2023 WASSCE: How To Answer History Questions

No matter if you’re taking Junior History, Ancient History, or Modern History in high school, there are a few rules you should always follow when writing a History essay.

Here, we tell you about them and explain them to them so that you have the best chance of succeeding.

Respond to the Question.

It’s so obvious, and I’m sure your teachers always tell you to “answer the question,” but they do so for a good reason.

The best essays are always the ones that answer the question well. You could write the most in-depth history of Napoleon ever, but if the question is about World War I, well.

So, there are a couple of things to keep in mind when answering the question. Firstly, what is/are the keyword (s)? And second, how big is it?

The keyword (s) are the parts of the question that tell you what to do, like “to what extent…”, “explain…”, “assess…”, etc.

Most of the time in History, you will be asked to judge something or give your opinion about something.

Rarely will you be asked just to explain how things happened? If that’s the case, don’t just tell what happened; evaluate how important your examples are!

The range or limits of your question are its scopes. This could be a period such as 1939–1945, a country, an event, a group of people, etc.

The scope is helpful because it gives you guidelines for how to answer. It tells you what to pay attention to.

Let’s look at an example to make it clear. This question is from the Modern History course for Grade 11:
“How much did Russia’s participation in World War I lead to the fall of the Romanovs?”

The keywords here are “to what extent,” and the topic is “Russia’s role in World War I” and “the fall of the Romanovs.”

So, in our essay, we need to: a) come to a conclusion about how Russia’s actions in WW1 led to the end of the Romanov dynasty; and b) back up our conclusion with evidence from Russia’s actions in WW1 and the events that led up to and caused the end of the Romanov dynasty.

Like in an English essay, you should answer the question directly by putting a thesis statement at the beginning and a topic sentence at the beginning of each body paragraph.

In conclusion, you should link back to the thesis statement.

Use proof to back up your claim.

In the body of your essay, you show what you know about the subject. All those dates and numbers you’ve been saving up now are their chance to shine.

But, as was said, you won’t be asked to describe the order of events very often (if ever), so don’t fall into the trap of just telling details.

The trick is to use historical evidence to back up your essay’s claim, which means you have to analyze that evidence.
So how do you do this exactly?

You may be familiar with the PEEL structure for essay paragraphs: Point, Evidence, Explain, and Link.

We suggest you use this for your History essays because it makes it easy for you to answer the question and clearly lay out and analyze your evidence.

If you use this structure, the best thing to do is to give each point its own body paragraph.

So, using the question above as an example, let’s say you want to talk about two important things Russia did during WWI and two things that didn’t have to do with the war.

You would need a total of four body paragraphs. In each body paragraph, use a topic sentence to introduce the example and explain how it relates to the question.

Then, add something to back up your point (a key event, a quote from a speech, a statistic, etc.). Then, and this is the most important part, explain or analyze this piece of evidence.

Why does this piece of proof matter? What does it teach us, or what does it show us?

You might also think about where the evidence comes from, whether it has any biases, and how useful and reliable it is. Lastly, connect this point back to the claim of your essay by mentioning its importance or value.

Refer to it correctly.
This may sound like a lot of fuss, but it’s easy to lose points if you don’t cite your sources correctly. History teachers are especially sensitive to this and for good reason.

The source of historical information has a big impact on what it says, and this is something that should always be kept in mind, especially when doing research.

Your teachers may not always agree with the points you make in your essays, but if you properly cite your evidence and point out any possible biases, you will show them that you’ve used your evidence in a thoughtful and informed way, and they can’t argue with that!

So, there you have it: the most important things you need to know about how to write a History essay. Go out and do well!

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