What "communicate an argument" means
The word that changed in 2024
- Level 2's AS91230 asks you to examine — to communicate key historical ideas through a coherent explanation, with supporting evidence.
- AS91435's 2024 text asks you to analyse — to use key historical ideas with supporting evidence to communicate an argument.
- An explanation answers "what happened and why". It can be complete, accurate, well-evidenced, and contain no argument at all.
- An argument makes a claim that could be denied, and then defends it.
- The test is one question: could a reasonable, well-informed person disagree with my central sentence?
- If no, it is a statement of fact and you have written an explanation.
- If yes, it is a claim and you have the beginning of an argument.
Three sentences about the same event
- Description: The scheme was carried out between 1954 and 1961 and drained 900 hectares of wetland. Nobody can disagree. This is a fact.
- Explanation: The scheme was carried out because post-war demand for farmland made drainage economically attractive. Better, and still not arguable — it reports an accepted reason.
- Argument: The scheme's significance lies less in the land it created than in the precedent it set for overriding local objection, which is why it is remembered as a grievance rather than as an achievement. This is deniable, so it can be argued for — and it needs evidence of the objections, of the precedent, and of how it is remembered.
Where an argument comes from
- From a disagreement between sources. If two accounts characterise your event differently, taking a side is an argument.
- From a mismatch between how something was seen then and how it is seen now. Contemporaries treated X as routine; it is now remembered as a turning point is a claim requiring evidence from both periods.
- From a question of proportion. This event mattered more for A than for B is arguable, and it is also a significance claim, which the standard requires anyway.
- From a question of cause. This place was commemorated not because of what happened there, but because of what was happening in the 1990s is a claim about the commemoration rather than the event.
- What an argument is not: a strong opinion, a moral verdict, or a preference. It must be a claim about the past that evidence can bear on.
"Key historical ideas" — what these are
- The phrase appears in both the Achieved and the Excellence descriptors, so it is not decoration.
- A key historical idea is a concept that organises evidence — the same family of concepts AS91436 lists: cause and effect, continuity and change, perspectives, significance, contingency, intent and motivation.
- Using one means structuring a section of your work around it, not naming it.
- Naming: This shows continuity and change.
- Using: organising a section around what changed and what did not, and drawing a conclusion from the contrast.
- Two or three key ideas is usually right for a 5-credit submission. More than that and none is developed.
Establishing significance, which is the half that gets dropped
- The Achieved descriptor requires the argument and establishing the significance to New Zealanders. Both. Every time.
- Establishing is not asserting. This event was very significant establishes nothing.
- The standard supplies the criteria, and they are the ones to argue against:
- importance to people at the time
- how deeply people's lives were affected
- how many lives were affected
- the length of time people's lives were affected
- the extent to which it continues to affect society
- The strongest submissions make significance part of the argument rather than a separate section — because how significant, and in what respect is itself a claim that can be denied.
Worked Example
Worked example
Note: the Riversdale Flats Drainage Scheme is an INVENTED case, used so the method can be shown without making claims about a real place.
A student has researched the scheme and its 1994 memorial. They draft four possible central claims. Which is an argument, and what is wrong with the others?
- A: The Riversdale Flats Drainage Scheme was a major public works project that transformed the district between 1954 and 1961.
- B: The scheme went ahead because post-war demand for farmland made drainage economically attractive.
- C: The scheme was wrong and should never have happened.
- D: The scheme is significant less for the land it created than for how it is remembered — the 1994 memorial commemorates the settlement that was displaced, not the works, which suggests the district's judgement of the scheme reversed within a generation.
Answer:
Step 1 — apply the disagreement test to each.
A fails. Major, transformed, and the dates are all matters of record. A well-informed person cannot disagree, so there is nothing to argue. This is description, and it belongs in a paragraph of context rather than as the central claim.
B fails, but less obviously. It gives a reason, which feels like analysis. But it reports an accepted explanation — nobody familiar with the period would deny it. An explanation of why something happened is not automatically an argument; it becomes one only when the reason is contested or the weighting is.
C fails for a different reason. Wrong is a moral verdict, not a claim about the past. Evidence cannot bear on it, and the standard requires key historical ideas with supporting evidence. A strong opinion is not an argument in this sense.
Step 2 — test D properly.
Could a well-informed person disagree? Yes — they might argue the memorial commemorates loss without implying any reversal of judgement, or that a memorial reflects the views of the committee that raised it rather than the district's.
That disagreement is the point. The claim is deniable, so it can be defended.
Step 3 — check that D generates the evidence the standard requires.
- Primary evidence — the memorial's wording, the 1994 booklet, contemporary 1950s newspaper coverage showing how the scheme was described at the time.
- Secondary evidence — accounts of the scheme, and writing on commemoration.
- Both kinds are required, and D's structure — then versus now — forces both, because the claim is about a change between two periods.
Step 4 — check that D carries the significance requirement.
D is a significance claim. It says what the event's significance consists in and argues against the obvious answer.
- It engages the standard's criteria directly — the extent to which the event continues to affect society is exactly what a memorial erected thirty-nine years later is evidence about.
- So significance is not a separate section, which is what the standard wants and what weaker submissions bolt on at the end.
Step 5 — identify the key historical ideas D is built on.
- Continuity and change — the district's view of the scheme.
- Significance — what the event's importance consists in.
- Perspectives — the difference between the 1950s council view and the 1990s commemorative one.
Three ideas, each organising a section. That is the right number for five credits.