History
How to answer the History documents-based question
The documents-based question is worth 100 marks and has four parts. At Higher Level they are comprehension (20), comparison (20), criticism (20) and contextualisation (40).
The four parts
| Part | Higher | Ordinary | What it asks you to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Comprehension | 20 | 40 | Find and report what the documents say. |
| Comparison | 20 | 20 | Show where two documents agree or differ on the same point. |
| Criticism | 20 | 20 | Judge the documents as sources: who made them, why, and how far you can trust them. |
| Contextualisation | 40 | 20 | Write about the wider topic using your own knowledge, not only the documents. |
How to approach each part
- Comprehension: answer from the document, and say which one. “Document A says…” is quicker for an examiner to credit than a vague summary.
- Comparison: name the point first, then show how each document treats it. A comparison needs both documents in the same sentence or paragraph.
- Criticism: think about the source. Is it a speech, a newspaper, a cartoon, a diary? Who was it for? Bias and propaganda questions live here.
- Contextualisation: this is the biggest part at Higher Level. Treat it like a short essay that answers the question with your own knowledge.
Check your year’s topic
The documents-based question comes from a prescribed topic that changes on a cycle. Check which topic applies to your exam year before you revise for it.
How somalc uses thisIMark checks the contextualisation answer the same way it checks an essay: sentence by sentence against the question.
Sources