How to get an A in History?

extremebogman

Title says it all. History is my favourite subject. I'm totally hooked on the subject. The facts come easily to me and I hope to study it further next year.

I'm a bit worried though. Our teacher isn't always 'on the ball'. To put it simply, I'm worried about getting a B when I'm capable of A1/A2 standard.

How can I achieve an A? Do I rote learn essays? Can I rely on predictions? What do examiners look for in an A standard essay?

I can learn off the facts as well as I like, but I realise if I can't produce a good essay within the time constraints it won't work out as well as it could.

spurious

Answer the question you are asked. This is where most people lose their marks.

Have a read of recent Chief Examiner reports (available on examinations.ie with the old papers) and see what they say. Quite an eye-opener.

extremebogman

Thanks spurious. I read the 2006 report, seems focus on the question is where a lot of people fall down. Couldn't open 2011 report though, it just redirects to the same page.

Soriel

Yeah they've delayed publishing last years report until March. Was hoping to have a look before the mocks!

RMD

Learn facts instead of essays. Get various essay titles and make 2-3 bullet points for each paragraph you'd include. Keep doing this. Rote learning entire essays isn't great as there's a significant chance you wont receive the same essay title and then you'll have to remember paragraphs from various essays learned rather than short concise bullet points which you can construct into a flowing coherent essays.

Don't go with predictions, use them as a guideline but never rely on them. I made that mistake, 1 out of the 3 "essential" predictions I learnt came up and the other 2 didn't feature in any shape or form.

HML

Have lots of small paragraphs, you'll get more marks if you have smaller ones that get say, 5 marks, rather then long ones that will only ever get perhaps 10! Aim for maybe 10 small paragraphs.

LC_sucks

Analysing is the most important part of the essays, have the first part of each paragraph with information, and then analyse for the rest of the paragraph, eg. the impact/effect of what you've just said. The minmum is five paragraphs, but you're obviously not going to get 12 in each (well I don't anyway!) so try for an intro, the 5 paragraphs and then a conclusion. The conclusion is the most important part, it will be the corrector's last impression of you so never just summarise all the info you've already said - always try and bring something new to the conclusion, maybe looking at the effects of what you've just said for the future or try and include a relevant quote. same with the intro, give a bit of background, don't just introduce your points. The intro is the only place you'll get marks for info outside of the date parameters. And always use the words of the question in your essay, and as well link our paragraphs to make the whole essay more coherent and improve your OE!

GoldRush4821

Thought I was going to get an A when I came out of my exam, ended up with a B1. This was last year and given how bad some people performed relative to the work they put in, I suppose it could have been worse. Making your answer relevant is of course important. I think where I fell down was an over use of facts and not enough of my own input. This was never something our teacher particularly drilled into us but is definitely something that the examiners look for. They don't want you listing off reams of facts about a topic, they'd rather get 2 facts in a paragraph, and your own personal take on the relevance of these facts to the wider context of your study.

Wider context is key. Don't focus too much on the minutia of a topic. An example : I don't know if you're doing the American Civil Rights Movement or anything like that, but people tended to focus on the Montgomery Bus Boycott (the case study) and would learn as much as possible about that. But you're never getting a full question out of that. The best you can hope for in that situation is "What was the impact of the Montgomery Bus Boycott on the Civil Rights Movement 1955 - 68? and even then you've got to bring in things from outside the case study. So, the point I'm trying to enforce is that you want to know the 3 Cs of each topic and you want to convey your own ideas as much as possible throughout. If you can write an intro, conclusion and 5 - 6 paragraphs in between then you've got a great chance of doing well.

I probably should have checked my scripts to see why/where I lost marks, oh well, once you get your course you just forget about it anyway. Best of luck this year !