The 12 Mark "How Useful" Question: The First World War (Q2) (AQA GCSE History)
Revision Note
Written by: Natasha Smith
Reviewed by: Bridgette Barrett
Summary of Question Two
Question Two requires you to evaluate how useful two sources are for a historian about the issue outlined
You should:
Refer to the content and provenance of the sources
Include knowledge that is relevant to the source
Make a judgement on how useful the source is for the given issue in the question
Amount of marks | 12 |
|---|---|
The time that you should spend on the question | No more than 20 minutes 5 minutes of planning 15 minutes of writing |
An example of the type of question you may encounter can be seen below:
In previous years, this question has focused on:
Year of Exam | Question Topic |
|---|---|
2018 | |
2019 | |
2020 | |
2021 | The rivalry between Germany and Britain before the First World War |
2022 | |
Sample 1 | Opinions of Austria on the outbreak of the First World War |
Sample 2 | The Battle of the Somme |
Using the Content & Provenance of a Source
A historical source is made up of two sections:
The provenance
The content
Provenance
Provenance is the background information of a source
The provenance can be found at the top of each source
The provenance usually tells you
Who created the source
What type of source it is, for example, a newspaper article
When the source was made
Where the source was created
For the example question, here is a breakdown of the provenance of Source C:
Who | Ernst Toller, a German solider |
|---|---|
What | A book called I Was a German |
When | 1933 |
Where | Based on his experiences of the Western Front before 1916 |
In this question, you should use the provenance of the source to:
Help you explain the usefulness of a source
Content
The content is the information presented in the source
The content could be a variety of different types of sources such as:
A picture
A photograph
An extract from a book
A speech
A political cartoon
A letter
In this question, you should use the content of the source to:
Help you explain the usefulness of the source
Making judgements in a 12 Mark "How Useful" Question
The 12-mark "How Useful” question requires you to make a judgement
The common mistakes that students make when making a judgement are:
Not giving a clear judgement. Students do this by:
Explaining that neither of the sources is useful to a historian
Failing to decide how useful the sources are
Not addressing the sources together
Using language in their answer which is not decisive e.g. “kind of” or “maybe”
Focusing on reliability rather than how useful the source is. Students do this by:
Not making any judgement about the source’s usefulness
Stating that, because the source is unreliable, the source is not useful to a historian
All sources are useful for a historian but not all sources are reliable
Unreliable sources can be very useful. For example, a propaganda poster from the First World War might be biased or have inaccurate information. However, it tells historians about a government’s fears or problems during the war
Good judgements will include:
Specific content from the sources
The source’s provenance
Your knowledge of the time period
This will help you to see if the source is accurate or typical for the period
Good judgements will also keep going back to the focus of the question
For the example question, the focus of the question is the conditions of the trenches. In Source C, there are references to trench warfare. You should remain focused on the conditions of the trenches
Your judgement does not need to include limitations and you can receive full marks without one
Students’ responses are often given higher marks if they only focus on the source's strengths. This is because the question wants you to pick parts of the source that are useful
However, if you include a limitation you will be credited, you must make sure the limitation is:
Supported by knowledge
Focused on the question
Relevant to your answer
Unlike the 8-mark "How Useful" questions, to achieve full marks you need to make a complex evaluation of the sources together by addressing them in combination or as a pair
The best place to do this is in your conclusion at the end of your answer
Historical sources are always more useful together as they may show
A change in perspective over time
How different people viewed an event or person in history
How an event or person affected different people in the same country or place
"How Useful" Question Structure
You need two paragraphs, one for each source, and a conclusion
Your answer could be written in PEE paragraphs
P- Make a point about the question
Make it clear how useful the source is
Use the source to make an inference about the issue in the question
E- Use information from the source and knowledge to support the point you have made
Your knowledge should be specific
Focus on the content and provenance of the source
E- Explain why this shows that the source is useful
Focus on the given issue in the question
For top marks, your judgement about the source’s usefulness will combine the content of the source, the provenance of the source and your own knowledge of the issue in the question
To achieve full marks, you need to repeat this twice, a paragraph for each source
For the 12-mark "How Useful" question, you need a conclusion
Your conclusion should:
Include both of the sources
Address how the sources are more useful together
Be brief
Worked Example of a "How Useful" Question
Worked Example
How useful are sources B and C to a historian studying the conditions of the trenches on the Western Front in the First World War?
[12 marks]
Source B: The Medical Officer of the 12th Battalion, East Yorkshire Regiment conducts a foot inspection in a support trench near Roclincourt, 9 January 1918  |
Source C: A book written by Ernst Toller called I Was a German, was published in 1933. Troller was a German soldier on the Western Front and was discharged from the army in 1916. “I was at the front for thirteen months, and by the end of that time the sharpest perceptions had become dulled, the greatest words mean. The war had become an everyday affair; life in the line a matter of routine; instead of heroes there were only victims; conscripts instead of volunteers, life had become hell, death a bagatelle; we were all of us cogs in a great machine which sometimes rolled forward, nobody knew where, sometimes backwards, nobody knew why. We had lost our enthusiasm, our courage, the very sense of our identity; there was no rhyme or reason in all this slaughtering and devastation; pain itself had lost its meaning; the earth was a barren waste. I applied for a transfer to the Air Force, not from any heroic motive, or for the love of adventure, but simply to get away from the mass, from mass-living and mass-dying.” |
Answer:
Source B is relatively useful to a historian studying the conditions of the trenches on the Western Front during the First World War. The source shows a group of British soldiers from the East Yorkshire Regiment in 1918. Soldiers would regularly have foot inspections because, at the start of the First World War, thousands of soldiers suffered from "trench foot" due to the soldiers standing in dirty cold water for days. This source is useful to a historian as it highlights the poor conditions of the trenches and the effects they had on the physical health of the soldiers. It is also useful because it demonstrates how the British army responded to the poor conditions of the trenches as men would have their feet inspected and encouraged to wash their feet and change their socks regularly to prevent diseases and in some cases amputation.
Source C is very useful to a historian as it demonstrates the harsh conditions of the Western Front and the effects on soldiers. The author describes the trenches as a "barren waste" which resulted in many soldiers losing their "enthusiasm", "courage" and "identity" through the slaughter and "devastation" of war. The conditions in the trenches on the Western Front often left soldiers with low morale, as Toller describes. The constant artillery shelling and poor weather resulted in the trenches being damaged and left in poor condition. Due to such conditions, soldiers suffered from PTSD known as ‘shell shock’ in the First World War which Toller is referring to in source C. Therefore, this source is useful to a historian as it demonstrates the negative effects the poor conditions had on the mental health of the soldiers and the consequences of the conditions on the Western Front.
Overall, these sources are more useful together as they demonstrate the poor conditions of the Western Front from both the point of view of the British soldiers and the German soldiers and what effects they had on the physical and mental health of the soldiers. Sources B and C are also more useful together because they were created at different years in the war, this is useful as it demonstrates that conditions were poor throughout the war but when governments could, they attempted to improve conditions as shown in source B.
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