Practice questions in the exam's own shape

Worked example

Question 5: Evaluate an underlying and an immediate cause of a significant historical event you have studied. Which was the more important cause, and why?

A candidate has chosen a piece of contested legislation as their event. Here is how they should plan it in five minutes on the unmarked planning page.

Answer:

Step 1 — write the event with its date. [The Act], passed [year]. The date is what will sort causes from consequences, and writing it first stops the essay drifting.

Step 2 — identify the underlying cause, and check it against the timing test.

The underlying cause is the condition that made the Act possible — a long-standing grievance, an established campaign, a demographic or economic shift. Then ask the test question: was this equally true five years earlier?

• If yes, it is genuinely underlying — and that is correct for this slot, but it means it cannot on its own explain the timing. Note that, because it will become the comparison.
• If no, it is not underlying at all — it is a second immediate cause, and the question has not been answered.

Step 3 — identify the immediate cause, and check it against the scale test.

The immediate cause is what turned possibility into occurrence — an election result, a report, a crisis, a change of minister. Then ask: would this alone have produced the Act, without the underlying condition?

• If no — which is the usual and correct answer — the two causes are genuinely interdependent, and saying so is the beginning of the complexity Excellence wants.

Step 4 — choose the criterion before choosing the winner. This is the step candidates skip.

• By necessity: remove the underlying cause and the Act is inconceivable; remove the trigger and it arrives later by another route. This criterion favours the underlying cause.
• By explanatory power for the specific question "why then?": only the immediate cause answers it. This criterion favours the trigger.
• Naming both criteria and choosing between them is the judgement. The question asks which was more important, and importance is not defined for you — so defining it is your work, and that is where the marks are.

Step 5 — write the position sentence for the introduction.

Step 6 — note what this sentence has already done. It has stated a position, named a criterion, conceded the rival criterion explicitly, and given a reason the concession does not change the verdict. That is the Merit requirement satisfied in the introduction, leaving the body paragraphs free to evidence each cause and the comparison paragraph free to deepen rather than to introduce.