Hello and thank you for checking out this audio revision guide from mrophistory.com. You can visit my website to download free history revision podcasts on this topic and a whole load of others. In this podcast, I'll be specifically focusing on part A questions from paper two of the Cambridge International Examinations AS level in history, which is syllabus code 9389. Now, what I'm about to say is based upon notes from the examiner's report, combined with my own practical tips and tricks for using your knowledge and skills in the right way in order to gain the number of marks that you deserve in the exam. The examiner's report is a document written by the chief examiner, that's the person who sets the exam and is therefore the person who wrote the mark scheme. And in this document, they explain what students did well in a previous exam and what needs to be improved in the future. It's therefore a really handy way to find out the things that you should include that examiners like to see and it helps you to avoid the mistakes that lower your grade. However, before we look at the chief examiner's comments, it's important to remind ourselves of what the examination itself actually looks like. Paper 2 lasts for a total of 1 and a half hours within which time you have to answer questions on two different topics from the regional option you studied in class. The timing is therefore relatively straightforward. 90 minutes to answer questions on two topics means that you should spend a maximum of 45 minutes on each topic. Now, if you studied the European option, for example, you will have to answer questions on two topics from the list of France 1789 to 1804, the industrial revolution circa 1800 to 1850, the origins of World War I circa 1900 to 1914, and the Russian Revolution 1905 to 1917. Questions on all these topics will be there. You just need to choose the questions on the two topics that you feel that you will do best on. Now, although the exam paper refers to each topic as a question, the reality is that each topic actually has two questions. These are referred to as part A and part B for each topic. Together, each question is worth 30 marks. So, the paper is marked out of 60. Part A questions are marked out of 10 while part B are worth 20. Now, since 10 marks is a third of the total topic marks, that means that you should spend about a third of your topic time answering the part A question. This means since it's 45 minutes for the total topic, you should spend an absolute maximum of 15 minutes answering part A questions. I'll go through all this again in a little bit. Now, part A questions are what are referred to as causation questions. This means that they require you to explain why something happened. There's a generic mark scheme for each question, which shows that to get the highest marks, you need to analyze and explain a range of different reasons. Your answer needs to be supported by precise evidence. And so I strongly advise my students to practice the P paragraph structure to ensure that their paragraphs show a clear connection between their argument, evidence, and analysis. Now, marks in the highest level for part A are awarded to those answers that consider the relative significance of factors and reach a supported conclusion. What this means is that you need to demonstrate that some factors were more or less important than others and explain why. So to recap what you need to do in a part question. Firstly, you need to write a multicausal explanation. This needs to include detailed evidence and you need to justify the way you ranked the different contributing factors. This is all clearly shown in the mark scheme and you should hopefully already know it from your working class. But it's worth us reminding ourselves of how to structure this type of answer. Now, I've already said that the P paragraph structure or some similar paragraph format will help you to address all of the points that you need to in these questions. If you're not sure what exactly I mean by a P paragraph, check out some of my IGCSE exam skills podcasts at www.mmsterophis.com for an overview. When you're writing your AS essay, you should organize your argument so that each paragraph addresses a different cause. You might want to do this chronologically if you feel it's appropriate, but I often find that thematic essays in which each paragraph looks at a different category of causes actually works best. Now, if you're asked to explain why Louis V 16th was executed, for example, you would probably need to include paragraphs on Louis's actions, the role of the Jacabins, and the impact of the war. These are broad themes involved in the execution and avoid you just telling the story. For each paragraph, you would need to include specific examples to support your points, and you'd need to explain why each of them actually contributed to Louis losing his head. You'll see that this approach does avoid being chronological. It forces you to identify and explain the big reasons for the execution rather than just describing or narrating the story. This type of essay structure is the type of thing that the examiners are really looking for as proved by what the chief examiner said about student responses in the last exam. Now, the chief examiner's report states that causation can only be adequately explained by an appreciation of the combined effects of a number of factors, both long and short term. Now, this is an important thing to take on board as it shows that the examiners expect students to demonstrate a broad knowledge of the topic and prove that events in the past happened due to a combination of different factors which you need to have learned and explained in sufficient detail. This isn't actually any different to what the mark scheme says or to anything that I've already spoken about. But the fact that the chief examiner feels the need to say it again in his report suggests that some people do not actually answer the question properly. According to the examiner's report, the strongest answers are those that focus consistently on explaining why different factors cause the event in the question to happen. The very best students use a wide range of examples drawn from the long, medium, and short term, and they show how they interacted with each other. This makes it possible to then judge the relative significance of factors to show which were more or less important than others. Importantly, the chief examiner's report also highlights common mistakes that students make in their answers to part A. In particular, it warns against drifting into narrative or descriptive accounts of how something occurred. The question does not ask what happened, it asks why. Therefore, if your answer does not clearly explain why the factors you include caused an event to happen, your answer cannot gain many marks. Similarly, if you don't discuss a number of different contributing factors, then again your answer will not gain many marks. This means that a thorough and detailed knowledge of each topic is very important. Basically, you need to make sure that you revise each topic fully to ensure that you can discuss the key events and personalities in detail. The very fact that you've listened to this podcast shows that you're aware that there is a technique to answering these questions. And so, I hope that it has helped in some way towards you developing and mastering the technique that you need to get the grade you deserve. For guidance on how to answer part B and any other AS history questions, visit my website at mroph history.com.