Usefulness Source Based Questions

Source A. A cartoon of Stalin which appeared in a British newspaper around 1935.

"How useful is Source A in helping you understand Stalin's rule?"

Usefulness questions are among the toughest questions in the Source Based section. Many weak students tend to write very little for this question, or worse still, nothing at all. You shouldn't be doing this! It is easy to score at least half of the points for the usefulness question, and it is not too difficult to score nearly full marks.

"How?", I hear you cry.

First and foremost, remember the Golden Rule: A source is never completely useful, nor completely useless. As such, your answer should be two sided. That is, you should start your answer with,

"Source A is useful to a large/limited/small extent in ... "

Thereafter, you should have one paragraph explaining the useful aspects of the source, "Source A's usefulness can be seen in... "

After you have finished explaining the useful aspects of the source, go into the other side of the question. "However, the usefulness of Source A is limited. This is because it does not..."

Finally, conclude.

Next, when explaining in what areas it is useful (or not useful), make sure you explain as clearly as possible. To take the cartoon as an example, you could say that "The cartoon is useful in illustrating the authoritarian aspects of Stalin's rule. This is evident from Stalin towering over all the people." Notice the first sentence identifies a specific area of Stalin's rule and the second sentence gives evidence direct from the source (by describing the relevant aspects).
For the "not useful" part of the answer, you might say that it is useful for explaining the political aspects of Stalin's rule, but not the economic aspects of his rule, because it looks like the cartoon was referring to political aspects rather than the economic aspects.

Third, you may wish to comment on reliability by comparing to your contextual knowledge or cross-referencing to other sources of the Source Based Question. In general, the more reliable a source is, the more useful it tends to be. However, even sources that are not very reliable can still be useful, as they can illustrate a particular point of view (e.g. propaganda). When referring to contextual knowledge, be sure to quote specific events (in this case, you could certainly mention that one example of Stalin's dictatorship was that he sent his opponents to gulags, or concentration camps). When cross-referencing to other sources, remember to quote directly from them. It may also be worth examining the provenance of the source. In this case, the fact that the cartoon was published in a British newspaper can either be used to support or challenge its reliability.

These are the main points for answering usefulness questions. If you've grasped them, you should be confident of scoring well in usefulness questions. But the only way to be sure that you've understood these points is to apply them. So practice, practice, and practice usefulness questions until you've got the hang of them. Good luck!