Explanation and key historical ideas
Building the explanation around a claim
- Start from the puzzle. Your topic contains something that needs explaining; the explanation is your answer to it.
- Write the claim as one sentence before you write anything else. The nine-year gap was the sum of two separate delays, not one long one.
- Every section then serves part of that claim, which settles what belongs in the submission and what does not — the problem that otherwise runs the whole way through.
- Use claim headings, not topic headings. The site dispute added at least two years rather than The site dispute. A topic heading can be filled with a story; a claim heading cannot.
- A submission with no claim is organised by chronology, and chronology is narrative.
The four-part paragraph
- Claim — what this section establishes, in one sentence.
- Evidence — three or four specific items. Dates, figures, names, quotations, the source.
- Link — this mattered because it meant that... The explicit mechanism. The sentence most often missing.
- Weight — how much this part accounts for, relative to the rest of your explanation.
- Run it for each part of your claim. Four parts, three or four sections, and the structural requirement is met without further thought.
Putting key historical ideas to work
- Cause and effect — say why one thing produced another, not that it preceded it. The test is whether you could say what would have been different without it.
- Change and continuity — what moved, what did not, and over what period. Naming the continuity makes the change measurable.
- Perspective — whose point of view, held for what reasons. A contested decision has at least two, and giving both is what makes an explanation convincing rather than one-sided.
- Intent and motivation — what people were trying to do, and what they had at stake. This is where a stated reason and an actual reason can be distinguished.
- Significance — dealt with in its own section, using the standard's five measures.
- An idea is being used when it changes what you write, not when it is named. Two or three used properly beat six mentioned.
Making the explanation convincing, which is the Excellence word
- Excellence asks for a convincing explanation with comprehensive supporting evidence. Convincing is a property of the argument, not of the prose.
- Address the obvious alternative. If a reader's first thought would be a different explanation, name it and say why the evidence points elsewhere. An explanation that never mentions the rival reads as unexamined.
- Show the evidence that cuts against you. A submission that reports only supporting evidence invites the question of what was left out.
- Say what your explanation does not account for. This explains the length of the delay but not why the fund reopened in 1937 — precision about scope makes the rest credible.
- Comprehensive evidence means across the topic, not more of one thing. Every part of the claim evidenced, not the easiest part evidenced heavily.
Common failures and their repairs
- Assertion. This was an important cause. → Add the mechanism, and say what would have differed without it.
- Narrative drift. A paragraph that tells a story. → Move its facts under a claim heading and cut what is left.
- One-sided explanation. Only the evidence that fits. → Add the rival explanation and the evidence against it.
- Idea-labelling. This shows change and continuity. → Delete the label and write the change and the continuity.
- Unstated proportion. Three paragraphs on a meeting, one line on a decade. → Say what each part accounts for, or rebalance.
Worked Example
Worked example
A student's section on the Mangaroa Bridge memorial (invented) reads:
Rebuild it.
Answer:
Step 1 — diagnose. The heading is a topic, and the paragraph is a story about that topic. Five sentences in chronological order, no claim, no mechanism, and two vague quantities — "slowly" and "its target".
Step 2 — turn the heading into a claim.
Step 3 — lead with that claim and make each fact serve it.
Step 4 — replace the vague quantities with evidence.
Step 5 — write the mechanism.
Step 6 — add the weight sentence, which is what stops the section overclaiming.
Step 7 — check for a rival explanation. A reader might think the district simply cared less as time passed. The 1935 letters and the sustained subscription list are the evidence against that, and naming the rival is what makes the section convincing rather than merely supported.
Claim heading, claim sentence, vague quantities replaced with figures, an explicit mechanism, a weight sentence bounding what the section accounts for, and the rival explanation named and answered.