intervention was important. This is a common failing in many student scripts regardless of the question.

Several students chose this topic, but most of them got rather a poor mark for their answer because instead of comparing and contrasting the main features of the two Financial systems, they simply described some of their main characteristics. Indeed many students devoted the vast majority of their answer to this question to a list of some of the characteristics of the Japanese system, and left a mere paragraph or two to describe the UK version

Finally, the last question deals with a particular form of Japanese Industrial Structure. Students faced this task:

But many simply described (again)) some of the more obvious features of Keiretsu (a particular type of grouping of companies in Japan) and did not bother to focus on those aspects of the structure that enabled Keiretsu to protect themselves from take-over. Very few students made any mention at all of monopoly power, how it might be controlled and, particularly, the relevance of the Keiretsu structure to this phenomenon.

The wording of the these last four questions required students to construct relevant and coherent arguments that were based on relevant facts and data. Many students fail to carry out this task with any facility. The conclusion to be drawn from this observation is that, even when an answer is factually correct and packed with accurate information, theories and ideas, if the content is not relevant to the question, then it will fail to score well. To repeat, the key skill is not just to regurgitate some information about the topic in question, but to apply what you know to the precise question that has been asked.