Examiner’s General Advice

Students in this A2 unit are expected to demonstrate three particular skills:

• the ability to select, use and communicate accurate knowledge and understanding of the topic.
• when giving an historical explanation, the ability to make a substantiated judgement, that is, a judgement that goes beyond mere assertion and is backed up by appropriate evidence.
• the ability to interpret, evaluate and use a range of source material, both primary and secondary, and also explain and evaluate interpretations of the topics studied.

These skills are also assessment objectives. All questions will aim to test more than one of these objectives, and in an examination answer will be marked accordingly. On any given examination paper, there will be a planned balance of the various skills across the questions to ensure that all are covered. However, individual questions or part questions will focus on certain skills, not necessarily all of them at once. One of the ways of writing an effective answer is therefore to learn to recognise the particular skill that is the focal point of a particular question. However, it is also important to remember that accurate knowledge and understanding are key elements in any A2 answer. Generalised statements showing, for example, a student’s awareness that one piece of evidence is less objective and more biased than another will not earn much credit. There must also be a clear indication of some background knowledge and understanding of the topic in addition to the ability to make comparisons and contrasts between the sources.

Unit 3 (options A-N) contain three essay questions, and candidates have to answer two of the three questions. One of the three questions will be a ‘breadth’ question, covering most or all of the chronological period.