Historiography in History Essays

[laryxle]

I've been studying for history for my upcoming exams, and I keep handing in essays to my teacher, who marks them for me. I usually get around 15-17, and the comment she always makes is that if I put in some historiography then I would be getting 18-20 for my essays.

But, she gave our class the November 2009 History Subject Report, and one of the striking comments made in that was that the essays which were awarded the highest marks were those without historiography, because most people just name-dropped historians and schools of thought. That leads me to think that you can get a 7 in History without any historiography in your essays. Also, if you look at markschemes for any history exam then for some of the questions it doesn't mention different interpretations or things like that necessary to get a mark in the top band.

Is this correct? Is it not necessary to use historiography in your essays if you are aiming for a 7?

[TOKlover]

I don't have the criteria on me but to get 16-20 for a paper 2 essay you need to look at different interpretations of history. I really don't know how much they expect, but my history teacher is under the impression that you can check off historiography in a general way, rather than have to look at specific historians.

[Stereoisomer]

One of the main error areas people fall in to (lol according to my history teacher anyways) is including too much mindless historiography!!

I guess the whole point of adding in historiography is to reflect different schools of thoughts/opinions.

Only include historiography when there is argument between, say two historians and their arguments support your main thesis.

But you definitely need to include various points of view if you want to score highly.

[sprintdominator]

Hey there. Hmm, I totally agree with mityrose. My history teacher shares the same sentiments to. He noticed that some students fall into the trap of rambling too much about the historiography pertaining to the prescribed topic and ended up not answering the question.

Edited October 16, 2010 by sprintdominator

[ridiculous]

The criteria says a student "may" include historiography effectively to get into the higher mark band. But historiography is essentially defined as quoting historians as a support for your argument (or that's what I've been told). It's safe to say that its not hard to quote historians in essays and it will show the marker that you've read up on the topics thoroughly. However you don't technically 'need' it; I've had an 18 mark essay where the only historiography I included was a cliched, 3 word quote from A.J.P Taylor, and only in passing.

As for including different points of view, while a good thing to include the main thing markers and teachers point out is that you lose marks for substituting an historian's argument for your own argument. E.g simply stating two points of view, or even discussing two contrasting schools of historical thought, even if interesting, is the same as dropping in pieces of relevant evidence without analysing them.

The way teachers at my school have suggested to use historiography is to essentially outline your argument in an essay, and then at the very least, in a concluding paragraph (before your actual conclusion) suggest a different interpretation, if its easily applicable. If you can quote/namedrop then all the better. But by no means should it be a major part of the essay ie you don't need to counter your argument in every paragraph - in my experience that usually convolutes things anyway.