In the exam you will be presented with one 8 mark question that asks you to evaluate the usefulness of a source. What this really means is that you are required to pick the source apart and explain why the parts you have selected are useful; the key point is that selecting the correct parts of the source isn’t enough, it’s what you say about why they are useful for finding out about the topic in the question that will score marks.
You can be awarded up to 2 marks for making comments on why the source is useful because of its provenance. This means comments about who wrote it, when it was written, why it was written and any issues with potential biases.
You can be awarded up to 2 marks for making comments on why the source is useful because of what it says about the issue in question.
You can be awarded up to 4 marks for making further developed points about the context of the source or pointing out relevant omisions i.e. what the source fails to mention about the issue in question.
Let’s walk you through an example question and I’ll show you how to answer one of these questions and I’ll make comments on my thinking as we go through it. Below is a typical example of what one of these questions looks like. This one relates to topic one of the Life in Classical Greece, Power and Freedom unit – Athenian democracy.
Source A was written by the comic playwright Aristophanes in the 5th century BC
There’s an Assembly called for sunrise and who’s here? No one. Not even the prytaneis. They’ll come late and then they’ll all pile in together, shoving each other to get the front seats like there’s no tomorrow. As for how we’ll get peace, they don’t give a toss. O my city, my city! I’m always first to take my seat, here in the Assembly. All on my own, I sigh and yawn, stretch and fart, don’t know what to do. I doodle on the ground, pull a few hairs out, do some sums in my head, all the time gazing out over the countryside, yearning for peace, hating the city, longing for my deme...Now I’m here all ready to shout, interrupt and slag off any speaker who doesn’t talk about peace. Hullo, here come the prytaneis, right on the dot of midday. Didn’t I tell you? Just like I said, all pushing to get to the front seats.
Evaluate the usefulness of Source A as evidence of the functioning of the democratic system in Athens in the 5th century BC (8 marks)
You could comment on who wrote it, when they wrote it, what they say, why they say it and what has been missed out.
Aside from the source there are three important parts to the question above
"Source A was written by the comic playwright Aristophanes in the 5th century BC" - This part of the question is known as the rubric. It contains the provenance of the source, specifically the author and the date.
"Evaluate the usefulness of Source A as evidence of the functioning of the democratic system in Athens in the 5th century BC (8 marks)" - The question itself lets you know what you should focus your comments on. In this case they should focus very specifically on the functioning of the democratic system in Athens.
"You could comment on who wrote it, when they wrote it, what they say, why they say it and what has been missed out." - This part of the question contains reminders of the types of evaluative comments you should make. Your comments must be evaluative; anyone with basic literacy can tell us who wrote the source and what it says – you need to go further and explain why that’s useful.
It’s easiest for both you and the marker if you subdivide your answer into three short paragraphs:
Provenance of the source
Content of the source
Omissions
You can do these in any order, some people prefer to start with the provenance others with the content. It doesn’t matter as long as you follow the process.
Step 1:
Begin your answer with a simple statement that sets up what you are about to do and lets you answer the question directly. Something along the lines of: “Source A is quite useful as evidence of the functioning of the democratic system in Athens in the 5th century BC but does not give the complete picture.”
Step 2:
I’m going to deal with the content of the source first because that’s what I feel most confident doing. It will also allow me to flow into my second mini paragraph on omissions. I find the provenance comments quite tricky so I’ll leave them till last; this way I’ve hopefully scored 6/8 before I begin the part I find the trickiest. So back to the source:
There’s an Assembly called for sunrise and who’s here? No one. Not even the prytaneis. They’ll come late and then they’ll all pile in together, shoving each other to get the front seats like there’s no tomorrow. As for how we’ll get peace, they don’t give a toss. O my city, my city! I’m always first to take my seat, here in the Assembly. All on my own, I sigh and yawn, stretch and fart, don’t know what to do. I doodle on the ground, pull a few hairs out, do some sums in my head, all the time gazing out over the countryside, yearning for peace, hating the city, longing for my deme...Now I’m here all ready to shout, interrupt and slag off any speaker who doesn’t talk about peace. Hullo, here come the prytaneis, right on the dot of midday. Didn’t I tell you? Just like I said, all pushing to get to the front seats.
I’ve highlighted the bits of the source I think are useful in bold above. Here they are itemised below:
There’s an Assembly called for sunrise and who’s here? No one. Not even the prytaneis.
Now I’m here all ready to shout, interrupt and slag off any speaker who doesn’t talk about peace.
These are two useful pieces of the source that allow me to provide an explanation and expansion on how they help me to understand the functioning of the democratic system. I’m going to use what we’ve learned about the Athenian Assembly to make these comments. You can either use the quotes and then explain their usefulness or paraphrase the source and explain. They’re both fine as long as you aren’t simply stating what the source says. You must explain why they are useful quotes:
“Source A is quite useful as evidence of the functioning of the democratic system in Athens in the 5th century BC but does not give the complete picture. It states “There’s an Assembly called for sunrise and who’s here? No one. Not even the prytaneis.” This is useful in showing us that because Assembly meetings had up to 6,000 citizens in attendance, many people turned up early to ensure that they would have a spot. Furthermore it briefly mentions the prytaneis which is useful as evidence of the functioning of the democratic system because they were the 50 man representatives of the Boule or Council of 500 whose job was to prepare the agenda for and administer meetings of the Assembly. It also mentions that the author is “ready to shout, interrupt and slag off any speaker who doesn’t talk about peace.” This is useful in showing that any citizen in attendance could speak his own mind and that the meetings could be quite rowdy with different opinions being yelled across the pnyx by citizens.”
These are some good points because they go beyond simply telling us what the source says and the comments focus very closely on the functioning of the democracy i.e. they tell us that Assembly meetings started early because it took time to assemble 6,000 citizens and that every citizen had a right to speak at these meetings. These points would definitely score 2 marks.
Step 3
Now having stated why the source is useful because of what it tells us, I’m going to use my detailed knowledge of the topic to explain 4 key points about the functioning of Athenian democracy that is not mentioned in the source. I’ll base these points around:
The difficulties of attending meetings of the Assembly
Some of the Assembly’s functions
Ostracism
Lack of democratic rights for women, slaves and metics.
Here goes:
“The source however fails to mention some key aspects of the functioning of Athenian democracy. It does not mention that the Assembly met every nine days and that this was a big burden on the time of citizens making it difficult for those living further away from Athens to attend frequently. It hints at the Assembly’s ability to declare war and peace but fails to mention other key functions such as it being the body which elected important officials such as the ten generals who were chosen each year to command Athens’ military forces. It does not mention that the Assembly had the power to call for an ostracism which was the means by which citizens could defend their democracy from potential internal threats by voting to banish someone from the city for a period of ten years. Finally it fails to mention that the right to participate in Athenian democratic politics belonged to a narrow body of citizens who were males over the age of eighteen and that women, foreign born metics and slaves had no political rights or representation themselves.”
These points are detailed, accurate and relevant regarding the functioning of Athenian democracy and so would score 4 marks. The relevancy is particularly important – you can’t just write down anything and everything you know about Athenian democracy. Your points must be relevant to the specifics of the question.
Step 4
Now the bit that no one likes. The provenance of the source seems to trip people up largely because we find it hard to be as specific in our points about the time and author as we were about the content and we start waffling vague points about primary sources and bias. It’s fine to talk about these things, we just need to be specific to this source in how we do it. Time to look at the rubric again:
"Source A was written by the comic playwright Aristophanes in the 5th century BC" - This part of the question is known as the rubric. It contains the provenance of the source, specifically the author and the date.
Okay. So for this part I’m going to focus my comments on: who wrote the source and why that is useful; the type of source and why that is useful and the timing of the source and why that is useful. I’m going to make very specific points about each of these that are applicable to this source. What many people find tempting is to try and trot out the same generic comments no matter what the source is as an effort to get through this but what tends to happen is you waste 5 or so minutes of exam time writing vague points that gain no marks. Here’s my thinking:
Time = Okay, so the source is from the 5th century BC which is the time period we study in the Athenian unit. Great, so that makes this primary source useful to us because the author is at least describing the Athenian Assembly as it was in the period that is relevant to us so that might make his descriptions more accurate as he’s not having to rely on other sources.
Author = The author is an Athenian citizen who is definitely educated (he’s a playwright) and in order to write about the Assembly in his plays and make it relevant, understandable and funny to his Greek audience, he’ll need to have a good understanding of how it works in order to do this convincingly. He’s probably attended it a number of times which should again hopefully make it more accurate.
Purpose = This is where things get a little muddied for us. The source is a comedy play which means that the author is probably exaggerating certain aspects of the subject in order to be amusing and entertain and therefore we can’t completely rely on its accuracy at face value.
So if we put all of this together with the rest of our answer, it should look a little something like this:
“Source A is quite useful as evidence of the functioning of the democratic system in Athens in the 5th century BC but does not give the complete picture. It states “There’s an Assembly called for sunrise and who’s here? No one. Not even the prytaneis.” This is useful in showing us that because Assembly meetings had up to 6,000 citizens in attendance, many people turned up early to ensure that they would have a spot. Furthermore it briefly mentions the prytaneis which is useful as evidence of the functioning of the democratic system because they were the 50 man representatives of the Boule or Council of 500 whose job was to prepare the agenda for and administer meetings of the Assembly. It also mentions that the author is “ready to shout, interrupt and slag off any speaker who doesn’t talk about peace.” This is useful in showing that any citizen in attendance could speak his own mind and that the meetings could be quite rowdy with different opinions being yelled across the pnyx by citizens.
The source however fails to mention some key aspects of the functioning of Athenian democracy. It does not mention that the Assembly met every nine days and that this was a big burden on the time of citizens making it difficult for those living further away from Athens to attend frequently. It hints at the Assembly’s ability to declare war and peace but fails to mention other key functions such as it being the body which elected important officials such as the ten generals who were chosen each year to command Athens’ military forces. It does not mention that the Assembly had the power to call for an ostracism which was the means by which citizens could defend their democracy from potential internal threats by voting to banish someone from the city for a period of ten years. Finally it fails to mention that the right to participate in Athenian democratic politics belonged to a narrow body of citizens who were males over the age of eighteen and that women, foreign born metics and slaves had no political rights or representation themselves.
The source is a primary source from the 5th century BC which is when the Athenian democracy was functioning and therefore it is describing the institution as it was at the time in question which could make it more accurate as we don’t have to rely on later sources for a description. It was written by the comic Aristophanes who as an educated citizen will probably have had a detailed understanding of how the democratic system functioned in order to write about it in an entertaining way and so again that could make it more accurate. However, because the source comes from a comic play it is likely to be exaggerating certain aspects of the system and therefore it might not be completely accurate and therefore less useful.”
This answer would likely score 8/8 because it is well structured and answers the specifics of the question:
Quotes from the source are relevant to the question and their usefulness explained.
Omissions and further explanations are detailed, relevant and accurate.
Comments on the provenance are very specific to the question.