HSC Economics Directive Verbs: What Each One Actually Asks For

The verb is the first word of most HSC Economics questions, and it decides the ceiling on your mark before you've written anything. The marking criteria are written in terms of the verb. If a question asks you to explain and you describe, the guideline puts you on the describe line, however much you know.

NESA publishes a glossary of key words that defines each one. The definitions below are paraphrased from it, with what each verb means in practice for an Economics answer and a real question where it was used.

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How often each verb appears

Here is every Section III and IV question from 2015 to 2025 sorted by its verb. One 2024 question isn't in the published paper text, so this covers 43 of the 44.

Verb	Extended responses, 2015-2025
Analyse	12
Assess	9
Explain	9
Discuss	5
Evaluate	5
Compare (including compare and contrast)	2
To what extent	1

Two things stand out. Analyse is the most common verb in the extended responses. And explain, which students tend to think of as a short answer verb, carries 20-mark questions regularly, including at least four of the eight extended responses in 2024 and 2025.

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The verbs that ask you to show what you know

Identify and define

Identify means recognise and name. Define means state the meaning and its essential qualities. Both usually carry 1 or 2 marks.

A definition earns its marks through precision. 2022 Q21(a) asked students to define the term fiscal policy for 2 marks. "Government spending and taxing" is half an answer. The full version names the instrument (the Budget), what it changes (government spending and revenue), and the purpose (influencing economic activity and achieving the government's economic objectives).

Outline

Sketch in general terms: give the main features. This is the 2-mark verb on most papers.

2025 Q21(a): Outline ONE role of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in the global economy. In your answer, refer to a specific example. An outline is short, but it still has to be specific enough that the marker can tell you know the thing itself, and here the question explicitly wanted an example on top.

Describe

Give the characteristics and features. Describe tells the marker what something is like, not why it happens.

That makes it a trap when you see it in a marking guideline beneath explain. In 2025 Q21(b), explaining the limitations of income as a measure of quality of life was worth 3 marks and describing them was worth 2. The difference between the two is the word "because".

Calculate

Work out an answer from the figures given. 2023 Q22(a) asked students to calculate net secondary income. Show one line of working and include the unit. All the formulas you could be asked to use are in our formula guide.

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The verbs that ask how and why

Explain

Relate cause and effect, and make the relationships between things evident. Explain is about how and why.

In practice, that means writing causal chains. A higher cash rate does not simply "lower inflation". It raises lending rates, which raises mortgage repayments and the cost of business credit, which reduces consumption and investment, which reduces aggregate demand, which eases demand-side pressure on prices. Each link is a sentence the marker is looking for.

At 20 marks, explain is deceptively demanding. 2025 Q25 asked students to explain the reasons for trends since 2016 in the size and composition of Australia's Balance of Payments. There is no judgement required, but the top band needed a "clear and comprehensive understanding", which means every trend explained with its cause, and the cause explained with its mechanism.

Distinguish

Note the differences between two things. 2020 Q22(a): distinguish between structural unemployment and cyclical unemployment. Define both, then name the difference in a sentence of its own. The difference is what's being marked.

Compare, and compare and contrast

Compare means show how things are similar or different. Contrast means show how they are different. 2022 Q27 asked students to compare how inflation affects individuals, firms and government in Australia.

The structural trap with compare is writing three separate sections (individuals, then firms, then government) with no comparison in any of them. That is three descriptions. Organise by effect instead: a paragraph on how erosion of purchasing power hits each group differently, then one on uncertainty and planning, then one on international competitiveness. Every paragraph then compares something.

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The verbs that ask you to take apart

Analyse

Identify the components and the relationships between them, then draw out and relate the implications. Analyse is the most common verb in the extended responses, and it's the one most often answered as if it said explain.

The 2025 examiners made this exact criticism of the protection question (Analyse how different methods of protection affect firms and government in Australia): responses explained the methods of protection instead of analysing them.

The difference is the implications. Explain says a tariff raises the domestic price, so domestic producers expand output and imports fall. Analyse goes further: protected firms gain market share but face less pressure to become efficient, firms that use the protected good as an input lose competitiveness, and the government gains tariff revenue but at the cost of a deadweight loss. Then it relates those effects to each other. The gain to one group is the cost to another, and the net effect on the economy is negative. Analysis is explanation plus "and so" and "which means".

Examine

Inquire into. 2019 Q22(b): examine TWO reasons for the difference in living standards between nations. Treat examine as close to analyse. Explain each reason, then look at how much it matters and what it depends on.

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The verbs that ask for a judgement

These are where most Band 5 responses stop short. Each one requires an explicit judgement, and the judgement has to be argued, not announced in the final sentence.

Assess

Make a judgement of value, quality, outcomes, results or size. Assess asks how much: how important, how effective, how large.

2018 Q28: Assess the importance of factors that determine the size and composition of Australia's current account. The word importance tells you the judgement it wants: which factors matter most. A response that explains five factors equally well, with no ranking, hasn't assessed anything. The strongest answers say early on which factor is most important and why, and then the order of paragraphs reflects that ranking.

Evaluate

Make a judgement based on criteria, and determine the value of something. Evaluate usually comes with effectiveness or success: 2021 Q25 asked students to evaluate the effectiveness of Australia's fiscal policy in managing unemployment, income distribution and external stability.

The word "criteria" is the key. Effectiveness against what? Here the question gives you the criteria (the three objectives), so the judgement has to cover each one. Fiscal policy might be highly effective on unemployment, effective on distribution through progressive taxes and transfers, and weaker on external stability. That uneven verdict is the evaluation. A single "fiscal policy is effective" for all three is not.

Our monetary policy guide has a full evaluate essay with the thesis worked through.

Discuss

Identify issues and provide points for and/or against. In Economics, treat it as for and against, always.

2024 Q25 asked students to discuss the macroeconomic and microeconomic policies available to achieve sustainable economic growth in Australia. A discussion covers what each policy can do and what limits it, then lands somewhere: what the outcome depends on. Discuss does not demand a verdict as firmly as evaluate, but a discussion that ends without any position reads as unfinished.

To what extent

Not in the NESA glossary, but it has appeared: 2020 Q28 asked To what extent do limitations of economic policies affect the achievement of economic growth and a more equal distribution of income in the Australian economy? Treat it as assess. The answer is a degree (largely, partly, only slightly), argued with evidence for both the extent and its limits.

Justify

Support an argument or conclusion. 2019 Q24(b) asked students to justify an appropriate monetary policy stance for this economy and to support the answer with the economic indicators provided. That means choosing a stance (tighten, ease or hold) and using the data provided to defend it. Sitting on the fence fails a justify question, because there is nothing to justify.

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The ladder

The verbs fall roughly into a ladder, and the marking guidelines use the lower rungs to describe weaker responses to higher-order questions.

Level	Verbs	What the answer must contain
Recall	identify, define, outline, describe	What it is
Cause and effect	explain, distinguish, compare	How and why it happens
Structure	analyse, examine	How the parts relate and what follows
Judgement	assess, evaluate, discuss, to what extent, justify	How much it matters, how well it works, what you conclude

A response always gets marked at the level it reaches, not the level it was asked for. Write an explanation to an evaluate question and you are marked as an explanation.

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Using this in the exam

Underline the verb before anything else. Then ask what the last sentence of your answer needs to say. For explain, it's the final effect in the chain. For analyse, it's the implication. For assess and evaluate, it's the judgement, which should also appear in your opening sentence.

If you have time for one drill this week, take twenty past questions and write only the first sentence of each answer. Each sentence should make it obvious which verb you are answering. Twenty sentences take about half an hour, and that half hour probably does more for your Section III and IV marks than another full essay.

For the way verbs work in the short answer section specifically, see our Section II guide. For how they shape a full essay, see how to structure a Band 6 essay.