[mungo]

Hello,

I really need help and advice on revising for Edexcel History Units 4 and 6. I'm doing 'The quest for greatness: Fascist Italy' for Unit 4 and 'Hitler and the Nazi State' for Unit 6. I've been looking for help on these subjects online and can't seem to find anything specific to the Units.

In particular I want to know if there are any good textbooks to help me study for these Units and any other outside reading that would be recommended.

More than anything I really want a clear structure or plan that I should follow in order to tackle these Units and revise effectively, everything seems to be so haphazard at the moment.

ANY help would be appreciated GREATLY!
My exams are really close and I'm really worried

[Miss Buxton]

Access to History series is good

Italy: Liberalism and Fascism, 1870-1945 (Access to History)
by Mark Robson (Hodder and Murray publishers)

Germany: The Third Reich, 1933-45 (Access to History)
by Geoff Layton (Hodder and Murray publishers)

[Mr Moorhouse]

For the Nazi State you might find this online guide to the unit pretty helpful. It includes references to books and websites.

[mungo]

Thanks a lot

I have 'Italy: The Rise of Fascism 1915-45' Access to History book.
I've also ordered the Heinemann Advanced History 'Hitler and the Nazi State' book and 'Mussolini and Fascism' by Patricia Knight.

I also wondered if there are any tips or helpful ways in learning these units and effective ways to structure the essays, they seem really different to all the other units I have studied and I can't seem to get above a C on my essays. Unit 6 is a real pain because the paper is source based. Although I didn't have a problem with Unit 1 which was also source based.

THANKS again to your help!

[MrJohnDClare]

Thanks for saying thanks!

As for structurng your essays, there is a lot of general stuff on the forum, but your best bet would be to:
1. ask for some 1-2-1 time with your teacher.
2. come onto the forum when you get your next essay and discuss it here.

[mungo]

Most of my Unit 4 essays have the same feedback from my teacher:

Knowledge = Great
Evaluation = Needs work

I've asked my teacher how I should improve my evaluation and he said that I need to work on my analysis of the knowledge I put in. I asked him if he could spend some time showing me how I should go about doing this and if he could be slightly more specific. The thing is he keeps putting it off every week and asking me to come to him at times in which I'm unavailable. He works in two schools and only teaches Unit 4 so I don't get to see him often.

For Unit 6 I still haven't received any marked essays back.

So overall any tips on analysis, evaluation etc. would be great.

I also want to ask how important is it to refer to intentionalist/structuralist debate in Unit 6, my teacher puts a LOT of stress on it.

THANKS AGAIN!

[MrJohnDClare]

mungo, on May 24 2009, 05:35 PM, said:

Most of my Unit 4 essays have the same feedback from my teacher:

Knowledge = Great
Evaluation = Needs work

I've asked my teacher how I should improve my evaluation and he said that I need to work on my analysis of the knowledge I put in. I asked him if he could spend some time showing me how I should go about doing this and if he could be slightly more specific. The thing is he keeps putting it off every week and asking me to come to him at times in which I'm unavailable. He works in two schools and only teaches Unit 4 so I don't get to see him often.

For Unit 6 I still haven't received any marked essays back.

So overall any tips on analysis, evaluation etc. would be great.

Te question is a bit general to be able to say anything useful.
Read this thread and this thread and see if they help at all.
Another 'way in' to this is to track down specific examples of question markschemes on the Board website and see why the exmainer awarded marks for what.

Keep trying to pin down your teacher, however.

Quote

I also want to ask how important is it to refer to intentionalist/structuralist debate in Unit 6, my teacher puts a LOT of stress on it.

Vital, especially as part of a thesis-antithesis-synthesis essay.