Command terms

Question 1

Analyse

Answer 1

• avoid a descriptive approach
• to avoid a descriptive approach,and ensure that you analyse rather than describe or write a narrative event, you should focus on finding thematic points around which to organize your information.
• example question: “analyse the reasons for the outbreak of WW1” -> organize your essay around long-term versus short-term and/or political, ideological, economic causes.

Question 2

Compare and contrast

Answer 2

• analyze similarities and differences between two or more case studies, event or developments.
• try to refer to both case studies/events or developments throughout the essay - don’t write about just one and then the other and leave it to the end to do the comparisons and contrast, but do it throughout the essay.
• example question: compare and contrast policies towards women in two authoritarian states.

Question 3

Discuss

Answer 3

• analytical approach
• make sure you offer a balanced analysis
• discuss successes and failures of a policy/person or the benefits and advantages of, for example, an interwar economic or social development.
• example: discuss the role of Stresemann in the 1920s in Weimar Germany

Question 4

Evaluate

Answer 4

• identify and analyse the strengths and limitations/successes and failures/positives of an assertion made in the question or, for example a policy or development.
• weighh up different arguments.
• example: evaluate the impact on the cource of the Cold War of two crises, each chosen from a different region.

Question 5

Examine

Answer 5

• is used when a concept is being addressed or where there is a clear interrelationship of factors
• example: “examine the economic development in Spain in the 1930s” means that you need to begin by examining the economic developments and then consider how these impacted social and political or economic developments.

Question 6

To what extent

Answer 6

• set up arguments both supporting and challenging the factor or concept of the question
• example: “to what extent was Stalin responsible for the Could war?” - involves looking at how the first given factor factor (Stalin) was responsible for the Cold War and then weighing this against the responsibility of an alternative factors (in this case Truman)

Question 7

Basic elements of the IB history paper (for revision)

Answer 7

a. Active Verbs: e.g. compare and contrast, analyse the causes for,
account for the so and so, examine, discuss, to what extent do you
agree, and so on.

b. Phenomenon: e.g. the rise to power, the fall from power, the ability to
maintain power, the effects of a policy, the overall character of a ruler,
etc.

c. Subject: e.g. Mao and Castro, Any two Civil Wars, Stalin, the League of
Nations, etc.