1. Make the question obscenely specific, so that there is little to no chance students have studied the material or been taught it in class.

2. Try to make the background info to the question really long so that students run out of time to answer. Also, it must be completely irrelevant.

3. Include the names Sally, Dave or Rangi.

4. If you decide to include a picture, it must be of no use. Try to make it look like it was taken with a Nokia brick phone or inserted from the 2007 Microsoft Word clipart library.

5. Make sure that only an English literature postgraduate can understand your questions. Where possible, add some Latin.

6. Always, always use ‘describe’, ‘explain’ and ‘discuss’ in weird contexts to make it sound like you know what you’re doing. We all know you don’t and nobody can tell the difference between those terms anyway.