Help
Hello,
Basically, I'm in my last year at sixth form, hoping to attend university in October, I'm doing A level History, the Russia Synoptic and Lenin and the Bolsheviks as my modules for this year. However, last year I studied, 2586 - Cold War, 2582 - Nazi Germany source paper and 2584 British History , and obtained
2582- D
2856 - D
2584 - B (two marks of an A)
So, i retook these exams again in January and managed to get slightly higher in the Nazi Germany one, the main problem was I read the question wrong and that was my downfall. I ended up with a C. However, the Cold War one I still only managed to get a D.
Now, i know the topic inside out, I know the dates, the facts what happened but my main problem is narrating, i seem to tell the story.
The topics are Korea, Cuba, and Vietnam, and I know why for example America intervened in all three situations, but in order to say why they intervene I seem to say they did this and this because of this etc. I really need some help in trying to be analytical and some advice on how to sort this out. My Russian modules are going okay touch wood, and I'm coming out with B/A's My Other two A levels I have A's in, and predicted A's for A2. The problem being I need AAA for university, and I am putting the work in, I'm doing lots of essays, but it's seems to still be rather narrative in nature.
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Cold War Edexcel 2286 Help needed ....
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#2
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Posted 10 May 2009 - 09:06 AM
Thank you for this post, because it illustrates a very common problem of students at GCSE and A-level - the tendency to tell the story rather than answer the question.
Sometimes the answers are 'in there somwhere', but the student merely alludes to the points 'as they go along' - and thus the points are insufficiently emphasised or explained.
And lots of what is written, of course, is irrelevant, because it appears simple as 'padding' between the sparsely-scattered 'points' - this is often made worse by the fact that such students usually find it impossible not to include 'interesting' facts as well, simply because they are so wonderfully interesting .. not because thy have any relevance to the question whatsoever!
How do I know all this - because I used to be like that at A-level too!
Of course, you know this about yourself - what you want to know is how not to do this.
The answer is at the PLANNING stage of your essay.
You need to move from a NARRATIVE struture organised chronologically, to an ANALYTICAL structure orgainsed point-by-point.
Every essay needs a different structure, but the essence is this: you sit down and look at the question. You think of all the information you know about the topic, and then you ask yourself: 'Now what POINTS am I going to make in asnwer'.
To take the simplest example, in a causation essay, 'What were the causes of the Civil War', you think through all the narrative story of the years preceding the outbreak of fighting, and you identify the KEY ISSUES which provoked the conflict.
You then write this down in a list:
1
2
3
4
etc.
This then becomes your essay plan.
Each point becomes a paragraph(/section) of your essay.
Then what you do is PEE.
You start by stating the point clearly up front, linking it is some way to the previous point; e.g. in an essay where the previous paragraph dealt with taxation as a cause of conflict, the next paragraph might start: 'Of course, disagreements over taxation was directly reponsible for the third cause of civil war - the fierce confrontation over who ought to control the armed forces...'.
Then you put your explanation and your evidence - but note, the most important part of this is the explanation (in our example, explaining HOW this particular point led to a civil war). THAT is where most of your marks lie.
And you only use those facts which directly illustrate and prove the points you are making in your explanation.
FACTS have therefore an entirely different role in an analytical essay.
They do not drive the essay - you are not giving the facts.
Rather, they lie in a bog heap beside you as you write, and you have a rummage through them from time to time, as you make assertions in your explanation, and find the 'bon mot' which proves what you are claiming and you use that and that alone.
When you start doing this, it is good to ask yourself, before you use ANY fact, whether you could meaningfully introduce it with the phrase: 'this is illustrated by...' If you can't, then you simply omit that fact.
Thus most of your 'story' still lies on the cutting room floor after you have finished the essay, which is about explanation, not narrative.
You have to be fierce with yourself.
STAY PRECISELY, WHOLLY RELEVANT TO THE QUESTION at all times.
But how do you show the examiner how much you know - that you know lots of facts.
Answer: you don't. He merely gets the impression of your knowledge from the sophistication and the relevance of the facts you use.
He can tell the difference between the candidate who is struggling to force the few facts he knows to fit the case, and the candidate who is clearly plucking perfect examples from a vast store of factual knowledge.
One final thing, when you have graduated, and left university, and you write your ground-breaking book on the causes of the civil war, you will have to unlearn all these lessons, and you will return to a narrative-with-points-made-as-you-go-along format, because (as you will have noticed), historians don't write in this way when they write their books.
It is a skill you need purely and simply to pass your academic exams.
Best of luck as you try to appropriate it.
Sometimes the answers are 'in there somwhere', but the student merely alludes to the points 'as they go along' - and thus the points are insufficiently emphasised or explained.
And lots of what is written, of course, is irrelevant, because it appears simple as 'padding' between the sparsely-scattered 'points' - this is often made worse by the fact that such students usually find it impossible not to include 'interesting' facts as well, simply because they are so wonderfully interesting .. not because thy have any relevance to the question whatsoever!
How do I know all this - because I used to be like that at A-level too!
Of course, you know this about yourself - what you want to know is how not to do this.
The answer is at the PLANNING stage of your essay.
You need to move from a NARRATIVE struture organised chronologically, to an ANALYTICAL structure orgainsed point-by-point.
Every essay needs a different structure, but the essence is this: you sit down and look at the question. You think of all the information you know about the topic, and then you ask yourself: 'Now what POINTS am I going to make in asnwer'.
To take the simplest example, in a causation essay, 'What were the causes of the Civil War', you think through all the narrative story of the years preceding the outbreak of fighting, and you identify the KEY ISSUES which provoked the conflict.
You then write this down in a list:
1
2
3
4
etc.
This then becomes your essay plan.
Each point becomes a paragraph(/section) of your essay.
Then what you do is PEE.
You start by stating the point clearly up front, linking it is some way to the previous point; e.g. in an essay where the previous paragraph dealt with taxation as a cause of conflict, the next paragraph might start: 'Of course, disagreements over taxation was directly reponsible for the third cause of civil war - the fierce confrontation over who ought to control the armed forces...'.
Then you put your explanation and your evidence - but note, the most important part of this is the explanation (in our example, explaining HOW this particular point led to a civil war). THAT is where most of your marks lie.
And you only use those facts which directly illustrate and prove the points you are making in your explanation.
FACTS have therefore an entirely different role in an analytical essay.
They do not drive the essay - you are not giving the facts.
Rather, they lie in a bog heap beside you as you write, and you have a rummage through them from time to time, as you make assertions in your explanation, and find the 'bon mot' which proves what you are claiming and you use that and that alone.
When you start doing this, it is good to ask yourself, before you use ANY fact, whether you could meaningfully introduce it with the phrase: 'this is illustrated by...' If you can't, then you simply omit that fact.
Thus most of your 'story' still lies on the cutting room floor after you have finished the essay, which is about explanation, not narrative.
You have to be fierce with yourself.
STAY PRECISELY, WHOLLY RELEVANT TO THE QUESTION at all times.
But how do you show the examiner how much you know - that you know lots of facts.
Answer: you don't. He merely gets the impression of your knowledge from the sophistication and the relevance of the facts you use.
He can tell the difference between the candidate who is struggling to force the few facts he knows to fit the case, and the candidate who is clearly plucking perfect examples from a vast store of factual knowledge.
One final thing, when you have graduated, and left university, and you write your ground-breaking book on the causes of the civil war, you will have to unlearn all these lessons, and you will return to a narrative-with-points-made-as-you-go-along format, because (as you will have noticed), historians don't write in this way when they write their books.
It is a skill you need purely and simply to pass your academic exams.
Best of luck as you try to appropriate it.
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