Source Based Questions

Often students are confused by Source Based Questions (SBQ) as it is new to them. In particular, lower secondary students sometimes they give up on the SBQ section, trying to compensate by doing better on other sections e.g. those requiring you to memorize facts.

Don't do this! It is rarely a wise strategy. In upper secondary history, SBQ will comprise 30 marks out of 50. That's a whopping 60% of your grade. Even if you decide not to take history, you will still have to take Social Studies. There, source based questions will comprise 70% of your total grade.

Therefore, you should be spending more time on source based questions, not less. How then can you master SBQ? Below is what I find most students forget:

Golden Rule: Marks are given on quality, not just quantity

You can write as long as you want, but if your answer doesn't have a certain quality, you won't be scoring high marks.

Take a look at page 65 of this document issued by MOE. (If you are looking at the page numbers, it's page 54).

Question 1(a) reads: "Study Source A. What can you infer..."

Notice that to score 4 marks, all you have to do is to write three high-quality sentences.
Sentence 1: Something you can infer from the picture (Europeans lived comfortably)
Sentence 2 and 3: Describe details in the picture which allow you to make the inference (e.g. huge house)

In contrast, you can describe the photo as much as you want and only get 2 marks.

This brings me to my next point:

Understand what kinds of questions that can be asked, and how to get to the highest level

There are different types of source based questions. If you are a lower secondary student, note that the kinds of questions you may get asked at the lower secondary level differ from school to school. (However, differences are slight, and once you reach the upper secondary level, you will all be preparing for the national examination.)

These kinds of questions generally revolve around the following:

• Inference
• Similarity/Differences
• Utility (How useful is the source...)
• Reliability (How reliable is the source...)
• Study all sources. To what extent do...
• Sources A and B differ. Is one of them wrong?

All (or almost all) schools will require you to learn inference, similarity and differences at the lower secondary level. Some schools may want you to learn how to answer utility, reliability, and "study all sources" questions. If you are in such schools, try to do your best as it is good preparation for O levels. If you master them in lower secondary, it will certainly make Secondary 3 and 4 easier. But if you can't master such questions at the end of Secondary 2, don't panic.

In subsequent posts, I will give tips as well as a general strategy on how to answer some of these questions. There is a general strategy to attempt such questions.

(Comment: The hyperlinks in the bullet points above will bring you to posts which talk about such strategies).

Update: Click here for a structured essay question guide for upper secondary students