A-LEVEL history coursework - AQA

Hi!
I am currently working on my alevel history coursework (exam board is aqa) and i am very stuck on how to actually write it. So if anyone has any drafts or help they could send me that would be much appreicated!
I have a plan and a question so its literally just a case of formatting
Thank you!

Reply 1

Pxnyl_

Hello! I finished my coursework recently for history and it was graded in between an A and an A* so I can definitely give some tips! I'm assuming you're just starting your coursework so here is some advice I'd give that really helped me out:

- Make sure ANY pieces of research that you find online/ in a book you keep a note of where you obtained that from in the proper footnote form so that when you are adding in the research to your essay, you can easily footnote it without trying to back-search to see where you got it from.
- Don't worry too much about your introduction in the beginning of your coursework, focus on making your paragraphs early on and then adding to them slowly over time. This will then make your argument in your introduction come across and far more concise and evaluative
- In terms of the formatting of the essay, I would say have your main essay on one document, your essay on sources on another document and then your essay on interpretations in another document. Once you have finished all of them then you can see where it would fit best into your main essay (my teachers did this for me though so it might be different depending on if you have to do it yourself)
- The main essay can be split into: Intro, Factor 1, Factor 2, Factor 3, (maybe a fourth one if you know you wont go over the word count), and then a conclusion. This is the best way to split it in my opinion but feel free to go with whatever works for your question.

Sorry if this seems a little messy, if there are any other questions feel free to ask! :smile:

Reply 2

yogo1o

Original post by kakalaka06

Hi, I'm also doing aqa history coursework and my school gives LOADS of help on how to structure it.
Introduction:
- give an overview of the question
- define the time period (and why)
- introduce your historians, their arguments and the sources and make it very clear which source is for each argument
- overall judgement

Paragraphs:
- introduce your historian and their argument
- evaluate the historian and their argument
- evidence from the time period to back up the argument of the historian and intersperse a few quotes form the historian. My school recommends dividing up your time period (for example by monarch if doing French revolution) to make sure you cover the whole period
- Bring in your primary source and link to the historians argument, again using quotes
- evaluate the source
- give an overall judgement
repeat for each point!

Just make sure you cover the whole time period and you have a mix of quotes from the historian and your own knowledge and you should be fine :smile: