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Define the term questions and a rubric for marking definitions

What a define the term question measures, what a good definition contains, how exam boards use define, and a rubric for definitions with eight answers marked.

The EdProcto editorial teamWritten and checked against the research it cites. Last checked . How the guides are made

Guides · Question shapes and when to use them · · 13 min read

How do I write and mark a definition question?

A definition question is marked fairly when the rubric is written before the quiz. Split the model definition into its essential elements, the class the term belongs to and each feature that sets it apart, give each a point, list the wordings you accept, and decide in advance what a circular answer, an example alone and the nearest term's definition earn.

A define the term question looks like the easiest thing a teacher can set: "Define osmosis." It is also hard to mark the same way twice, because thirty students hand in thirty sentences, some word-perfect and empty, some clumsy and right.

The cure is a rubric written before the quiz: which parts of the definition earn the points, in which wordings, and what an example or a circular answer is worth. EdProcto carries the shape as its define the term template, an open definition, graded against your rubric.

What does a definition question measure?

A definition question measures whether a student can state what a term means. Taken alone, it cannot tell the student who understands the concept from the one who has stored the sentence.

Familiar wording flatters. Anderson et al. (1974) had 662 high school students read a passage, take a quiz and sit a test a week later. Questions in the passage's own words were answered much better than paraphrased ones, on the quiz and on the test.

Holding a definition is also different from being able to use it. Scott and Nagy (1997) gave 60 fourth-grade pupils definitions of invented verbs and asked whether sentences used the verbs correctly. When a sentence fitted only a fragment of the definition, the pupils accepted it about half the time, which is chance.

Does learning a definition carry over to using the concept?

Not reliably. McDaniel et al. (2013) gave middle-school science classes multiple-choice quizzes on definitions or on applying the idea. Application quizzes raised later exam marks on definition questions and on new application questions. Definition quizzes did nothing for application questions.

Rawson et al. (2015) found in three experiments that students who studied definitions and then examples classified new cases better than students who restudied the definitions, with effects from d = 0.74 to 1.67. In vocabulary teaching, the meta-analysis by Stahl and Fairbanks (1986) found that the most effective methods gave the definition and the word in context, more than once or twice.

So a definition question is a sound check that a meaning was learned, and weak proof that it can be used.

What does a good definition contain?

A good definition names the class the thing belongs to and what sets it apart inside that class. This is the classical form, genus and differentia, which goes back to Aristotle: a human defined as an animal, the genus, with the capacity to reason, the differentia (Smith, 2022). The Purdue Online Writing Lab (n.d.) teaches writers the same parts: the term, its class and what differentiates it.

The form brings its own test: a definition should fit everything the term covers and nothing else. As a definition of a triangle, "a shape with straight sides" lets squares in, and "a shape with three equal sides" shuts most triangles out.

Where the classical form fails

Three kinds of term do not fit it.

  • Concepts with fuzzy edges. Margolis and Laurence (2019) report that attempts to define concepts by necessary and sufficient conditions have a poor record, and that people judge an apple a more typical fruit than a plum. "Define democracy" has no single sentence a rubric can hold.
  • Operational definitions. Bridgman argued in 1927 that a concept means no more than the operations used to measure it (Chang, 2019), and school science often defines a quantity by how it is calculated. The rubric for "speed is distance travelled per unit time" lists two quantities and their relation, with no class and no feature.
  • Definitions by example. Pointing at cases is how many words are first learned. An example shows that the student has met the thing, not that they can say what it is.

What do define, state, describe and explain ask for in exams?

Each command word asks for a different kind of answer, and define is the narrowest: the meaning and nothing more. Here are two boards' own published lists, reported in our words.

Command word Cambridge International Education (n.d.) AQA (n.d.), GCSE sciences
Define A precise meaning The meaning of something, specified
State The answer put in clear terms Not listed. Give, name and write each want a short answer with no explanation
Describe The points of a topic, or its main features Facts, events or a process recalled accurately
Explain Reasons, how things relate, the why or the how, with evidence Something made clear, or the reasons it happens

Two things follow. "Define osmosis" and "Explain osmosis" need different rubrics, and a student who explains when asked to define writes for marks that are not there. The lists also differ, and Cambridge adds that each syllabus names its own subject's command words, so teach your own list and keep to it.

How do you write a rubric for a definition?

Write the definition yourself first, then turn each part of it into a line of the rubric.

  1. Write the model definition in one sentence, in words a good student would use.
  2. Split it into essential elements: the class, and each feature that keeps a neighbouring term out. Two to four is usual, at one point each.
  3. List the wordings you accept for every element. This is where a paraphrase is protected.
  4. Name what earns nothing on each line: usually the nearest term's feature, or the class's commonest misconception.
  5. Rule on circular answers. A definition that leans on the term, or on a word built from it, earns nothing for the element that word stands in for.
  6. Rule on examples. An example in place of a definition earns nothing. An example added to a sound definition neither earns nor loses.
  7. Say what does not count: spelling, length, and the form "X is when", which the Purdue Online Writing Lab (n.d.) advises against. Mark the form only if you taught it.
  8. Try it on five real answers, then give it to whoever marks. In EdProcto the define the term editor has a box for the model answer and a box for the rubric.

A worked example: two terms, two rubrics, eight answers marked

Each question carries 3 points, one for each element.

Science: "Define osmosis."

Model answer: osmosis is the net movement of water through a partially permeable membrane, from a dilute solution to a more concentrated one.

Element Accept Earns nothing
Water moves "water molecules diffuse" particles, solute, sugar or salt moving
From dilute to concentrated "from more water to less", "from high to low water potential" "from high to low concentration", nothing named
Through a partially permeable membrane "selectively permeable", "semi-permeable" "a membrane" alone
  • A. "Water passing across a selectively permeable membrane from the weaker solution to the stronger one." Every element, in none of the model's words.
  • B. "The movement of water from a dilute solution to a concentrated solution." The textbook's sentence, stopped before the membrane.
  • C. "The movement of particles from a high concentration to a low concentration." A fluent definition of diffusion.
  • D. "When the salt moves through a partially permeable membrane until both sides are equal." The membrane is there, and the wrong thing moves.

English: "Define the term metaphor."

Model answer: a metaphor is a figure of speech that describes one thing as if it were another, without "like" or "as".

Element Accept Earns nothing
A figure of speech "figurative language", "a literary device" "a word", "a sentence"
Compares two unlike things "describes one thing as another" describing with no second thing
Directly, with no "like" or "as" "says it is the other thing" "using like or as"
  • E. "Figurative language that says something is another thing it only resembles, with no like or as."
  • F. "The classroom was a zoo." A good example, and no definition.
  • G. "It is when a writer describes something metaphorically." Circular: the term defines itself.
  • H. "A figure of speech that compares two things using like or as." A simile.

H is the answer a trial run exists to find. It defines the wrong term and still collects two points, because a simile shares the metaphor's class and its comparison. The fix is a cap written into the rubric: without the distinguishing element, no more than 1.

Osmosis   A  1+1+1 = 3/3  right
          B  1+1+0 = 2/3  partly
          C  0+0+0 = 0/3  wrong
          D  0+0+1 = 1/3  partly
Metaphor  E  1+1+1 = 3/3  right
          F  0+0+0 = 0/3  wrong
          G  0+0+0 = 0/3  wrong
          H  1+1+0 = 2/3  capped at 1/3  partly

Each row is class, feature, feature, and the totals and labels come from running the points through EdProcto's marking code. The same code shows why marking cannot wait: until it is marked, a definition reads "to grade" and counts as zero. A student with seven points by rule and a perfect three-point definition stands at 70% at hand-in and 100% once marked.

How do you mark definitions consistently?

Judge each answer element by element, never by overall impression. An impression rewards the fluent sentence, and answer C is fluent.

Dunlosky et al. (2011) show how strong the pull is. College students who recalled the definitions of key terms and judged their own answers were overconfident, often crediting wrong answers. So were students who graded other students' answers with the correct definition beside them. What reduced it was checking an answer against each idea in the definition, one at a time, which is what a rubric of elements makes a marker do.

Three habits finish the job: take the definition through the whole class before another question, hide the names where you can, and write each new decision into the rubric, then recheck the earlier answers. The research on rubrics and reliability is in our guide to short answer questions.

Which variations test understanding better than "define"?

Three variations make the student use the definition, and two are marked partly or wholly by rule.

Variation Example In EdProcto
An example and a non-example "Write one metaphor, and one simile that is not a metaphor." A short answer, read against a rubric
Two near terms told apart "Sort these six processes into osmosis and diffusion." Sort into groups, marked by rule
The definition applied to a case "A raisin swells in water overnight. Is this osmosis? Give your reason." Choose and justify: the choice by rule, the reason by a reader

The research above favours these tasks. Our guide to choose and justify questions covers the third.

How do you teach students to write definitions?

Teach the form and give practice in it, because the form is learned at school. Snow (1990) scored definitions from 137 children aged seven to eleven for their form and their information. Schooling in the language was strongly related to how often the children gave formal definitions, and Snow concluded that performance depends most on chances to practise the form.

A frame is enough to start: "A [term] is a [class] that [feature]." Then give students two checks: does the sentence let in a neighbour, and does it shut out a member. Last, have them mark their own definitions idea by idea against the model, the method that cut overconfidence in Dunlosky et al. (2011).

How does EdProcto mark a definition question?

EdProcto is the best tool for definition questions when consistency is the worry, for one plain reason: the rubric you wrote sits beside every answer at the moment it is marked, whoever marks it.

Start in the quiz maker on the home page: paste the chapter, pick define the term, and Procto AI drafts the questions from what you pasted, each one yours to edit. In the editor you fill "Model answer (what a full answer contains)" and "Rubric (what earns the points)", and set the points, in halves if you wish. This shape has no word-limit box, so write "in one sentence" into the question.

At hand-in each definition waits as "to grade". The grading page shows the student's answer with your model answer and rubric under it. You type the points and a note for the student and save, or press "Ask Procto AI" there. It grades one answer at a time, only when asked, and the mark it gives is saved under Procto AI's name, yours to keep or change. Releasing a score, setting a penalty and rewriting a student's answer are things Procto AI never does.

To keep half-marked scores from students, set "Show the score" to "When released" and press "Release the scores" on the results page when the marking is done.

Grading by Procto AI comes with the Tutor plan, as do all 111 templates. The Free plan covers the core templates with marking by rule, and the full analysis arrives with Educator. See pricing.

When is a definition question the wrong tool?

A definition question is the wrong tool in four cases.

  • The concept has fuzzy edges. Ask about one case instead.
  • Use is the goal. Set one of the variations above, or see our guide to questions above recall.
  • The term is the answer. Give the definition and ask for the word, as a one word or matching question marked by rule.
  • Nobody is watching. A definition is the easiest answer to look up. EdProcto's integrity measures can log a student who leaves the tab, which is a record and not proof. A case from your own lesson is the stronger defence.

Quick questions

How many marks should a definition question carry?

One for each essential element, usually two to four: the class and each feature that sets the term apart. If you can find only one, ask for the term instead.

Should students define a term in their own words or the textbook's?

Accept both, and list the paraphrases in the rubric. If the exact wording matters, as in a legal definition, say so before the quiz.

Is an example an acceptable answer to "define"?

No, unless you taught the term by example and said so. To reward examples, ask for an example and a non-example in a separate question.

Can AI mark a definition question?

It can propose a mark against your rubric. In EdProcto you press "Ask Procto AI" on an answer to a define the term question, the mark is yours to change, and Procto AI never releases a score. Our guide to checking AI marks explains how far to trust it.

References

Define the term

An open definition, graded against a rubric.

In the builder now

See Define the term

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