Different types of questions

In AS History examinations, different types of question are used to assess your abilities and skills. Unit tests mainly use either source-based questions or structured questions.

Source-based questions

The types of question you may encounter are:

• Comprehension and explanation of references or issues mentioned in the sources. Here is an example: - Explain briefly what is meant by the phrase ‘people of the free provinces’.
• Extraction of information from the sources. Here is an example: What can you learn from source 2 about why the Old Poor Law was often criticised in the years before 1834?
• Comparison between two sources. Here are two examples:Compare and explain the objections made in sources B and C to Lloyd George’s proposals for National Insurance in 1911. Explain how far the statistics in source A support the view expressed in source B concerning economic growth in Russia after 1880.
• Evaluation of the reliability or usefulness of one or two of the sources. Use all the information available to you – the content of the source, the information given to you about it by the examiners, comparison with the other sources, your own knowledge – to decide what use a historian could make of it.
  • Here are two examples: Assess the value of these sources to a historian studying the reasons why people supported the Nazis in the 1920s and early 1930s. How reliable are sources B and C to an historian as evidence of the relations between France and Piedmont?
• Use of sources as evidence to answer a broader question, e.g. to construct an explanation, discuss an interpretation or assess a judgement. This type of question usually requires you to use your own knowledge as well as the sources. Make sure you refer to both: failure to do so is one of the commonest mistakes made by candidates.
  • Here is an example: From source A and from your own knowledge explain why Ulster was such animportant consideration in the Home Rule question in 1886.

Structured questions

Structured questions are in two or three parts. The parts are usually related to a common issue and are progressively more difficult. Typically the first part of a twopart question will ask for identification or explanation of key issues and the second part for analysis of causation or assessment of the significance of an issue. Sometimes one or two relatively short sources are provided and the first part then asks you to extract information from the source or explain a reference in it.

Here are two examples (Edexcel specimen questions):

• In what ways did Lenin’s economic policies, in the period to 1924,  attempt to solve the problems facing the Bolsheviks in 1918? [15 marks]
• Explain why these policies aroused opposition within the Bolshevik Party and within the USSR. [15 marks]

Here are two examples (WJEC specimen questions)

• Explain briefly the main aims of British foreign policy in 1815. [24 marks]
• To what extent was British foreign policy consistent between 1815 and 1865. [36 marks]