The Student Room Group

Does anyone else find the AQA A level history NEA annoying?

Basically I hate AQA for a lot of reasons. One of these reasons is the NEA that we have to do. I don't hate it because we have to do lots of reading, I hate it because I have to use not my own, but historians points of argument. This annoys me because currently I believe that nationalism was a prime reason for the outbreak of WWI, however I haven't been able to find a historian who explicitly says that so therefore I can't argue that point. I feel that my ability to write my essay isn't based on my own understanding and ability to formulate points of argument, but instead on how many books I've read through or on what points of argument I've been able to find.
I was just wondering if anyone else gets annoyed by this thing
Oh totally. I dunno if it's the same for everyone, but mine is due in on the 20th yet I'm only half way through (luckily I have a half day tomorrow). I would be done already but on Friday my teacher looked it over and basically told me to do it again from scratch because the structure wasn't satisfactory. I think it makes a damn lot more sense to analyse it chronologically, but noooo either intro - interpretations - 3 points - conclusion or a fail grade apparently. Not to mention that the whole historian interpretation thing is complete ass, trying to find two conflicting arguments on a point that everyone and their gran agrees on was the most stressful thing on earth, I had to settle for cropping key bits out when quoting the historians and hoping no one notices. I am actually gonna spend all of my money on TGI's as celebration when this crap is over with

Rant over ☺️
Reply 2
Original post by Eat-sleep-repeat
Oh totally. I dunno if it's the same for everyone, but mine is due in on the 20th yet I'm only half way through (luckily I have a half day tomorrow). I would be done already but on Friday my teacher looked it over and basically told me to do it again from scratch because the structure wasn't satisfactory. I think it makes a damn lot more sense to analyse it chronologically, but noooo either intro - interpretations - 3 points - conclusion or a fail grade apparently. Not to mention that the whole historian interpretation thing is complete ass, trying to find two conflicting arguments on a point that everyone and their gran agrees on was the most stressful thing on earth, I had to settle for cropping key bits out when quoting the historians and hoping no one notices. I am actually gonna spend all of my money on TGI's as celebration when this crap is over with

Rant over ☺️


I suppose my teacher is much different, because the only thing he asks of us is that we organise our paragraphs so that those points of argument which conflict are written close together, as to make it organised nicely. I had considered cropping bits of the quotes out (or chopping the ends of them off) to get a point of argument closer to what I actually believed, but I think my teacher would notice and although it's annoying, I'll argue with the point of argument I have. One of my authors, James Joll, is a good historian to use in that he puts forward a lot of reasons for WW1, the only problem is that he doesn't come to a definitive conclusion on which one was the main cause, meaning that I'm struggling to figure out how I'm going to write my essay. It's all very stressful, I might go on holiday to Antwerp when I'm done just to forget about it all and to eat Belgian waffles

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