This paper examines the way in which a cohort of first year Chemistry students interpreted commonly used assessment task verbs and compared these responses with their lecturers' usage of these terms. The results of the research suggest that the gap between the understandings held by students new to university, and those held by lecturers, is of sufficient a nature to indicate that changes in practice are needed to contribute to fair assessment practices. The paper argues that understanding assessment as a Discourse , which exists alongside (but also independent of) general and discipline-specific academic Discourse, will help explain the substantial gap between student understandings and lecturer usage of assessment terms. Students must become members of this Discourse community in order to gain mastery within it. This requires deliberate exposure to the language, values and practices of academic assessment through examples used in every-day teaching practice and through scaffolded formative assessment.