Year 12s: what will be the first way you research your future options? >>

How much detail do you need for an A*

I've been doing my history revision and making notes on the topics, but I'm not sure how detailed I need to make them. I'm aiming for an A* (if it's any help, I'm in Year 12 with the new spec, so no AS exams). I've attached some notes I found on this site, are these kind of notes detailed enough?

I'm with OCR, and I'm doing
Russia 1855-1964
Britain 1930-1997
France 1774-1815

Thanks guys :smile:

Monster notes with everything in.doc105.0KB

Synoptic content of Russian History 1855-1964.docx203.0KB

Bump

For an A* you definitely need quite a bit of detail! As long as you know that you would be able to answer any essay question thrown at you with enough evidence to back it up (to make 5 or so paragraphs) you'll be fine. But what you definitely need to focus on other than the content is how to answer the essay question. So you need to ensure you know the structure and skills needed that will hit all the points in the top band of the mark scheme - of course lots of detail is important for this, but if you don't know how to use that content to construct an argument then that may have an impact on your grade.

Reply 3

Aweevee

When at GCSE you could learn the textbook and throw loads of information at examiners to get an A*, if you do that at Alevel youre not gonna get anything past a C grade at most. Whilst it is important to have a deep understanding of the contextual knowledge and support that with detail the detail should be concise and to the point. For the higher grades the examiner is looking for how good your overall argument is and how analytical you have been in your response.

Reply 4

GovernmentEarner

History one of the hardest subjects to get an A* in. This is because exam technique and structure is the most important thing, yet you still have to know all the content... Which means you can revise every single ounce of the textbook and come out with a B in your results if you don't frame your answer correctly. So try and learn all the content in detail but always think how that info could be applied to an argument/counter an argument.