NZ Scholarship Religious Studies common mistakes
NZ Scholarship Religious Studies · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Writing a descriptive summary of what a tradition or thinker teaches instead of building an argument that answers the scholarship question directly.
Scholarship questions are framed as propositions or debates ('to what extent...', 'critically evaluate...'). Candidates trained on achievement-standard 'explain' questions default to exposition and never commit to a thesis, so the assessor sees knowledge but no scholarly thinking.
What to do instead
Before writing, convert the question into a one-sentence contention and write it at the top of your plan. Test every paragraph against it: if the paragraph only reports content, add an explicit move ('This supports/undercuts my contention because...'). Open the essay with that contention, not with definitions.
Presenting a single tradition's or scholar's position as self-evidently correct, with no engagement of an opposing view or counter-argument.
Candidates often know one tradition or one academic voice deeply and treat it as the frame rather than an object of analysis. The result reads as confessional or partisan rather than scholarly, which caps the grade in the 'critical thinking' dimension.
What to do instead
For each major claim, deliberately supply the strongest internal or external objection and answer it. Use a two-column plan (claim / strongest objection) and give at least one paragraph to a serious rival reading before rebutting or conceding.
Naming scholars, theories or sacred texts without explaining what the idea actually does in the argument, or misattributing a concept to the wrong thinker.
Name-dropping feels like it earns 'depth', and under time pressure candidates recall a label (e.g. 'Otto's numinous', 'theodicy') without the mechanism. Assessors reward accurate, functional use of scholarship, and misattribution signals shallow reading.
What to do instead
After every scholar's name, write one clause stating the specific claim and one clause stating why it matters to your contention. Keep a revision sheet pairing each thinker with a one-line definition, a key text, and the standard criticism, and only cite what you can explain in that form.
Treating 'religion' as a single undifferentiated category, ignoring that the question concerns a specific tradition, period, or community.
Broad generalisations ('religion teaches that...', 'believers hold...') are easier to write and survive in candidates' notes from introductory material, but they flatten the internal diversity the exam is designed to test.
What to do instead
Qualify every general claim with a tradition, school, era or community (e.g. 'Theravada commentarial tradition', 'post-Holocaust Jewish theology'). Where relevant, show internal diversity by citing two voices within the same tradition that disagree.
Answering an 'evaluate' or 'to what extent' question with a balanced list of pros and cons that never reaches a judgement.
Candidates are taught to 'show both sides' and mistake balance for analysis. The command word requires a weighted conclusion; a fence-sitting ending reads as indecision rather than scholarly caution.
What to do instead
Decide a position in the planning stage and allocate weight explicitly ('this objection is serious but ultimately fails because...'). End with a conclusion that states the degree of agreement and the condition under which you would revise it.
Using sacred texts or scriptural quotations as proof-texts that settle a question, without attention to genre, context, translation or interpretive tradition.
Candidates often quote a verse as if it transparently states doctrine, which ignores that the exam rewards understanding of hermeneutics and that the same text is read differently across communities.
What to do instead
When citing a text, state its genre and context, name at least one interpretive tradition's reading, and show how a different reader could take it otherwise. Treat scripture as evidence of a community's reasoning, not as a trump card.
Discussing ethical or theological positions in the abstract with no concrete case, practice or lived example to anchor them.
Abstract argument is quicker to produce and feels sophisticated, but without a case the analysis cannot be tested and the essay reads as generic. Scholarship rewards showing how a principle bites in a real situation.
What to do instead
Attach at least one specific case, ritual, text or contemporary controversy to each major theoretical claim, and draw out what the case reveals that the abstract principle conceals. One well-analysed case beats five mentioned in passing.
Running out of time or space because the essay spends its opening third on definitions and background before reaching the actual argument.
Candidates reproduce the introduction style expected in internal assessments, where context earns credit. In a timed scholarship essay this front-loading starves the analysis, and the assessor sees the argument only in outline.
What to do instead
Cap background at two or three sentences, folding definitions into the argument as they become necessary. Practise timed plans (five minutes) and full essays, budgeting roughly 10-15% of words for introduction and conclusion combined.
Ignoring the specific wording of the question, so an essay on 'religious experience as evidence for God' drifts into a general essay on religious experience.
Under pressure, candidates write the essay they have rehearsed rather than the one asked, and key qualifiers ('as evidence', 'in the modern period', 'compared with') are skimmed. Assessors penalise relevance directly.
What to do instead
Underline every qualifier in the question and write them into your contention sentence. After drafting, re-read the question and annotate each paragraph with which part of the question it answers; cut or rewrite paragraphs that answer nothing.
Using technical vocabulary (e.g. 'ontology', 'eschatology', 'hermeneutic', 'theodicy') as decoration without demonstrating that the underlying concept is understood and applied correctly.
Candidates pick up terms from secondary summaries and deploy them to signal sophistication, but imprecise use produces category errors that a specialist assessor notices immediately and which undermine otherwise sound argument.
What to do instead
For each technical term, apply it to a concrete example in the same sentence and check it against a reliable source definition. If you cannot give a one-line definition and an example, replace the term with plain language and describe the idea instead.