How to get Band 6 for QCAA Modern History IA3 Investigation?

Modern History Internal Assessment 3: Investigation (IA3) will be your second time writing an extended essay for senior year. You will be provided an extensive amount of preparation and writing time. So how do you maximise your success in crafting this essay?

What is the Modern History IA3?

This assessment requires students to write a historical essay that responds to their key inquiry question (KIQ). Your teacher will provide an overview of the genre you will be focusing on, but you get to choose which topic you want to delve into.

The essay should:

• Be up to 2000 words
• Use evidence from reliable sources

How is the Modern History IA3 Assessed?

The marking guide breaks this assessment into 6 unique categories. Below is a breakdown of each category and how they will look in our essay.

1. Comprehending

This assessment criteria looks for your ability to comprehend terms, concepts and issues. To score full marks, you work should have these characteristics:

1. Thorough and mostly accurate use of terms placed into historical contexts
2. Detailed explanation of issues related to the key inquiry question
3. Informed understanding of the relationship between concepts and a variety of ideas developed in response to the key inquiry question.

Follow these three ideas:

• Throughout your essay, ensure that you use historical terms you have seen and learnt from your background reading.
• Ensure that any concepts/ideas you introduce in your essay are well-explained, relevant to your KIQ, and accurate.
• Go in-depth on how certain issues impact your individual/event to show your understanding of the time and connection to the KIQ.

If you are unsure about how to start, a private tutor from KIS Academics can help!

2. Devising and Conducting

You have to devise a historical question and conduct research linked to the topic. The instrument-specific marking guide (ISMG) breaks this into three points.

1. Discerning use of historical questions by creating a nuanced key inquiry question.
2. Detailed use of historical research by using evidence from primary and secondary sources that demonstrate application of the key inquiry question and hypothesis.
3. Selection of evidence from primary and secondary sources that offer different perspectives.

Therefore, you have to select a range of historical sources that work well together for your devised KIQ. After choosing your event/person from the topics provided, it is vital to do extensive background research. I recommend creating a table to. organise your information, like:

When devising the KIQ, it is important to establish your main individual/event and their impact on the broader topic. Here are a couple of stems that you can use to devise your KIQ:

• To what extent…?
• How important were…to…?
• How significant were the actions of…?
• What were the major factors which led to…?
• To what degree did…actions threaten a balance of power in…?

3. Analysing

To score full marks in this category, your work should have:

1. Discerning use of the features of evidence from primary and secondary sources.
2. Detailed examination of the features of evidence from sources.
3. Informed explanation about how evidence from sources contributes to the development of the key inquiry question and hypothesis.

This means your sources have to be used for the right purpose. These are the different features of evidence:

• Origin
• Motive
• Audience
• Perspective
• Context
• Explicit and implicit meanings
  • Signposts for Explicit meaning: emphasises, describes, illustrates, demonstrates, highlights
  • Signposts for Implicit meaning: suggests, implies, insinuates, hints

It is important to ensure that every source utilised includes one of these features of evidence. The evidence used must support your points in each paragraph, as well as the overall argument. For each source used, ensure that you:

1. Are discerning with your use of features of evidence.
2. Have a detailed examination of the features of evidence.
3. Include an informed explanation of how evidence contributes to the development of your argument/hypothesis.

4. Synthesising

For this category, your work should have:

1. Combination of information from sources to justify insightful decisions.
2. Combination of information from sources to support a sophisticated historical argument.
3. These combinations use evidence from primary and secondary sources.

This category carries the highest weightage, so it is important to ace this. It demands for your entire essay to be cohesive answers your KIQ. A simple way to ensure you meet this criterion is by structuring your body paragraphs following the TEEL method:

• Topic Sentence: clearly state how this point answers your KIQ
• Evidence: provide the evidence to back your argument up
• Evaluation: analyse and evaluate how your sources prove your point, as well as the limitations of the source (as mentioned in above section)
• Link: always end the body paragraph linking back to the point you are trying to make in this paragraph, and how it answers your KIQ

You should also ensure synthesis in your introduction and conclusion.

• Introduction: When introducing your different arguments, make it clear how they attack or support your KIQ.
• Conclusion: Reiterate how every piece of evidence in the essay serves your arguments, and how that relates to your hypothesis for your KIQ.

5. Evaluating

The criteria for this category is:

1. Discerning judgments about usefulness and reliability .
2. These judgments use evidence from primary and secondary sources and/or refer to different perspectives.
3. These judgments are well-reasoned and corroborated.

This section requires you to ‘evaluate’ the usefulness and reliability of your sources.

• Usefulness:
  • State whether a source is useful or not, and provide a reason for this.
  • For the topic mark to ensure your judgement is well-reasoned, incorporate your features of evidence into this.
• Reliability:
  • A source can be unreliable, somewhat reliable, reliable to an extent or highly reliable. It’s important to identify the different ‘levels’ of reliability of your sources.
  • Utilise the features of evidence to create a well-reasoned judgement about a source’s reliability.
  • Can also be judged using corroboration. If two or more sources support similar ideas in a unique way, such as the implicit meaning of one source corroborates with the motive of another, then the source can be deemed reliable.

6. Communicating

These are the 3 criteria:

1. Succinct, with ideas related to the key inquiry question and hypothesis conveyed logically.
2. Features of a historical essay based on research and ethical scholarship are consistently demonstrated.
3. Minimal errors in spelling, grammar and punctuation.

This category mainly assesses your command of the English language. Simply ensure that your writing is clear and follows the requirements of the assignment.

How to Structure the Essay?

1. Introduction

Keep this concise and clear. Ensure that you have done all these:

• Contextualise the topic (time, place and/or significance)
• Clearly state your hypothesis
• Succinctly outline key points of argument to be made in the essay

2. Body Paragraphs

Have 2 to 4 clear and focused body paragraphs:

• Outline the point being made (topic sentence)
• Elaborate and support the point, referencing knowledge of the task
• Support your evidence by analysing, evaluating and linking back to your point
• Demonstrate how the point contributes to the overall argument

3. Conclusion

• Summarise and draw together key points made in the body of the essay
• Reiterates how these points support the hypothesis
• Does NOT introduce any new information, ideas or sources

If you require an additional pair of eyes to provide constructive feedback on your essay, try out KIS Academics' Assignment Marking service!

Final Tips and Tricks

• Find and decide on your sources as early as possible providing yourself ample time to write the best essay.
• Plan out your essay and see where you can fit specific sources. You can try to use your sources by date (from earliest to latest), but this is not a hard fast rule.
• Constantly proofread your work, and ask for feedback from teachers, tutors, or even peers!

Conclusion

Ultimately, your essay should flow and read well. I recommend getting feedback from a sibling or friend to see if they can follow your argument. Who knows, maybe you just might teach them a thing or two about our modern history! If you are seriously struggling, a tutor from KIS Academics can help you.

FAQs

Written by KIS Academics Tutor, Ragulan Gnanavel. He currently tutors Specialist Mathematics, and Mathematical Methods and specialises in Modern History and Physics assignments. Ragulan is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Actuarial Studies and a Bachelor of Commerce at UNSW. He has outstanding tutoring credentials, and you can view Ragulan’s profile here and request him as a tutor.

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