Exam technique: handling sources from 1890-1918
What the Exam Tests: The Key Question Types
Exam questions on this unit test a set of specific historical skills. Understanding exactly what each question type is asking — and what the most common mistakes are — is as important as knowing the content. This lesson works through the main question types, using worked examples from the period 1890–1918.
For Source Utility questions (5 marks), the three elements that must work together are: Content (what the source actually says), Provenance (who produced it, when, why, for what audience) and Contextual knowledge (what you know from your own learning that helps you assess the source).
Source Utility: The 5-Mark Question
The most common mistake on source utility questions is judging a source purely on bias: “This source is biased because it was written by a government minister, so it is not useful.” This always misses the point. A source’s utility must be assessed for a specific enquiry. A government propaganda poster is extremely useful as evidence of what the government wanted people to believe — its “bias” is precisely what makes it valuable for that enquiry.
A strong utility answer does three things in sequence. First, it identifies what the source says (content). Second, it comments on who produced it and why (provenance). Third, it uses own knowledge to explain what this tells us about the source’s value for the specific question asked. All three elements should be present in a single integrated judgement, not three separate bullet points.
Question: How useful is a Charles Booth survey extract (describing families in East London living on less than 21 shillings per week) for understanding the case for Liberal social reform?
Weak answer: “This source is useful because Booth was a reliable researcher. He found lots of poverty.” (No provenance, no contextual knowledge, no specific claim about utility.)
Strong answer structure: “This source is useful for understanding the case for reform because it shows [content: specific detail from extract]. Booth was a wealthy Liverpool businessman who surveyed London from the 1880s to 1903 with no financial interest in exaggerating poverty — this increases the reliability of the content [provenance]. My own knowledge confirms that Booth found roughly 30 per cent of Londoners in poverty and identified structural causes rather than personal failings, which directly influenced Liberal reform arguments after 1906 [contextual knowledge]. However, the source is limited for understanding what form the reforms should take, since Booth described the problem rather than prescribing solutions.”
The Compare Interpretations Question (10 marks)
The critical rule for this question: you must explain why the interpretations differ, not just how they differ. Describing “Interpretation A says X while Interpretation B says Y” answers the wrong question and caps your mark at the middle band.
Reasons why interpretations differ include: the time at which the historian wrote (a 1920s historian writing in the shadow of the anti-war poets will reach different conclusions from a 1990s revisionist with access to new archives); the historian’s purpose (academic history vs popular history vs political history); the evidence they prioritised (war poets vs soldiers’ diaries vs military statistics); and any political or ideological perspective that shapes their questions.
Question: Compare Interpretations A (traditional view that the First World War was necessary to resist German militarism) and B (Ferguson’s revisionist argument that Britain need not have entered) in terms of why they differ.
Weak: “Interpretation A says the war was necessary and B says it wasn’t. They differ because one agrees with the war and one doesn’t.”
Strong structure: “The interpretations differ partly because of when they were written: the traditional view was formed in a period when resisting German militarism seemed self-evidently justified; Ferguson wrote in the 1990s post-Cold War era when empire and military intervention were being reassessed across Western culture. They also differ in the questions asked: the traditional view asks ‘Was entering the war the right thing to do?’, while Ferguson asks the counterfactual ‘Was it necessary?’ — a different question that opens different evidence. Finally, they differ in the evidence used: Ferguson had access to post-war German archives showing the limits of German war aims; earlier historians did not.”
The 12-Mark and 16-Mark Essays
Both extended essays share the same requirement: a substantiated overall judgement. This means your conclusion must do more than summarise your paragraphs. It must directly answer the question with a precise claim: “The transformation of Britain was more significant in its political and welfare dimensions than in gender or imperial terms.”
Common mistakes in the 12-mark “Evaluate an Interpretation” question: writing only agreement, or only disagreement. You must “agree and disagree” with the interpretation using your own contextual knowledge. A response that only agrees is a “one-sided essay” — it cannot reach the top band regardless of how accurate the agreement is.
Top-band essays on transformation argue that change was significant but uneven — real in politics and welfare, partial in gender rights, and complicated in empire. A weak conclusion says “both sides have valid points.” A strong conclusion says which side is more convincing and why.
Exam Technique Checklist
Before you write your answer, check:
- Source utility: Have I addressed content, provenance AND contextual knowledge together — not in three separate bullets?
- Compare interpretations: Am I explaining why they differ (time, purpose, evidence, perspective) — not just what they say?
- 12-mark evaluate: Have I agreed AND disagreed, both with specific evidence?
- 16-mark essay: Have I reached a substantiated overall judgement that directly answers the question — not just summarised my paragraphs?