Class 12th

How to write catchy answers in your social science board exam

Now that boards are coming, some of you may be thinking of how to write catchy answers in your social science board exam and in other board exams

Pushpender Yadav

Feb 1, 2023 — 5 min read

I have seen students struggling to get one or half marks in their answers. If it’s a five-mark question, they get four or four and a half. This half mark makes a difference in the total marks obtained.

Answer writing is a skill which is very important for scoring well in social science exams. The most challenging aspect of writing a social science answer script is the way of writing the answers. Often, students write too much or too little on their exam sheets. Here in this article, we will explore the top five tips to help you write better answers in your exam.

Be thorough with the content for your board exam answers

You must be thorough with the material you have at hand, which means that you should be well aware of what and all is there in one topic and what sort of content you should be writing in your answers. Often you might get an information overdose that would result in either registering too much or not writing enough.

Students struggle with knowing the limits, which makes them confused. If you write a lot, you may lose time for your other answers. It is essential to realize the demand of the question before you proceed to attempt it. It is not only about analyzing; it is about making sure you set limits on the question you are answering. The examiner wants to the point and crisp answers; making up stories would ensure that you end up losing marks instead of gaining anything.

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If you know your content, you should be able to understand the question correctly and write how much is required.

Distribution of your answers in board exams

Once you are thorough with the content and know how much you want to write, it is essential that you 'distribute’ the content and not simply write it down. Break your answer into small chunks and present it.

Presentation plays a vital role, but we will discuss it in upcoming points.

Presenting your answers in points is an essential technique you should follow while writing your answers.

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If you know your content, you should be able to understand the question properly and write how much is required.

When you divide your answers into points and then explain them, the information you gathered becomes less difficult to remember, and you can then focus on the presentation and neatness part of the paper.

Since a social science paper is more subjective, neatness and distribution must be maintained throughout your answer sheet. It should not be mismatched. If it happens to be mismatched, it will reduce the perfect impression into meagre nothing.

Write according to the question Marking.

Another important aspect related to distribution is "marks". You have to write answers suitable for the marks allotted to a particular question.

This does not mean that you should not write all the points or only write half. Often students have this habit of writing fewer points for the questions with fewer marks.

So, suppose a question is asked for two marks; students would write only two points and leave the rest. If you do this, then your answer will remain incomplete. Do not make such kind of mistake. Do not make such kind of mistake.

The trick is to write the complete answer within fewer words. You can’t go on writing an essay with 250 words for a two-mark question, but the limit should be maintained at 40-50 words or so.

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Ensure you always write complete answers and modify the word limit according to the marks allotted to a question.

You should work on answer-writing Skills

As I mentioned, answer writing is a skill one must master. While writing an answer for a social science paper, it is important to keep the following things in mind-

Always substantiate your answer with examples. This is one of the most important tricks to score better in social science exams. Suppose you are writing an answer to a political science question. Then try to give recent examples. So, if you are writing about the President of India, you can mention that the Smt. Draupadi Murmu became the President of India recently. If you substantiate your answers, it gives the examiner the impression that you know the content very well.
Always make diagrams whenever possible. Try to add a bit of creativity and expression to your answers. Try to make your long explanations more visual. This will help your answer look beautiful and neat and reduce your effort to write everything down. You can make flow charts of long topics or shows similarities and differences through a table. You can also show what you are trying to explain. Suppose you mention sugarcane as a type of crop, then draw a rough diagram of sugarcane beside your answer.

Similarly, practice making rough freehand India maps that you can use to mark and locate certain cities or features. So, suppose you are writing about the Grand trunk road; then you can actually show the route on the rough map that you have made.

Make sure to underline the important keywords in your answers. While writing your answers for board exams this year, there may be certain terms or words that are really important to your answer. Make sure you underline them whenever possible.

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Don’t use a different colour pen like black or red but use a pencil to do all the underline work.

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Do not overwrite or make a lot of cuts if you write something wrong. Students often have this habit of overwriting and making a lot of cuts on the words that they wrote wrong. Instead of doing this, just make a cut of a single line with a pencil and then continue writing again. This will make sure that your answer sheet looks neat and tidy.

Do not use different coloured pens. Keep it consistent with a blue pen and use a pencil for underlining keywords and cutting wrong or misspelt words. Remember, it is a social science paper, and our goal is to write it neatly and not make it colourful.

Be Consistent with your answers

In order to achieve all the goals, you have to be consistent in writing your answers in a particular way. Achieving the skill of writing proper and neat answers can be mastered only with constant practice.

Sometimes students know all the answers and study well too, but in the end, they do not secure more marks because the way they present their answers is not up to the mark.

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Hence proper practice and consistency in writing the answers are important to score better in your social science exams.

Referring

Refer to previous year's papers for practising your answer writing skills. You can also refer to the CBSE official website for sample question papers so that you know the pattern of the question paper and the allocation of marks. Once you are thorough with the paper pattern, then you can move on to start solving the paper. This will also help you organize your time and decide on which questions to attempt first in your answer sheets.

You can set timers while you solve the papers and can also give your practice sheets to your teachers for evaluation. They will also help you improve your answer writing skills, which will give you a better idea about how to write answers properly in a neat and presentable way.

Conclusion:

It is important for the students to know how one is supposed to write answers for social science in the board exams. Even when students know the content inside and out, they fail to score better because they struggle with writing answers correctly in the answer scripts.

These above tips will help them score better by writing presentable and neat answers.

Also read:

Best sample papers for CBSE class 12 art boards exams.

Best self-development books with life-changing advice.

Why reading is important for social science students.

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