CIPD Command Verbs
August 13, 2026 2026-08-13 10:06CIPD Command Verbs
CIPD Level 7 — L&D Specialist Unit
CIPD Command Verbs Explained: What ‘Analyse’, ‘Evaluate’ and ‘Assess’ Actually Want From You
A full breakdown of every CIPD command verb, with the depth and structure each one demands at Level 3, 5 and 7.
If you’ve ever stared at an Assessment Criterion and thought “I don’t know what this is actually asking me to do” — you’re not alone, and it’s rarely about the subject knowledge. It’s about the command verb.
CIPD assessment briefs are built around a small set of instructional verbs — describe, explain, analyse, evaluate, assess, discuss, compare, critically evaluate — and each one signals a different depth, structure and type of thinking. Markers aren’t just checking whether your content is correct. They’re checking whether you’ve responded to the verb. Write a description where the AC asked for an evaluation, and you can produce accurate, well-researched content that still doesn’t hit the mark — because it’s answering the wrong question.
This guide breaks down every command verb you’ll meet across Level 3, 5 and 7 CIPD units, what each one is really asking for, and how to check your own draft against it before you submit.
Why command verbs decide your mark before your content does
Every CIPD Assessment Criterion is built from two parts: a command verb and a subject. “Explain the difference between an employee and a worker” has the verb explain and the subject employment status. The subject tells you what to write about. The verb tells you how deep to go and what shape the answer needs to take.
Markers use the command verb as a filter. If an AC says evaluate and your response only describes, the marker isn’t being pedantic by marking it down — the criterion literally hasn’t been met, regardless of how much you know about the topic. This is one of the most common ways confident, knowledgeable learners lose marks: they know the subject well but answer at the wrong cognitive level.
Command verbs roughly sit on a ladder of depth. Lower-order verbs ask you to show you understand something. Higher-order verbs ask you to weigh it up, judge it, or apply it to a specific situation. Knowing where a verb sits on that ladder tells you how much structure your paragraph needs.
The Command Verb Ladder: Lower to Higher Order
Descriptive verbs — show you know what something is
Identify
Name or point out something specific, usually with minimal explanation. Often used for lists: “Identify three sources of employment law.” A correctly identified item with a one-line justification is usually sufficient — don’t over-write these.
List / Outline
Similar to identify, but outline typically wants a brief overview of each point rather than just a name. Think of outline as “identify, plus one sentence of what it means.”
Describe
Give a factual, detailed account of something as it is. Describe wants accuracy and completeness, not judgement. If you catch yourself writing “this is effective because…” in a describe AC, you’ve drifted into evaluation territory the AC didn’t ask for — which isn’t wrong exactly, but it’s not what’s being marked, and the word count would be better spent elsewhere.
Explanatory Verbs — Show you understand why or how
Explain
Give reasons, causes, or the mechanics of how something works. Explain is the most common verb learners under-serve. A weak explain answer states a fact; a strong one shows the reasoning chain behind it — “X leads to Y because…”. Examiners are looking for the “because,” not just the “what.”
Illustrate
Explain using a specific example or scenario to demonstrate the point. This is where a well-built example does real work — it has to actually show the mechanism you’re describing, not just decorate the paragraph.
Differentiate / Distinguish
Explain how two or more things differ, ideally addressing several points of contrast rather than one. A table-then-prose structure works well here: identify the axes of comparison, then explain what the difference means in practice.
Analytical Verbs — show you can break something down
Analyse
Break a topic into its component parts and examine how they relate to one another. Analyse is not the same as describe-plus-more-detail. It specifically wants you to show relationships, patterns, causes and effects between parts of a system. A useful test: if you removed all the connecting words (“because,” “which leads to,” “this affects,” “as a result”) from your paragraph and it would still make sense as a list of facts, you haven’t analysed — you’ve described at length.
Examine
Very close to analyse; look closely at the different aspects of a topic. Some briefs use it interchangeably with analyse, but treat it as slightly more exploratory — laying out considerations rather than necessarily reaching a firm conclusion.
Compare / Contrast
Analyse the similarities (compare) and/or differences (contrast) between two or more things, with reasoning for why those similarities or differences matter. The trap here is writing two separate descriptions side by side rather than genuinely relating them to each other. A strong compare paragraph moves between the two subjects within the same sentence, not just within the same section.
Evaluative verbs — show you can judge
Assess
Weigh up the strengths, weaknesses, extent or effectiveness of something, working towards a reasoned judgement. Assess wants you to consider more than one angle before landing somewhere — even if your conclusion is “it depends, and here’s what it depends on.”
Evaluate
Very close to assess, but typically expects a clearer, more decisive judgement of value, worth, or effectiveness, usually supported by criteria you’ve made explicit (effectiveness against what — cost, culture, legal risk, employee experience?). Evaluate answers that never actually state a judgement — that just present “on one hand… on the other hand” and stop — are a common way to lose marks even with strong content either side.
Critically evaluate / Critically analyse / Critically assess
The “critically” prefix is not decoration. It specifically asks you to interrogate the strength of the evidence, theory, or argument itself — its limitations, the context it does and doesn’t apply to, counter-arguments, and where it might fail. This is where citing a model isn’t enough on its own — you need to say something about where that model is contested, limited, or context-dependent. Critically evaluate is the verb most associated with Level 7, though it does appear at Level 5.
Justify
Give reasons that defend a decision, position, or recommendation, anticipating and addressing the obvious counter-argument. A justify answer that doesn’t acknowledge at least one reasonable objection tends to read as one-sided rather than justified.
Recommend
State a course of action and back it with reasoning, usually grounded in the specific scenario given. Recommend answers score poorly when the recommendation is generic (“communicate clearly,” “provide training”) rather than tied to the particular situation in the brief.
Review
Look back over something (a policy, a process, a piece of practice) and assess its current effectiveness, often with an eye to what should change. Review sits close to evaluate but usually implies an existing thing being reappraised, rather than a general topic being weighed up in the abstract.
Reflect / Reflect on
Specific to reflective ACs. Asks you to consider your own experience, learning, or practice — what happened, what you learned, how it will change what you do. This is the one verb category that genuinely can’t be “answered” generically, because the content has to be about you. It’s also the verb most vulnerable to being written thinly — a strong reflective response needs an honest account of what didn’t go well, not just a highlight reel.
Where learners lose marks even when they know the content
The pattern shows up constantly in mock marking: a learner has done the reading, understands the theory, and still comes back under grade because the response was pitched at the wrong depth for the verb. A few recurring versions of this:
- Describe-dressed-as-analyse — long, accurate, well-organised content that never actually connects cause to effect
- Evaluate without a verdict — both sides of an argument laid out competently, but no judgement reached, so the AC’s core requirement (a reasoned judgement) is technically unmet
- Critically evaluate without the “critically” — a model applied correctly and explained well, but never interrogated for its limits or its fit to context
- Justify without the objection — a recommendation defended only from one angle, with no acknowledgement of the obvious counter-case a marker would expect addressed
None of these are knowledge gaps. They’re structural mismatches between what was written and what the verb asked for — which is exactly the kind of thing worth catching before submission rather than after the grade comes back.
This is the gap our Evidence Bank review and mock marking service is built around: not telling you what to write, but checking whether what you’ve already written actually answers the verb it’s sitting under, AC by AC, before you submit. If you’ve already had a referral and you’re not sure whether it was a content issue or a depth-of-response issue, Refer Rescue is the faster route back in — it starts with exactly this kind of diagnostic.
A quick Self-Check before you Submit
For every AC in your draft, try this:
- Circle the command verb.
Not the subject — the verb.
- Name its category
Descriptive, explanatory, analytical, or evaluative.
- Check your paragraph against that category’s test
- Descriptive → is it accurate and complete, without unnecessary judgement?
- Explanatory → does it show reasoning (“because,” “which means”), not just facts?
- Analytical → does it show relationships between parts, or just list parts?
- Evaluative → does it reach an actual, stated judgement, supported by more than one angle?
- If the verb says “critically”
Have you said anything about the limits, context-dependence, or counter-view of the theory or argument, not just applied it?
If you can’t answer yes to your category’s question, that’s usually the fastest single edit you can make to lift a mark — often faster than adding more content.
Command Verbs aren’t a Vocabulary Problem — they’re a Planning Problem
The reason command verbs trip people up isn’t that the words are obscure. It’s that the temptation, especially under time pressure, is to start writing everything you know about the subject before you’ve locked in what the verb demands you do with it. Reading the verb first, planning the shape of the paragraph around it second, and only then writing, is a small reordering that tends to fix most of the issues above before they happen.
If you want a structured way to plan against the verb before you draft — rather than catching the mismatch after — that’s exactly what our AC-by-AC guidance modules walk you through inside each unit course, alongside the self-marking checks that let you test your own draft against the verb before it ever reaches an assessor.
