Aw, you mentioned me in your article. I'm really touched.

I love so much to read the thoughts of snobbish writers?/'journalists?/anybody willing to share their opinios on matters they know very very little about.

I took the exam in question and I too had never come across the phrase 'despotic tyranny'. Fortunately the phrase came from a source which presented a completely intentionalist viewpoint allowing students to infer the meaning of despotic tyranny, as I did. The paper was indeed manageable, however regardless I oppose the dribble written above.

It remains:
1. The wording was unneccersarry, in the previous ten years of this module the paper had not been presented in any way, shape or form in such a diluted fashion.
2. Your quotes go no way to representing the views of all A-level students.
3. You present a pathetic straw man arguement, whereby you try to suggest the confusion of some students must subsequently mean the ignorance of all UK students, lets apply your methodology; some Americans have an IQ of less than 50, your American thus you must have an IQ of less than 50. (This may not be too far from the truth, excuse me, bad example.)

The argument that the grade hinged on that word seems false to me.

You could argue throughout the essay exactly what kind of tyranny you thought he had, and neglect the word completely. It is unlikely the examiner would feel like being harsh on you just because you may have not been slick enough in your essay writing skills to fool him or her into you not knowing quite exactly what the word meant, using strategic neutral insertions of the word in your discussion.

Once used this technique in a history GCSE paper where there was a question amongst a multitude asking about a particular reformist of dealing with criminals. Knew nothing about the person, just wrote what I knew about reformation. This is an even more extreme example.

However, think I once gained advantage in a test by knowing what the word 'epitaph' meant. Admittedly, there was a selection of questions to choose from rather than just one. But that was a relatively easier question to answer.

Another point to take is that noone seems to take historians seriously unless they use Them Big Words.

...then you should probably refrain from using it...

...as demonstrated quite clearly in the last response posted. It's ironic, really, that we are the most technologically advanced we've ever been in history and yet, we cannot spell even simple helping verbs correctly. If anything, Kristy is merely, as it appears, trying to suppliment her vocabulary. I would read dictionaries and thesauruses for the simple fact that there are more misused words in the english language now than ever. It makes me a little sad for painfully obvious reasons to see these are the folks that will inheret the earth...regardless if they like it or not. And people want to think highly of themselves as it is a very easy way of hiding a broken ego.

But these people are in college...should they not already know what a despotic tyrrany is? How do you not know what a despot is? Or a tyrrany? How? This alone is sufficent proof that one can stupidly spend 50k to augment his learning and learn nothing but how to fit in with his fellow retards...

People don't half get their knickers in a twist over use of words. Surely they can't infer from the context what is meant by "despotic tyrant"?

Good to see my old Sixth Form College has some sound representation though!

This would be funny if it wasn't so scary. If those were my kids I'd give them a good beating...and a dictionary.