How to Analyse a Source Successfully

                     

How to Analyse a Source Successfully

Have you ever found the Source analysis questions difficult? Probably yes. I know the feeling. So to help anyone, like me, who find source analysis questions a nightmare, I have a made a guide filled with tips and tricks to cracking a Source analysis question.

  

  Step 1:

READ THE QUESTION. That’s all you need to do at first.This sounds simple, but you need to understand exactly what it is asking to give a solid response. What is your task? The question might want you to identify a source or put it in historical context. Or, it might ask you to answer one or more questions on the basis of the source.Read it a second or even third time – it can’t hurt! Make sure that you understand the question.

         Remember: Read the question carefully in case you did not miss out  crucial words, otherwise    

                                you may do the wrong thing.

Step 2:

       

Before writing anything on the answer sheet, make a PLAN. A plan is crucial for to answering anything, not just source style questions. Spend about 10% of your total time allocated to answer the question to make a plan for the question.

If it helps, jot down brief notes or underline parts of the question before you turn to the source. The question should guide you and may even contain hints.

• For instance, a question that asks, “Read and identify the following passage,” wants you to use your background knowledge to link the source to a certain time period, place, and maybe author.

• One that asks, “Evaluate source A as evidence for the rise of Communism,” is asking about usefulness and reliability. Here you will have to identify context and any biases in the source, as well as its limits as historical evidence

• A question that asks, “What does this source tell us about the effect of the American Civil War on the abolition movement?” is asking something else. You’ll need to evaluate the source, but also understand how it fits into arguments about the abolition of slavery during the Civil War.

         

Step 3:     - The First Sentence

  You’ve read the text(or picture) and you’ve made a plan. So now let’s start your   Analysis. For the first line of the analysis directly answer the question

For e.g.

• If the question is asking ‘ what is the message of this source ‘ start your answer with ‘ the message of the source is …’
• If the source is asking for the causes of an event begin your answer with ‘ the most important cause is…’     

Remember: Never give your own opinion, or use the words I or we

Step 4

Now that the first line has been written, you have got to back it up. You could do this by reading or looking at the source(if it is a picture) and use points to back it up.

For e.g.

• ‘ This can be seen as in the source the overseers in the factories are beating the children’
• ‘This can be seen as the British man has a fat globe as a stomach with the name of colonies written under his button.’

Doing this is crucial for an analysis question and will give you a lot of marks

Step 5:

This is probably the most important stage of writing an analysis, the contextual knowledge. In this step, you have to write your knowledge on this topic which will support your first line.

For e.g.

• ‘This is indeed true as there were many British Colonies in Africa. Britain also wanted even more land. Due to this, Germany was jealous of Britain’s imperialistic attitudes’
• ‘This is true because children were the cheapest type of workers. So this allowed more profit to be made’

Step 6 - the conclusion

In the conclusion write just 1 or 2 sentences which conclude you analysis

(this is the easiest step)