IB History is the subject where students most often mistake knowledge for skill. A student can know the causes of a war in detail and still score in the middle, because the assessment asks what can be inferred from a document, how its origin shapes its reliability, and whether two accounts can be reconciled.

Source analysis is the skill that separates grades in this subject, and it is taught surprisingly rarely. The internal assessment then requires the same skill in a longer form, applied to a question the student has chosen.

What Paper 1 Actually Tests

The source-based paper presents a small set of documents — typically four or five — around a topic, and asks a sequence of questions that move from comprehension to evaluation to synthesis.

The first question asks what a source says or shows, which rewards careful reading and nothing else. The later questions ask about value and limitations, about comparison, and finally about how far the sources support a claim.

The paper is not testing whether the student knows the topic. It is testing whether the student can use documents as evidence, which is a different skill and one that is transferable to every humanities course the student will take afterward.

OPCVL, Taught as Reasoning Rather Than as a Formula

The standard framework for evaluating a source is origin, purpose, content, value, and limitation, and it is usually taught as an acronym to be recited.

That produces answers like *this source is limited because it is from a German newspaper*, which is a label rather than an analysis. The marks are for the reasoning that connects the origin to a specific limitation.

The reasoning has a shape: a source was produced by someone, in a position, for a purpose, in a genre. Each of those constrains what the source can tell you. A government communiqué can tell you what the government wanted citizens to believe, and cannot tell you what was happening in factories. A memoir written forty years later can tell you how an event was remembered, and its detail is unreliable precisely because of the interval.

The habit that earns marks: name the constraint, then name what the source can still be used for. A source that is unreliable about facts is often valuable about attitudes, and saying so is a higher-order judgment than dismissing it.

Value and Limitation Are Not Opposites

Students write one paragraph on value and one on limitation, which is the wrong structure because the two are connected.

The useful structure states a single property of the source and derives both consequences from it. A speech by a wartime leader is valuable because it shows the rhetoric a population was exposed to, and limited because it was designed to persuade and therefore selects and omits.

Written this way, the paragraph demonstrates that the student understands why sources are partial rather than merely that they are. That understanding is what the mark scheme's higher bands describe.

Comparison Without Listing

The comparison question asks how far two sources agree, and the common failure is a list of similarities followed by a list of differences.

The assessed skill is identifying the basis of agreement and disagreement. Two sources may agree on the facts and disagree on their significance. They may agree on the outcome and disagree about the cause. They may be describing different periods and appear to disagree.

The sentence pattern that produces credit: *Both sources agree that the policy was implemented, and they diverge on whether it was intended, which suggests the disagreement is about motive rather than about events.*

The "How Far Do the Sources Support" Question

This is the synthesis question, and it requires a judgment rather than a summary.

A strong answer weighs the sources against each other, notes what the sources do not cover, and brings in the student's own knowledge where it can adjudicate between them. It concludes with a qualified judgment about the extent of support rather than a verdict that the sources are right or wrong.

The most common weakness is treating the sources as a set of equal testimonies. Some sources are better placed than others on a given question, and saying which and why is the analysis.

The Internal Assessment: A Question That Can Be Researched

The IB History IA is a historical investigation of roughly two thousand words, and the marks are lost at the start rather than at the end.

A workable research question is narrow enough to answer in the word limit, specific enough to be contested, and answerable from sources the student can actually access. A question about why a treaty failed can be answered; a question about whether a war was inevitable is a philosophical prompt.

The IA has a prescribed structure in sections, and each section is assessed separately. Students who write a flowing essay rather than the prescribed sections lose marks for organization that had nothing to do with the quality of the argument.

Section by Section

Identification and evaluation of sources. Two sources, evaluated for origin, purpose, value, and limitation, with the evaluation connected to the investigation's specific needs rather than to general criteria.

Investigation. The body, organized around the argument, with evidence cited and interpretations weighed. This is where the student must do more than narrate.

Reflection. An assessment of what the investigation revealed about the methods of the historian. Students write this as a summary of difficulties, which misses the point. The criterion asks what the student learned about how historical knowledge is produced.

The Reflection Section, Which Is Misunderstood

The reflection is worth relatively few words and it is where the difference between a good and a very good IA often appears.

What the criterion wants: a specific account of a methodological problem encountered and how it was resolved, or how it changed the investigation. What it does not want: a list of obstacles, or a statement that the student learned a lot about research.

The distinction is between reporting the process and analysing it. A student who explains that two sources contradicted each other, that this forced a re-examination of a third, and that the resolution changed the argument's emphasis has written a reflection. A student who writes that finding sources was difficult has written a diary.

Dates, Names, and the Uses of Specificity

History answers are marked partly on the precision of evidence, and vagueness is expensive.

A paragraph that says *in the 1930s, several countries adopted protectionist policies* earns less than one that names the policy, the country, and the year. The specificity is not decoration; it is what allows the reader to assess the claim.

Students often know the dates and omit them because they are unsure of the exact year. A close approximation with a hedge is better than a vague reference: *in the mid-1930s, around 1935...* is acceptable, while *at some point in the 1930s* is not.

Writing Under Time in Paper 2

The essay paper rewards a clear argument with a thesis, paragraphs organized around claims, and evidence integrated rather than listed.

A structure that works for most questions: an introduction that states a position, three or four body paragraphs each organized around one reason, a paragraph that engages the strongest counter-argument, and a conclusion that states what the evidence shows and where it is weakest.

Students who write narrative history — this happened, then this happened — produce accurate essays that score in the middle, because narrative does not argue.

What to Ask a Tutor

Ask how they teach source evaluation as reasoning rather than as an acronym. Ask whether they will read an IA against the criteria section by section. Ask how they handle a student who knows a great deal and writes essays without a thesis.

A tutor who supplies more content is adding to the thing the student already has. The assessed skills here are argument and source handling, and both are teachable.

Paper 2 and the Thesis Problem

The essay paper is a different skill from the source paper, and the recurring weakness is the absence of a thesis.

A thesis in history is a claim that organizes the essay: not what happened, but what the evidence shows about why or how far. A student who writes *there were several causes of the conflict* has stated a topic. A student who writes *economic competition was the decisive cause in the short term, and ideological rivalry mattered more in shaping how the conflict was fought* has stated a thesis, and every paragraph can now be organized around supporting or qualifying it.

Essays without a thesis read as competent narration. They are accurate and they score in the middle, and the reason is structural rather than intellectual.

How Much Content Is Enough

History students worry constantly about knowing enough, and the worry is usually misplaced.

The examination rewards depth of evidence applied to an argument rather than breadth of coverage. Three examples used precisely, with dates and consequences, support a paragraph better than eight mentioned. A student who has studied six topics thoroughly will outperform a student who has skimmed twelve, because the essay requires evidence that can be deployed rather than recognized.

The practical rule for revision: for each topic, be able to name five specific events with dates, two historians' interpretations, and one piece of statistical or documentary evidence. That is enough to write any essay the paper is likely to ask.

The Historiographical Sentence

A single sentence naming how historians have disagreed about a question does more for an essay than a paragraph of additional facts.

The sentence has a shape: one school of interpretation argues this, another argues that, and the difference turns on a specific piece of evidence or a specific assumption. A student who can write that sentence has demonstrated that history is an argument rather than a record, which is what the higher bands describe.

Two such sentences per essay is enough. More becomes a survey of historians rather than an argument about the past.

IB History rewards the use of evidence, not the accumulation of it. Paper 1 asks what a source can and cannot establish, and the marks are for the reasoning that connects origin and purpose to a specific limitation.

Derive value and limitation from a single property of the source. Compare sources on the basis of their disagreement rather than listing similarities. Conclude synthesis questions with a qualified judgment.

The IA is won or lost at the research question. Write the prescribed sections as sections, and make the reflection an analysis of method rather than a record of difficulty.