This question landed in my inbox recently:
In the English examination for independent school entrance, does the student have to repeat the question in their answer? There seems to be so much confusion around this issue between what schools teach, and many of the tuition sites teach. Some say there is no need to repeat the question, as it wastes valuable time in an exam where there is a time limit. Others instruct students to repeat the question in their answer. What are your thoughts/advice on this please?
It's an excellent question, and I've also noticed a lot of conflicting advice on this. In my view, what really counts when completing a comprehension question is that you give a detailed, thoughtful and accurate answer. Repeating the question does not help students achieve this goal, and can often hinder them, as well as using up valuable exam time.
Take this question from a recent Highgate 11+ entrance paper:
Using your own words, describe the mood or atmosphere in the wilderness (paragraph 5).
A common way for a student to do badly would be:
I would describe the mood or atmosphere in the wilderness as sad.
A better answer would be:
The mood is lonely and desolate; even the howling wolves sound as if they are in pain or feeling very alone. There is also a sense of menace, as the daylight is fading and the wolves sound hungry.
The first student has really only answered the question with a single word ("sad"), but repeating the question has fooled them into thinking they have given a substantial answer. Where the exam paper provides a limited number of lines to answer, copying out the question can take up most of the space provided, making students particularly prone to providing insufficient detail.
I suspect the origin of the advice to “repeat the question” is that teachers want to avoid receiving single word answers. But I would argue that the advice is counterproductive. Even a candidate who hasn’t read the passage at all is capable of copying out the question - their ability to do this tells me nothing of their understanding of the text. I strongly suspect examiners have figured this out too, and can easily spot that Student 1 has simply ‘window-dressed’ what effectively remains a single-word answer.
That said, I do think it's a good idea to answer in complete sentences - i.e. avoiding single word answers or sentence fragments. But this is easy to achieve without tedious repetition of the entire question.