Transcript Teaching Source Analysis Skills

Teaching
Source
Analysis
Skills
How to analyse sources…
Consider:
Origin
Motive
Content
Author
Type
Usefulness
Reliability
Perspective
Sources in general
You will be provided with a variety of sources in
the SACE exam.
They could be posters, photographs, tables, maps,
memoirs, letters, poems, texts, internet articles,
diary entries etc.
Here are just a few…
• Posters are examples of propaganda
and should be carefully analysed because
of their purpose. They are designed to
persuade, make someone do something or
think in a certain way (they play on
emotions).
• DO NOT dismiss them as unreliable and
therefore not useful.
Propaganda
Answer the questions using
the following posters-
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How do these posters attract
attention?
What emotions do the posters try
to appeal to?
What message are they giving?
In what ways do the posters
create these emotions?
What is bias?
How can you tell some of these
posters are biased?
Which (in your opinion) is the most
successful poster? Why?
Analyse two posters using the three terms in bold below:
‘Usefulness, Reliability & Perspective’
ie.
“Assess the usefulness of the posters to a historian studying the use of
propaganda in WWI. In your answer consider their reliability and the
perspectives provided by the two posters.”
This poster has been used a few times at the
SACE. It is early on in the war, targeting
enlistment. It uses the womanly figure, with
children, telling her men to “Go!”
If you were being asked
how useful this poster
would be to an historian
studying the home front, it
would be VERY useful.
What does it show?
It shows how voluntary
enlistment petered off as the
impact of the early battles
and casualty rates rose.
It shows early Government
attempts to manipulate
civilian population and the
necessity of establishing the
Ministry of Propaganda.
Poems
A poem written by the
British poet/soldier
Siegfried Sassoon in
1918.
SUICIDE IN THE TRENCHES
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.
You smug-faced crowds with kindlingeye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.
Siegfried Sassoon
• One thing the examiners do not want to read is an analysis
of the poem as if it was an English question.
• Who cares about the responder and the composer in
Modern History?
• We certainly don’t want to read about poetic techniques.
• Stick to the point. Answer the question asked in a concise
manner.
• How is this poem useful, say to an historian studying
changing attitudes to the war?
It shows the early attitudes to the war, light-hearted ‘grinned
at life in empty joy’; then how the war has impacted on that
soldier, ‘bullet through his brain”.
SUICIDE IN THE TRENCHES
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.
You smug-faced crowds with kindlingeye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.
Siegfried Sassoon
Sassoon uses emotive
language to get his
point across to the
“smug-faced crowds”,
as he describes the
“hell where youth and
laughter go”.
• The perspective of this source would also be noted, it is
from hindsight, looking back at WWI, from a point in time
when the statistics had been analysed, so that an historian
could quantify how much time was spent in the front,
support and reserve lines.
• There is no particular country bias, it is educated, its
purpose is to inform.
Photographs
Photographs are usually used in
the 1st or 2nd question. Make
sure you carefully examine the
photograph and describe what
you see.
However, if you were asked to
assess its usefulness to an
historian studying conditions in
the trenches, what could you
say?
They show:
Troops taking up their positions in the trenches on the
front line.
The poor construction of the trenches, remember the
British saw the trenches as temporary, as they would be
going forward in the spirit of the offensive.
The devastation of the terrain, no vegetation in no man’s
land, the mud etc.
•
The perspective is the
photographer. It is what he
wants you to see, the sense of
purpose. No dead bodies etc.
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Note the camera angle – from
above looking down.
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The technology of the time
meant that the cameraman would
have been very vulnerable up on
the top of the parapet.
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Therefore it is not a battle
photo, but probably staged, so
not that reliable.
The realities of war were rarely shown to
the public at the time.
The one time that the British public saw a
scene approaching the real situation, The
Somme movie 1916, the reaction was not
what was intended – people were shocked at
what the soldiers were going through.
Maps and Tables
You should not just write ‘as shown in the map’. You need to be more
specific: e.g. the French army was to the south, the pink shaded area, around
the Somme Canal, the British armies were to the north.
Tables are usually used in the comprehension question and you need
to take a little care so that you don’t get confused.
Source A: Total Casualties for the war
Mobilised
Killed
Wounded
British Empire
8 900 000
1 000 000
2 000 000
France
8 400 000
1 360 000
4 000 000
Russia
12 000 000
1 700 000
5 000 000
USA
1 750 000
80 000
180 000
Italy
5 600 000
460 000
900 000
Germany
11 000 000
1 800 000
4 200 000
AustriaHungary
7 800 000
1 200 000
3 000 000
Turkey
2 850 000
650 000
950 000
A) Which country had the greatest number of men Killed?
Germany
B) Which of the Allied Powers or Central Powers had the greatest
number of men wounded?
Russia
C) Which country had the least number of men killed?
U.S.A.
Last pointers…
DO NOT to make sweeping statements, “Source B is a primary
source and therefore it is reliable.” There are primary sources
that are very useful, but not that reliable: e.g. posters.
Make sure that you answer the question that is set, not the one
you wished had been set.
Make sure you use BOTH sources AND that they are the right
sources. Using the wrong source will mean that you will get ZERO
for the question because you will have failed to answer the
question!
Make sure you assess
USEFULNESS
PERSPECTIVE &
RELIABILITY.