GCSE History help

Hi I was wondering if memorising dates was very important for GCSE edexcel history because some people say you don't need to memorise the dates but you should have an idea of them/know them so when you answer a question you don't talk outside of the given time frame. I know that's its important to know the dates for the Cold war paper (due to the narrative question) but is it the same for Weimar & Germany, Elizabeth & medicine through time. Recently I did a medicine & Germany exam and I got a grade 8 but I included little to no dates so I was wondering if you could get away with not memorising them

Reply 1

squiddy135

Original post by 234532dsd32

Those people are kind of right. You should have a general idea of dates, and should probably learn some for specific evidence, which should help you get to a 9. Basically, if you have other knowledge then yes you can probably “get away with it”, but if you want absolute top grades, or to be certain you’ll get a 7/8/9, you should know general dates for most things and a couple of specific dates at least as this is really useful for specific evidence.
For history specific dates are a lot like statistics - you should probably know the rough number so you can pick it up in a source question etc, but the exact thing isn’t compulsory, just useful to get you more marks for specific knowledge.