OCR AS Essay

I am in the process of doing past papers for my summer exams. What are the things i need to be doing in the 45 marker question, as i am hoping to achieve an A.

Thanks in advance
Michael :smile:

What's the question?

Assess the reasons why Parliament won the civil war?

Reply 3

nothingspek

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_did_Parliament_win_the_English_Civil_War

Google is your friend.

Just present your arguments separately and include a lot of detail.

Reply 4

made_of_fail

what particular points of exam technique are you unsure about?

[i don't do OCR so i can't fill you in on the examiners' quirks]

Reply 5

02mik_e

Linking factors most importantly, but just exam technique in general. My teacher told me 50% is exam technique and he hasn't actually really explained to me how to do this.

Reply 6

icedsarcasm

OCR examiners are kind of losers - they're really big on linking factors (x was an important factor both in itself, and also because it led to y / situation x was already poor, but y pushed it to breaking point), and also on ranking. In every essay you need to be able to find ways to rank points you've made in order of importance - so say you've given a number of reasons why parliament won the civil war, you must say which you feel was the most important and which was the least. Those are the two big things for a 'Band I' response.

Also make sure you answer the question... sounds silly, but really make sure you know what all the question types mean and what they're asking you to do. The main ones for this exam are:
- To what extent...?
- How serious...?
- Assess the view that...
- How far...?
- How successful....?