History Paper 1

[cranberry_isle]

Our teacher's method of teaching us information about Stalin was giving us a 600 page biography for summer reading. We'll probably do some more stuff when school starts up again, but i was just wondering, from those who have already taken this test, or know more than i do at least, how beneficial this will be.

or did anyone elses teacher use the same method?

just curious.

[Lan]

same here. my teacher, he is crazy by the way, told us to read a textbook about Canada (600 pgs and up) and write a summary about the ups and down ( conflicts) of Canada. okay, first, i'm taking the history of the Americas next year, and i truly don't see the point of understanding the history of Canada would help me in that course in any way. second, he told me to mail it to him by mid July. so i was wondering , is he really that bored over the summer that he is just dying to have some works to do? come on!! i'm going on a vocation for a month( to ny) and i'm to camp next week for a whole week!! he is insane, and i'm going to have him for the rest of my high school year. ~sigh~

[Scade]

No we really didn't use that method. Instead we went through the stuff in class, and he assigned reading from our textbook (Mastering Modern World History by Norman Lowe), in addition to that he recommended us a book called A History of Modern Russia by Robert Service. Not many of us read it (I did), but pretty many people scored well. By whom is your book written? If it is a personal account of Stalin's life I don't know how useful it is, but if it incorporates the whole business there not just Stalin it might be great.

I think it is a good strategy to make sure you know the period well, not just Stalin because the questions aren't only about him. Basically you can get through paper 1 without knowing much about the subject, the only place where you will need to actually use your own knowledge is the mini-essay. Of course if you study Stalin for paper 1 you might want to do it well so you can use your knowledge of that era also in paer 2&3.

[cranberry_isle]

The first third of it, i've learned after looking at the syllabus, is completely useless, as it covers his childhood a little bit and then a hundred pages worth of how his relationship with lenin grows, what he does before he takes full control, etc.

its talked about all aspects of things so far, so i'm pretty sure it'll talk a LOT about other thigns that were happening during his reign... there is 400 pages to fill with information from that time period, afterall.

the book is by Edvard Radzinsky


(and also, history of the americas covers canada, mexico and latin america in addition to the US... surprise!)

[Kiel]

Our teacher did not tell us to read books as supplements for the USSR, but she did let us read Richard Pipes' [i]The Three Whys to the Russian Revolution[/i]. We covered the material through her PowerPoint Presentations where she would explain the material while there are rough bullet points on the projector.

Reading the book I think would be pretty beneficial but honestly, I don't know if I can last a few days reading a 600 page biography. But if you really want to be prepared for Paper 1 and 2 (which does cover a lot about Russia), reading something more detailed and in depth would surely increase your chances of doing good in the exams. Make sure you take detailed and specific notes about your material while reading. Historiography is also very important so you should have a separate page where you write the historian's thesis and even better, a quote that summarizes or clearly demonstrates his stance.

Hope that helps.

[rubii]

im scared now, from reading your responses...

im the first year in my school to do the IB...
and for our history syllabus, we haven't exactly been told to do much background reading...
all we have are the textbooks, our teachers' brains and powerpoints.

is it extremely important that we do background reading? for example Robert Service?

[robertomx]

In my school we read a couple of books each semester for historiography. I don't know about reading a specific biography, because we've only read historians so far (for example, Eric Hobsbawm, Jean Meyer, Robert Service and so on). I wouldn't say a biography will be too helpful for Paper 1, though. 1 a), 1 b), 2 and 3 are based on the sources they give, so no help there, and well, for 4 you just need some knowledge on the subject.


[quote name='rubii' post='18774' date='Jun 25 2008, 10:44 AM']... is it extremely important that we do background reading? for example Robert Service?[/quote]


I'd say it is, as IB requires you to be aware of historiography for exams.

Edited June 25, 2008 by robertomx

[schouston1991]

wow yeah 600 pages should be more than enough. just make sure that you have plenty of material form different sources and different historians point of view. You're main problem will be if the 600 pages are from all the same source

For us, our teacher just photocopies relevent sections from different text books, historians points of views and journal articles as well. its not so much the quantity that counts but the quality. We've also seen a few dvd's and documentaries. Then we do exercises on them.

Just make sure that you've taken notes form the 600 pages and that the notes correspond to the relevent syllabus points. Also if you're not sure whether you know the topic well enough look aver a few past papers and see how you do.

other than that sounds like your more than prepared

-soph x

oh yeah and for the canadian history one ---> wat!!?? well im not doing that anyway. haha i have no idea how that is relevant

Edited July 4, 2008 by schouston1991

[tournedos]

We generally get a book, mine is by Michael Lynch, to read on Stalin. Some get Corin and Fein

My teachers also occasionally photocopy relevant stuff from various sources for us to read for revisionist, etc views on the history topic. I think as long as you've some contextual knowledge of Stalin it should be okay for Paper 1...