How to score a 7 on both Paper 1 and Paper 2?

[Bishup]

What do you guys do or know and what do you do in order to get a level 7 in history. I only seem to be able to hover around the 6 grade. I get 13s most of the time. I was wondering what I should do in order to get a 7.

[veck]

heey

i'm taking history HL

and i believe is actually IMPOSIBLE to score a 7 hahaha

but really if you study and you are incredibly lucky to know very well all the questions for essays and sources then you have the possibility to score a 7...

i usualy get 6 on a practice papers... but it is because I study A LOT and I am lucky that i know very well the questions i chose for the essayssss but i suck at source analysis so....

hahah so really the key is to study hard and be preparedd !

[Strummer]

I know what you mean, and it is extremely difficult to get a 7 in history, but my teacher says the key to getting in that upper band is to increase your historiography and read around the subject and look what different historians are saying. So rather than just coming out with a narrative you can add in what different historians beleive and add an element of analysis and evaluation to your writing. If you see what I mean...

[PositiveVibes]

I don't think it's that hard getting a 7, at least not impossible! The important factors differ for p1 and p2 of course... In paper 1 -- stick to the sources unless they tell you otherwise! There's no time to go off track and you don't get marks for it anyways. In paper 2 -- know your historians, schools and interpretations. Never just explain the events, always actually answer the questions! You gotta get your time management down so you can write a lot and in a sensible, organized way. Be consise and remember you aren't writing an English essay so don't use metaphors or other fancy things like that.

[Center Field]

I would spend time thinking about things-after reviewing notes, spend maybe like an hour thinking about what you've read while comparing it to other sources and viewpoints. Furthermore, perhaps outside reading would help. Being able to cite historians while you write is always a plus.

[Cynthia]

Paper 1 is a piece of cake to score 7s in as long as you are taught the correct way to do source-based questions. If not do past paper 1s and look at the mark schemes, there's probably also information online on how you should optimally do paper 1. It is possible to score 22 points out of 25 (if I recall correctly) with only the source-based information, and that's a clear 7. In paper 2 I think 13 (out of 20 I assume) is already pretty close to a 7, so if you do well in P1 it should not be too hard.

Check the History syllabus and the markbands for paper 2 essays. As people have noted do historiography (in most of my P2 answers I have mentioned around 5 interpretations), you don't need to know them too in-depth to be able to do some impressive namedropping so outside reading is not really necessary if you have a good teacher/good textbook although it's of course helpful. For my last mocks I made a little list of interpretations for some topics I anticipated there might be, for example for AII:

Mosse - opportunity missed due to autocracy

Kirchner - fundamental changes but ran out of time

Watts - too little, alienated intelligentsia

Westwood - "no other ruler bought so much relief to his people"

Also if possible challenge the assumptions within the question (e.g Why was the League of Nations a failure? was not a complete failure, settled smaller disputes, Health Organization was a success, for one of my essays which was on whether Alliance system was responsible for WWI or not I had a paragraph on how it was not due to only one reason but rather a sum of several.), might also be helpful to compare to other similar historical events eg. when discussing the Paris peace conference 1919 you might compare it to Congress of Vienna in 1815...

Edited July 27, 2010 by Cynthia