hello I'm Scott alsop I'm a history teacher who's been delivering the Cambridge IGCSE course for quite a few years and in this video I'm going to share my top tips for paper four the alternative to coursework this year the Cambridge igcs has changed the structure of paper 4 since this year is the first time that the paper will be sat there's really not very much guidance from the exam board and even less practice papers for you to try but I've been actively teaching the course and have attended some training sessions on the changes to the syllabus so I've put together this video which I hope will give you some useful practical tips and tricks on how you can use your knowledge and your skills in the right ways in order to gain the number of marks that you deserve on paper four now IGCSE history paper 4 for Cambridge is based on the depth study and consequently the content material differs depending on which depth study you studied at your school now most ERS do seem to do depth study about Germany with the USA and Russia also proving popular but the layout of the exam and the requirements of the mark scheme are the same for each particular depth study so I'm going to try to be as broad as possible so then what are you expected to do well by now you should be comfortable with the idea of exam questions being marked according to specific level criteria The Examiner reads your response and then they fit what you you've said into what are referred to as level descriptors these are very generic descriptions of what students might do in their work and they're structured like a ladder of attainment the better your answer the higher the level you receive now paper four is marked out 40 marks across two questions one worth 15 marks and one worth 25 and each question has its own level descriptors and therefore its own specific requirements the 15 mark question has three levels while the 25 mark question has five the examiner's role is to identify the level descriptor that best fits your work and then choose how well your work does what the descriptor says the better you do it the higher the mark you get so really I can't emphasize enough the importance of your teacher sharing these generic level descriptors with you because they give really clear instructions on what to do to secure the best marks you can see it almost as a kind of a tick list of things to do now the purpose of paper 4 overall is to test your ability to meet two assessment objectives in the first question the examiner wants to see how well you can recall select organize and deploy detailed and specific knowledge of your chosen depth study then in the second question the part B they want you to construct an his hisorical explanation using contextual knowledge of the topic now in many cases they want you in Part B to explain why a particular person event or policy was historically important now this possibly sounds a bit scary but the reality is that you should be doing this anyway because at its core you can really see paper 4 as just being like an extended version of the question types that you're already used to from paper one so let's get to the paper when you open the paper you're going to be faced with a number of different depth studies obviously you should only look at the topic that you've studied within your topic you'll then find two questions which each contain a part A and A Part B you need to choose one question to answer but your answer must include both parts A and B of your chosen question so the first thing that you need to do then is to spend a bit of time choosing which of the two questions you want to answer I know that seems really obvious but with paper 4 being worth around a third of your total IGCSE grade across just two questions you really do need to choose wisely so make sure you read the questions closely focus on the specific terms included in the text and keep an eye on the dates some of the questions give a specific time frame such as say the 1920s or after 1934 so you've got to make sure that all of your examples are drawn from that exact period anything outside those dates is irrelevant and it doesn't gain you any marks so what we're going to do now is to look at each question type in turn beginning with part A that's worth 15 marks the question will ask you to write an account of something something related to your depth study for the Germany topic the specimen paper provided by the exam board gives two example questions the first is write an account of the establishment of the viar Republic the second is write an account of Hitler's consolidation of power 1933 to 34 so what's an account well an account is a retelling of the story The Examiner just wants you to describe in detail what happened and in a logical way so according to the mark scheme this means that you have to focus closely on the question topic and include the main events and developments basically don't get distracted by things that aren't relevant you then need to include precise and accurate historical knowledge and details a quick check is are you including things with capital letters in which case it's probably a person or a place and are you including numbers in which case you're probably giving statistics ICS or dates and finally you need to sequence your account logically what the examiner want you to do in your retelling of the story is to name the key characters and the organizations and the features and say what they did you don't need to present an overall judgment this isn't asking you to provide any balance and also there's no explanation you just describe what happened in detail there are examplar answers available for this that are freely available on the Cambridge website but for copyright reasons I can't include them here but you can go off and look for those and if you do read them you'll see that you really do need to write at least three short paragraphs about key parts of the story I'd suggest that you start each paragraph with a clearly indicated part of the story and if it's your second paragraph or later try to show how that next bit leads on from the previous thing that happened and then of course remember to pack each paragraph with lots of specific names statistics and other details that show that you really know the story if you want to see an example of an historical account check out my other YouTube channel it's called history pod and on that I take an event from a day in history and I write a 300ish word account of what happened and then I narrate it so in 2 and a half minutes I tell tell the story of an historical event that's basically what you're trying to do in part A of paper four on the cie exam on to Part B then the second part of the question which is worth 25 marks now these questions do appear to be worded in a few different ways but the requirement in the answer is the same they all use the same Mark scheme what you need to do is to take one factor of an event and consider a range of different ways in which it affected something else so it could say discuss the extent to which this was a turning point within a period or discuss the importance or the impact or the contribution of a named Factor within the period of your depth study for example within the Germany topic the specimen paper offers discuss the impact of the Treaty of Versa on Germany and a second example of discuss the importance of the night of the Long Knives so although these questions appear to be different one asks about the impact and the other asks about the importance they're really asking you just to focus on explaining the effects or the consequences of the named Factor now within the study of history we often see how one event has multiple consequences it's a causal web for large events such such as the impact of the Treaty of Versa on Germany you might consider the political consequences or effects or the social consequences or The Economic Consequences other named events may be much more specific and so have much more precise consequences in the case of the KN of the Long Knives for example well that had some very specific effects some of them were shortterm some were long-term some were really specific to the Nazi party some had a wider impact on Germany as a whole the purpose of the 25 mark question is to get you to explain a range of effects or Consequences of a single named Factor now in the mark scheme the exam board calls these different aspects facets these are kind of particular aspects of something that's much bigger so some of the different facets of the Treaty of versa's impact on Germany may include its impact on politics its impact on society and it impact on the economy each of the facets that you include then needs to be fully analyzed this means that you need to not only provide detailed and specific evidence about the factor in the question but also explain the importance of each of them this won't be a balanced essay in the sense of it being a two-sided argument but it does need to consider multiple aspects multiple angles multiple facets you're actually quite used to doing this from the six Mark questions on paper one where you identify and explain causes of an event the 25 mark question on paper four is asking you to actually do something very similar just to think about the different ways that the named Factor affected something else therefore while the part A account is descriptive the part B needs you to be analytical remember that part B is a question about how a factor relates to something else and so you need to clearly explain how or why each facet that you include was significant to the topic being explored so if you're answering a question about say the importance of Lenin in the Years 1917 to 24 you obviously need to give a range of examples of what Lenin did similarly if you're talking about the importance of the rise of popular culture in America during the 1920s you need to think about the different aspects of that but to properly answer the question you need to show the impact that these things had Part B is not just saying what happened it's about explaining why it mattered now if you use the point evidence explanation paragraph format or something similar to that that helps you to structure your work you're probably already very used to writing analytical responses like this but it doesn't hurt for me to State this again you must ensure that every point you make refers back to the exact wording of the question don't just tell the examiner the facts make those facts relevant to the question examiners often report back on analytical questions that some IGCSE students just provide generalize comments that don't address the issue in the question so if the question asks you to discuss the importance of the Great Depression for Germany your explanation probably needs to include something along the lines of this was important for Germany because now following this format of at least three facets supported with good evidence and explained to say why they were important will get you a good Mark but it won't secure you the highest level to push for the top marks on Part B there's therefore a little extra to do so while each of the named factors that we've considered did have a range of effects a range of facets it goes without saying that some effects or facets were bigger or more important than others evaluating this relative impact or importance of the different facets that you include helps to move your answer into the highest level on the mark scheme the mark scheme describes this as reaches are clear convincing un substantiated judgment on relative importance and it's this concept of relative importance which is where you explain that although the stated Factor did of course have a range of effects and consequences the biggest and most important of those effects and consequences was this one for the impact of the Treaty of Versa on Germany for example you might choose to argue that although yes it had an impact on the political situation in Germany and it had an impact on the social situation in Germany the Treaty of versa's economic impact on Germany was the most important the most significant the most impactful to help you reach that kind of judgment it can help to consider issues such as how long a facet lasted for how many people it affected and whether the effect ever really went away demonstrating that you understand that events have multiple effects but that some of these effects are more or less significant than others is what will help you reach the highest levels so that's paper four let's summarize what you should expect to see firstly you'll have a choice of two questions from your depth study each question contains two parts Part A and B so select your question carefully ensure that you have a detailed knowledge of the specific terms and also so that you know and understand the time frame that's stated in the question remember that in part A you're writing an account of an event this is telling the story of what happened through at least three individual aspects you need to include lots of specific details and you need to order your account logically so that one part flows to the next what about Part B then well this is where you're required to present a multifaceted or multi Factor explanation of an event or a person the questions usually look at the impact or the importance or the contribution that one event or person made to something else this requires you to think of at least three different ways that that given Factor affected other things and explained them with detailed supporting evidence to get the highest marks you also need to consider which of the things that you've written about was most significant now in Part B it's can be worth writing an introduction that says what you're going to argue you'd outline the facets that you plan to discuss and importantly say at this stage in the introduction which one you think was most significant we call this a thesis statement it tells the examiner what you're going to argue and for the sake of the mark scheme it also shows that you're already reaching a judgment on which one was most impactful for both parts of the answer though both A and B you need to make sure that every point you make uses specific and detailed evidence you need to use paragraphs as well to properly structure your work but ultimately as I said a bit earlier at its core you could really see paper 4 is being kind of an extended version of question types that you're already used to from paper one it really isn't anything to be scared of but you must ensure that you gear your answers to the specific demands of each of Parts A and B because they do require you to do very different things while both obviously need a good structure and lots of evidence part A is about you telling a good detailed story or account while Part B need you to explain every point that you make with direct reference to the question and choose which of those effects was the most significant I hope that's useful good luck