A-Level History: Evaluating Sources

Evaluating primary sources is examined at every board, for example in Section A of AQA's Component 2 (three sources, 30 marks) and in the source questions of Pearson Edexcel's Papers 2 and 3. This material trains the skill on short extracts from documents across the periods most students study: Tudor England, Tsarist and revolutionary Russia and the Cold War.

The extracts are short. The English texts (the Act of Supremacy of 1534, the version of Elizabeth I's Tilbury speech printed in 1654, Henry VIII's reply to the Lincolnshire rebels, the Truman Doctrine and Marshall's Harvard speech of 1947, and Kennedy's Berlin speech of 1963) are quoted from the historical texts; the Russian documents (Alexander II's words to the Moscow nobility in 1856, the October Manifesto of 1905 and Lenin's April Theses) are given in translations made for this material. Each question contains the extract it asks about, so nothing depends on a document you cannot see.

The quiz works through the elements of the skill: how the way a text was recorded and transmitted affects its value (the Tilbury speech); what the wording of a statute reveals about how a policy was presented (the Act of Supremacy); how audience, purpose and context shape a source (Alexander II to the nobility, the October Manifesto issued during a general strike, the Truman Doctrine as a request for funds); how tone reveals an author's attitude (Henry VIII's reply to the rebels); why value depends on the enquiry (Kennedy in Berlin, the April Theses, a Soviet newspaper report on a show trial); and how corroboration and the difference between private and public sources affect reliability.

The flashcards fix the vocabulary of source evaluation and the key documents. The written work sets eight tasks, each built around an extract and a stated enquiry, asking how valuable the source is and why, and in one case comparing two speeches of 1947; each has a reference answer and key points. The oral exam asks you to evaluate a source aloud, one question at a time, with brief feedback at the end.

Question formats and wording differ between boards and papers, so check your own specification and use this material to practise the method, which is common to all of them.

  • Analyse the provenance of a source: author, date, audience and purpose
  • Explain how tone and emphasis reveal an author's attitude
  • Judge the value of a source for a specific enquiry
  • Use contextual knowledge to test the content of a source
  • Explain how corroboration affects reliability
  • Recognise that biased or propaganda sources can still be valuable

Practice material written by Zestly on the source skill (AO2) of the A level History specifications. Extracts come from historical documents in the public domain (Act of Supremacy 1534; Tilbury speech as printed in 1654; Henry VIII's reply to the Lincolnshire rebels 1536; Pontefract Articles 1536; Truman Doctrine and Marshall's Harvard speech 1947; Kennedy's Berlin speech 1963); Russian documents are in translations made for this material.

Sample question

Source: Elizabeth I's speech to her troops at Tilbury, August 1588, in the best-known version: 'I know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too.' This version comes from a letter by Leonel Sharp, a chaplain who was at Tilbury, first printed in 1654. Which point about its provenance most affects its value as evidence of the queen's exact words?

See the answer

The text was written down by someone else and printed more than 60 years later, so the exact wording may not be the queen's.

The version we have depends on Sharp's report, printed in 1654, long after the event; it may reflect later memory or editing. It remains valuable as evidence of how Elizabeth's image was presented and remembered, and of the mood of 1588.

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