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AS AQA Breadth Study Russia: Essay Help

Does anyone know a clear structure for Source Questions on this side of the course? My teacher literally still hasn't taught us this and I have zero clue of how to structure it myself. All answers are appreciated!
I don't know if we do the same (I'm on AQA doing 2N - Russia 1917-29 for AS). My source question's structure follow like this:

No intro

Source A
Content paragraph - picking out content and linking it to contextual knowledge in relation to the question
Provenance paragraph - who produced the source, why, when etc. and the significance of this in relation to contextual knowledge and how valuable it is based on these things.
My teacher tells me to give a large amount of focus on provenance.


Source B
Same structure as Source A

Conclusion
Which source is most valuable taking into account provenance and content - can be one of them, or both, or neither and then explain why

Hope this helps!
(edited 7 years ago)
hi! Are you doing the 1855-1917 AS course? If so, I'm doing the same course as you :smile:
As the sources are from historians, we've been taught not to assess provenance at all - but we do for the other side of the course (we're doing modern britain)
So your structure would probably be:
Source 1 -
summarise what the source is discussing in a couple sentences; e.g. the historian discusses the impact of Alexander II's reforms on Russia's social structure
pick out aspects of the source - not huge chunks though! - and use your own knowledge to analyse it and support the argument.
once you've done this, you should also challenge what the source says - e.g. what it doesn't discuss, using your knowledge to support your argument.

Do the same for the second source. Then, make your conclusion - which one is more convincing? Discuss why the more convincing one is better than the other one - e.g. it addresses this and this wheras source 2 only addresses this.

Hopefully this helped! :biggrin:
Original post by CharlotteAL
I don't know if we do the same (I'm on AQA doing 2N - Russia 1917-29 for AS). My source question's structure follow like this:

No intro

Source A
Content paragraph - picking out content and linking it to contextual knowledge in relation to the question
Provenance paragraph - who produced the source, why, when etc. and the significance of this in relation to contextual knowledge and how valuable it is based on these things.
My teacher tells me to give a large amount of focus on provenance.


Source B
Same structure as Source A

Conclusion
Which source is most valuable taking into account provenance and content - can be one of them, or both, or neither and then explain why

Hope this helps!

Ah, by the looks of it the structure you have provided is on the depth side of the course. Thank you for responding though!
Original post by King Geedorah
Ah, by the looks of it the structure you have provided is on the depth side of the course. Thank you for responding though!


To my knowledge the mark scheme is identical for depth/breadth source Qs

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