It’s exam question time! And today we’re looking at the question you voted for, so here is…
How to answer a 16 mark interpretations question.
This is the question that appears as question 3 d on section B of your paper 3,
which, depending on what topic you’re doing, will either be your Weimar & Nazi Germany,
Russia and the Soviet Union, Mao’s China or USA conflict paper.
Essentially it’s the very last question of your exam.
There are just a couple of other things which I would like to mention before I start.
First of all, this video is covering the Edexcel 9-1 history GCSE, although there
is a chance those of you who are studying for other exam boards may find it helpful.
The interpretation question tests SPAG on top of everything else,
and 4 extra marks are available for good SPAG. SPAG is spelling,
punctuation and grammar. However, I plan to go into SPAG in a separate video,
so I won’t cover it here. You should also note that it tests your use of key terms and how well
your essay flows so there needs to be a logical argument which runs throughout your answer.
It’s a tough question so don’t worry if you find it quite hard to wrap your head around.
Paper 3 comes with an insert- a sheet that you can take out of the exam booklet - and on this insert
there are 2 sources and 2 interpretations which will be labelled as such. A source is a thing
with some information about an event- that could be a picture or a newspaper report from the time,
a transcription of something someone said or something else entirely. An interpretation,
however, is a view given by a historian on an event. These will be given in the form of a short
paragraph, labelled interpretations 1 and 2. And these are what this question focuses on. Also, pay
attention because it’s very easy to accidentally write ‘source’ when you mean interpretation.
The two interpretations will give different views on the topic in the question,
so you will need to familiarise yourself with the interpretations. If you do questions 3 a, b and c
before you do this one, question 3 d, by the time you get to this question, you’ll know what they’re
on about. However, if you’re running out of time it’s better to skip straight to this question
because it’s worth a lot of marks - you should leave yourself around 25 minutes to write it.
So, let’s dive in with an example. The question we’re going to be using
as an example is taken from the topic Weimar and Nazi Germany, but as usual,
this method will apply to all the potential topics you could study for your paper 3.
So our example question is: ‘How far do you agree with Interpretation 2
about the reasons for the growth in support for the Nazi Party in the years 1929-32?
Explain your answer, using both interpretations and your knowledge of historical context.’
The question is looking at the reasons for the growth in support for the Nazis
and this is something you need to bear in mind when you read the interpretations.
Also note that it can ask about either interpretation 1 OR interpretation 2,
so you want to pay attention to which one it’s asking about.
The first thing we’re going to need to do then, is to work out what the overall view
given in each interpretation is. Note, we’re not looking for specific small things yet,
but we want to sum up what view the interpretation is giving overall-
what reason is the interpretation giving for the growth in Nazi support.
Also note that you’ll be told the book and author each interpretation comes from.
So interpretation 1 reads:
‘Hitler himself was central to the success of the Nazis in the years 1929-32. He provided
charismatic leadership with his powerful message to build a new Germany. He was a powerful speaker
with his timing, expression and the content of his speeches impressing listeners. He was able
to identify with their emotions and gave people hope. Along with Goebbels, he realised the
importance of propaganda. He used propaganda to target the specific grievances of many Germans.’
Essentially, this interpretation is saying that Hitler himself was the
reason for the growth in support. We want to take note of this for later,
so I’d suggest scribbling this down underneath the interpretation on the insert.
Now we need to work out the overall view in interpretation 2.
Interpretation 2 reads:
‘There was nothing inevitable about Hitler becoming Chancellor of Germany in January 1933.
Five years earlier the Nazis had been a small party in German politics with little support.
Event such as the Wall Street Crash, which led to depression in Germany, brought increased
support for the Nazis in the years 1929-32. Chance events, such as the depression and unemployment,
played a much larger role than any actions of the Nazi leader himself in bringing Hitler to power.’
This interpretation is arguing that rather than Hitler being responsible for the growth in Nazi
support, it was mainly down to chance events- again, we want to scribble this down somewhere.
We also want to think about which interpretation we find more convincing, do we find them both
similarly convincing, or do we find one more convincing than the other. Personally,
I find interpretation 2 to be more convincing, so that will be what I argue in this example.
One final thing we want to do before we set pen to paper is pick out a couple of quotes from
each source- 2 from each if we can. These quotes should be examples the interpretation gives and
things it says to back up its overall argument. So from interpretation 1 we could pick out:
“He was a powerful speaker with his timing, expression and the content of his speech
impressing listeners.” And
“He used propaganda to target the specific grievances of many Germans.”
And from interpretation 2 we could pick out:
“Five years earlier the Nazis had been a small party in German politics with little support.”
And “Events such as the Wall Street Crash, which
led to depression in Germany, brought increased support for the Nazis in the years 1929-32.”
Right, so now we have studied the interpretations, we should probably talk about structure.
In order to get full marks in this question, you’re going to need to talk
about both interpretations, I’d recommend having 2 paragraphs on each interpretation.
And I’d recommend alternating these paragraphs, (agree, disagree, agree,
disagree) so if you run out of time during your 2nd paragraph, at least you’ve talked
about both interpretations. You’re also going to need a conclusion.
The structure you want to use within your paragraphs goes like this.
You want to state the Summary, quote, evidence and then link. SQEL.
Let’s put pen to paper!
As the question is asking about how far we agree with interpretation 2,
we’re going to write about interpretation 2 first. Using SQEL,
the first thing we need to do is summarise the view given in the interpretation - luckily we
wrote this down on our insert earlier, so we can write, ‘Interpretation 2 says that
chance events such as the Wall Street Crash and Great Depression were much more important
to the growth in Nazi support between 1929 and 1932 than anything Hitler did himself.’
We now need to use a quote to show how the Interpretation tries to support this claim.
So let’s put, ‘The interpretation supports this claim by stating that
“five years earlier the Nazis had been a small party in German politics with
little support”’ - that’s one of the quotes we jotted down earlier.
So the next step is evidence, and, as usual, that means we need to use some SPEND,
that’s statistics, places, events, names and dates. We’ll use this evidence to agree with
the argument in the paragraph as this paragraph is focussing on the agree side of the question.
So here we could say, ‘From my own knowledge,’- that’s a really good phrase by the way,
because it makes it very clear to the examiner that you’re adding your own knowledge- ‘I know
that the 1923 Munich Putsch, which the Nazis led, failed due to a lack of support
and that even by 1928, Hitler still only had 2.5% of the vote’.
And then you need to link it back the question- in this case, this means talking about how convincing
we find the interpretation to be in relation to the statement in the question, so we can finish
this paragraph up with, ‘This therefore increases how convincing I find interpretation 2 to be.’
So now we need to address the counter argument and talk about interpretation 1.
The way we give a counter-argument, is by using the explanation given in interpretation 1
as an alternative reason. So in this case we do this by going ’no the support for the Nazis was
because of Hitler’s charisma, not chance events’. So let’s summarise the view in interpretation 1.
And again, we’ve made life easier for ourselves by having this already
scribbled down on the insert, so let’s write: ‘However, interpretation 1 provides an alternative
reasoning for why Nazi support grew between 1929 and 1932, which challenges interpretation 2.
Interpretation 1 suggests that Hitler himself was the key reason for the growth’.
Now we need to quote, so we’ll take the first of the quotes from interpretation 1 we jotted
down earlier and do the same thing we did for the other interpretation - show how the
interpretation supports its argument. ‘And backs this up by saying “he was a powerful
speaker with his timing, expression and the content of his speeches impressing listeners.”’
Evidence: we need to grab some more SPEND and it’s the same thing as we did for the first
interpretation. ‘From my own knowledge, I know that this was indeed true. Hitler’s speeches
were well rehearsed and would begin quietly and slowly, building up to an impassioned rage.
At the 46 party gatherings of the DAP held between November 1919
and November 1920, Hitler appeared as the star speaker on 31 occasions.’
And then we link it back to the question by saying how this affects
how convincing we find interpretation 2 - the interpretation this question is focussing on.
‘This would therefore challenge how convincing interpretation 2 is, by suggesting that Hitler
was potentially a more important reason than chance events for the growth in support.’
So, as we’re alternating which interpretation we talk about in each paragraph, our next paragraph
needs to talk about interpretation 2 again. As we have already talked about what view is stated in
interpretation 2 in our first paragraph, we can skip this step of SQEL, and go straight to quote.
But as this question tests how well we write our answer,
we will need to make sure it flows - let’s put, ‘On the other hand,
interpretation 2 further substantiates its claims by stating’ and then we’ll write the
other quote we picked out earlier,’“events such as the Wall Street Crash, which led
to depression in Germany, brought increased support for the Nazis in the years 1929-32.”’
Now we need some evidence to back this up. So we can write,
‘From my own knowledge, I know this to be true. The Great Depression
meant that unemployment went from 1.3 million before the crash to 6.1 million by January 1933,
with many in extreme poverty, causing desperation. The Weimar government decreased its spending in
attempt to control inflation, which led to cuts to wages and unemployment benefits,
turning many against them. This led to a growth in support for extremist parties, such as the Nazis.’
And then we just need to link it back to the question.
‘This would therefore further increase how convincing I find interpretation 2 to be.’
And we now need to do this again for interpretation 1. Again, because we
have already said what the overall view of the interpretation is, we can skip this step and
go straight to a quote. Here we can put our last remaining quote. ‘However, interpretation 1 also
substantiates its view further, by talking about Hitler’s use of propaganda. It says of Hitler,
that “he used propaganda to target the specific grievances of many Germans”.
Now we need some evidence, so let’s put, ‘From my own knowledge,
I know that the Nazis used slogans such as ‘Bread and Work’ during the Great Depression,
a time where unemployment went over 6 million in Germany and many had been
pushed into extreme poverty, so a stable food supply would be very appealing.’
And then we just link it back to the question again. ‘This would again
take from how convincing I find interpretation 2 to be
for why there was a growth in support for the Nazis between 1929 and 1932.’
So now we need to wrap the whole thing off with a conclusion. Unsurprisingly,
you’re going to have state here how far you agree with the interpretation in the
question- interpretation 2. Note that you’re not saying which interpretation you agree with more,
you’re saying how far you agree with the interpretation in the question
(interpretation 2). So if you agree with interpretation 1 more than interpretation 2,
then you’ll just say that you don’t find interpretation 2 very convincing.
In this case, however, we’re going to agree with interpretation 2, so we’ll put that.
We also need to give a brief explanation of the reason why we find the interpretation convincing
or not. So we could put. ‘To conclude, whilst the alternative reasons suggested by interpretation 1
hold some merit, interpretation 2 in pointing to the fact the Nazis had been a very small
party prior to the Wall Street Crash and to the suffering which the crash brought about,
is successfully able to use this to explain why there was a growth in support for the Nazis.
The fact that Nazi party remained small until 1928 despite Hitler’s speaking skills and that it took
the Great Depression to create the grievances which the Nazis targeted with their propaganda,
takes from the value of interpretation 1 and would suggest that interpretation 2
holds more weight. Therefore I strongly agree with interpretation 2
about the reasons for growth in Nazi support between 1929 and 1932.’
And we’re done! If you have time,
read back through your answer and make sure you’re happy with it and then relax.
I’d also like to point out that there are a couple of different ways you could order your paragraphs
and it doesn’t really matter which one you do. You could also put them like this for instance,
or like this. The reason I chose to alternate them was just in case you run out of time,
so at least you’ve covered both interpretations. Some people even suggest writing three and not
four paragraphs as it might help you make sure your answer doesn’t sit on the fence - so two
for the interpretation you agree with and one for the one where you disagree.
And another thing I’d like to point out, which is the case for all exam questions. This is just one
way to answer this type of question- your teacher may teach a completely different method, and your
teacher is probably just as right, so really you just need to find a method which works for you.
And, as usual, I’m going to have to recommend that your next step is to go away and practice. I’ll
put a link to some example answers and practice questions in the description and you can go and
answer them and force your teacher to mark them. Or you can have a go at marking them yourself,
that can be quite useful. Your teacher is there to teach you, so use them. Extra points if you
manage to annoy them with the sheer volume of questions you want them to mark. It worked for me.
Thanks for watching, don’t forget to like, subscribe and tell all your friends. I want
to say a big thank you to Andy for checking my script so there’s no duff advice - he has an
awesome channel which you might also find useful called History Blast which I’ll drop a link to
in the description. Other than that, if you want to see what I'm up to then you can find
me on twitter @alongtimeago_YT, also instagram @alonglongtimeago. And if you like my work enough
and you can afford it, and you want to donate some money to help make more and better videos,
then you can find a link to my patreon, also in the description. Laters gaters.