Advice for the new AQA AS Level History Source questions?

So I'm currently doing AS Level History (Topics are: Tudors 1485-1603 and America 1945-1980).
In Section A (the compulsory source question). It will always say "With reference to these extracts and your understanding of the historical context, which of these two extracts provides the more convincing interpretation of....." (any topic from the AS specification).
How would I actually go about answering this? I'm not even 100% sure what it necessarily means by "more convincing".

Thankyou

So at AS, you tend to be given sources that are clearly for or against a certain line of argument. Generally it's 3 sources, and they can either have 2 that agree and 1 that doesn't, or 1 that agrees and 2 that don't, or even bits of agree AND disagree in each source.

In History you are generally dealing with the "weight of evidence" to make a decision. Think of it slightly like a court case; you're looking at balance of evidence for and against a person and deciding your verdict based on which has more weight, right? So in History you're doing the same thing.

There's one more part to "convincing" you'll need to be aware of - people don't always make unbiased sources, and sometimes they eliminate some information to make their picture look better, right? This is where provenance comes in. You are actively given marks for calling a source out if it might be being made a for a political/personal gain, as propaganda etc. By "more convincing" you are also looking at a source that tends to avoid that bias more wholly.

For the actual structuring I recommend the following technique:

- Take time analysing each source with 3 highlighters, one colour for for, one colour for against and one colour for both.
- Immediately you should be able to see which side has the more points; write on the source sheet the key points coming up.
- See which points are common between the sources so you can do cross-referencing and get an idea what you're gonna talk about.
- Intro: a very brief (4-5 line) statement of to what extent you believe the topic in question and outlining the points you'll be making.
- Paragraph 1: Your strongest point in favour of the viewpoint you chose, backed with evidence/Own Knowledge. At the end of the paragraph take a little time to also point out the flaws in this argument. It's okay to repeat yourself a little bit if this comes up in a later paragraph.
- Paragraph 2: As before.
-Paragraph 3: Now do the same for the opposite side. While you might find it hard to argue in favour of an opposing viewpoint, there will always be some things you can say about it. In cases where there is much more for one side than the other, P3 can be a third paragraph in favour/against the point.
-Paragraph 4: As before, except to get a decent grade this has to be the opposite to P1, 2 and maybe 3. The source will give you a lot of detail which you have to point out and then be critical of so to make it very clear you're firm on your point of view even considering other viewpoints.
-Conclusion: This is a more crucial part than you'd think; while the intro isn't even necessary (but heavily advised), a solid conclusion reaffirming your point of view based on the evidence for both sides is necessary to gain a good number of marks. Give yourself about 5 minutes to write a solid conclusion just to be safe.


I do want to point out everything I wrote was in reference to my technique for old spec Edexcel but the principles are very much the same across exam boards. But if your teacher has given any specific guidance it is because they know better I would imagine.