analysing sources...help!! (1 Viewer)

[pig_93]

just wondering if anyone has a good way to ANALYSE SOUCES well?
i mean, everytime i do it, i just feel i have no direction and im just going for it!
(this is basically in the last question of the WW1 section ie perspective and reliability)

i have this little thing where i do

M otive
R eliability
C ontent
O rigin
A udience
P erspective

(get it, MRCOAP) but yeah, i dont use it properly each time, i just go ahead and write. any help would be much appreciated.
how do u do it??!

thankyou so much!

 

[beach_babe]

hey.well my teachers have always said that the best way,is to only analys what u
see and dont think what if ,or it could of happene this way.only analys what u see in the picture.and never assume cause thats the worse thing u can do!

i hope that can give u some insight.

good luck!!
if you need any help just let me know!

 

[pig_93]

thanks beach

yeah i get that, its good advice. but dont u get better marks if u CAN do what u said not to? i dont know, im just assumiing though. or then again, is that going off on a tangent?

grr i dont know
thanks matey
appreciate it

 

[Meldrum]

just wondering if anyone has a good way to ANALYSE SOUCES well?
i mean, everytime i do it, i just feel i have no direction and im just going for it!
(this is basically in the last question of the WW1 section ie perspective and reliability)

i have this little thing where i do

M otive
R eliability
C ontent
O rigin
A udience
P erspective

(get it, MRCOAP) but yeah, i dont use it properly each time, i just go ahead and write. any help would be much appreciated.
how do u do it??!

thankyou so much!

This is all lame and all, but I honestly think that the better responses avoid that lameo structure. They know what you have to show and show it, rather than sticking to some universal pattern:

Reliability - Can the source be trusted?
Usefulness - What can you see in the source, with regards to the question?
Perspective - Who wrote the damn thing and are they biased or do they only look at a small part of history?

 

[veridis]

yeah they're the three i use, but in a different order =)
MRCOAP seems a little unnesessary. audience is part of motive, both of which are part of reliability, origin can fit under the perspective heading and it leaves out the fact that even the most biased sources can tell us something. the PRU format is alot easier and flexible

 

[fleepbasding]

Yep, you only need to remember perspective, reliability and usefulness- but you should have motive, orgin etc in the the back of your head because different sources will require different angles. Don't worry about acronyms because the question in the exam (Q3) tells you exactly what to focus on- They are not testing your knowlege on source analysis but your ABILITY to use it.

 

[sashysashy!]

You will be asked to comment of the usefulness of 2-3 sources to a historian undertaking A PARTICULAR HISTORICAL INVESTIGATION.

You should make the following notes on your source booklet as soon as you start this section- having read them and mentally thought about all this during your reading time:

Indentify the TYPE- is it a poster? personal letter from a German soldier? personal letter from a British officer? Speech made to British Parliament? Photgraph?

Once you identify TYPE there are a whole stack of implications that you need to bring into your response, without going into content in any depth at all. The purpose of this question is not to comment on content, it is to show you have got your head around HOW the "content" of the source came to be

eg

A PHOTOGRAPH of women at work in a factory in Britain in 1917 could be deliberately POSED with the express aim of inspiring women to contribute to the war effot and normalising this major change in society. If the photograph was produced by the government, this would be highly likely. You would expect an official photograph to show clean, healthy, happy female workers in good working conditions. This contrasts with the reality of working conditions in factories in Britain where women were subject to poor working conditions and health problems (such as TNT poisoning in the case of munitions workers). This will not be evident in the photo, but you WILL have that knowledge- so that is an example of showing your knowledge AND showing you are analysing the photograph.

TYPE is the starting point for source analysis. Once you identify tyoe you then automatically start to run through author, context, motive, audience and the other requirements of the question.

ALWAYS remember to tie your analysis back to the specific historical investigation under consideration- a source that is useful for one area of investigation may not be as useful for another, because of the limited perspective it offers, unless it is used in conjunction with other sources

eg

The photograph of women etc described above may be useful for an historian investigating government propaganda in Britain, but not as much for investigating women at work in Britain in the war.