Modern History Exam Discussion (and Suggested Answers!)

[sudodds]

Whole exam (at least personalities and Russia/Indochina options) was incredibly generic, hope my answers are enough to stand out.

Susie I disagree with you about question 3 (I answered C), it's a tough question  how do the tactical successes mentioned in source C relate to source B? B is just doom and gloom lol

What did everyone else answer?

Generic is better than convoluted I'm sure you did fantastic _______! To stand out with those questions, it would have been detail and links - so how many stats, terminology, specific facts and/or quotes that you included, and whether you were able to link the Treaty or Stalin to the other factors and/or a wider theme eg. popular support, consistency of ideology, etc. etc.

[sudodds]

for the germany question, it was kinda totalitarian.
at least, you couldve referenced that anyway... well, i hope so coz i did!!

I think you definitely could have referenced it, given the "total control" aspect of the question According to Emily (english lecturer who also got a very nice 95% in Modern History as well!) who studied Germany, what was great about this question is that though you could reference Totalitarianism, due to the wording of the question you didn't have to go into all the technical stuff regarding the concept, or historians debates So actually easier than a totalitarianism essay!

I'm sure you did absolutely smashed it ~BK~, great work!

Susie

[sudodds]

I agree about it being generic! it was kinda 'boring'...didn't really lead to any very good argument...i thought anyway

Yeah I also answered C....fingers crossed it was right!!!

Ahahahahahaha I love how all of you are disappointed it was easy! That genuinely makes me so happy, that you wanted a challenge I'm sure you smashed it JD99! How did you find the other sections of the exam?

[diesxel]

Think I did OK but seeing the World War 1 answers kind of freaked me out a little! The 8 and 10 Marker threw me off (a bit) though I still had stuff prepared, but I think I messed up with talking about the sources properly...or I'm just second-guessing myself

Super happy with Russia though, I saw bolshevik consolidation of power and wanted to get up and do a happy dance in the middle of the exam.


EITHER WAY It wasn't that bad overall. For that problematic MCQ I also put C, but I can kind of see how it could be B as well..


Overall, well done everyone!! We're done!! Super happy and proud of all of us

[bun00]

BOOOOYEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH GO U LEETLE HISTORIANLY PPL!!!!!!!!!! history is history
and yeh i wldnt say it was easy but damn BOSTES were much more favourable than i was expecting!!!
yipeee! ATB with the rest of ure exams!

[~BK~]

I think you definitely could have referenced it, given the "total control" aspect of the question According to Emily (english lecturer who also got a very nice 95% in Modern History as well!) who studied Germany, what was great about this question is that though you could reference Totalitarianism, due to the wording of the question you didn't have to go into all the technical stuff regarding the concept, or historians debates So actually easier than a totalitarianism essay!

I'm sure you did absolutely smashed it ~BK~, great work!

Susie

thanks so much susie... makes me feel a lot better 
many many many thanks for how much you have helped out on this thread throughout the year!!
i can't believe that history OVER!

[mersinah]

I forgot to reference 'Source E' for Question 6  Will that mean I will lose a couple marks for that question?

[fantasticbeasts3]

finally decided to face my fears and go through this thread ahahaha here's a quick rundown rant on the exam:

ww1: what the actual hell... usually i'm awful at sources but i didn't understand a thing. like, the first question i was stumped and i saw "eat less wheat" so i was like YES BREAD then didn't have time to go back over the answers which i could've changed. oh well. the rest was okay but this section was harder than trials which was strange because cssa tends to be pretty confusing. because this question went so badly, i lost confidence in the rest of the exam... so yea.

germany: i did this one last which i'm really annoyed at because in reading time, question b was really good (stood out to me most) and i wish i did it earlier because i would've finished it. at first glance, i saw "total power" so i thought totalitarianism, but then i thought it wasn't exactly? but for sure this question was the best one out of all. i'm relatively confident with this one, even though i didn't finish it and had so much more i wanted to write.

personality study, gorbachev: if i didn't stuff up the first part of the response i would've been so happy with it. i finished ww1 in about 35 minutes (wtf honestly could've looked over that stupid bread question) and started writing for part a, then realised i was writing about background. wasted about 5 minutes which was just ugh. then i started again, rambled on too much of the first rise to prominence dot point, eating into my time for part b, so had to cut that one short, and had to cut down on collapse of eastern europe which is irritating because that's like half of what gorbachev did? super annoying.

cold war: most people in my school didn't like question a which is really odd because it seemed a lot easier. probably just me. thought this one went quite well while i was writing, but looking back at it now, i don't think i sustained my thesis well enough... smh i hope whoever is marking this is less tired than me during the exam (probably not) because i can't even understand what i wrote.

anyway, all in all i walked out really not confident about the whole thing. crazy how it takes just one section to make you feel crap... should've done germany first, but that's okay. honestly, i'm not expecting more than 70 for this exam (no exaggeration whatsoever), but it's over.

best of luck for the rest of your hsc everyone,
fantasticbeasts

secondary rant

inspired by what someone wrote about a person not attempting an entire section... a couple of people in my class didn't study. like i know a girl who didn't study at all this entire year, and did horribly in trials. she stayed for the entire exam, but didn't study at all and looked super stressed this morning. another one has no regard for history whatsoever, and decided to leave halfway through the exam. the part of the class that actually tried... like 12ish out of 20 were absolutely fuming that some people didn't try. it's really going to bring down the marks of our class because we don't have many people and our range is bloody huge (let's not start on trials... what a shitshow)

[sudodds]

FULL SOURCE ANALYSIS NOW AVAILABLE!

Remember though, as I said within the post, the Source Analysis is the most subjective part of Section I, so even if you didn't answer it the way I did, you still could get a fantastic mark, even full marks! There are a lot of different things you could focus on, those were just the ones I chose

[kaya-sandwich]

You guys are all making me unsure of my answers ;(! For both Weimar and Conflict in Europe, I chose question a. To be honest, I felt as though I could have answered either a or b for both so I spent about 5 minutes panicking about which question to do. The Russian campaign question scared me a little because I wasn't quite sure how to structure my paragraphs and what main themes to talk about. With the Russian campaign, it feels like only in hindsight were we able to determine that the campaign was significant in the allied victory. Incidentally, I had done a practice essay on the non-aggression pact so I went with that.

For weimar, I talked about how Bruning's role as chancellor made people more vulnerable to Hitler's rhetoric, the Anti-Young plan media campaign he ran in conjunction with Hugenberg and the role of the army.

For Conflict in Europe, I argued that non-aggression pact had very little significance as the war was a result of Hitler's expansionist policies deriving from his desire for lebensraum, appeasement and the collapse of security with regards to Abyssinia and the Stresa Front.

 For the Weimar essay I was able to inject quotes from historians but for the conflict question I only mentioned Turner and Churchill and basically paraphrased what they said. I didn't really use statistics but I tried to connect the smaller ideas to the main overarching theme and make lots of links so I'm a bit worried. Oh well, Modern History is done and dusted. Out of all my exams so far, this one makes me feel the most nostalgic as I genuinely enjoyed history.

[daenyy]

glad it's over, really good questions!! I did the Russian campaign question for CIE but ran out of time at the end and only got 5 pages only about Barbarrossa and Stalingrad!!  how much will this effect my mark??  asking for a friend

[HamBurr17]

FULL SOURCE ANALYSIS NOW AVAILABLE!

Remember though, as I said within the post, the Source Analysis is the most subjective part of Section I, so even if you didn't answer it the way I did, you still could get a fantastic mark, even full marks! There are a lot of different things you could focus on, those were just the ones I chose

Thank you!
And.. erm... I'm pretty sure I said Source B was partially useful... and I may have asked for another booklet and used a whole other page explaining why... oops! Hopefully it works out for me

[dancing phalanges]

Thank you!
And.. erm... I'm pretty sure I said Source B was partially useful... and I may have asked for another booklet and used a whole other page explaining why... oops! Hopefully it works out for me

I also said it was partially useful R.E lack of detail and also being from Hindenburg's perspective and being a memoir, that he may have been diverting attention for German collapse away from his own failings/the German army's failings and towards a lack of resources etc. Did you do similar?

[fantasticbeasts3]

Oh well, Modern History is done and dusted. Out of all my exams so far, this one makes me feel the most nostalgic as I genuinely enjoyed history.

saaaaame. i can't bring myself to throw out any handouts/past papers/notes at the moment, i'm not ready to let go just yet

[HamBurr17]

I also said it was partially useful R.E lack of detail and also being from Hindenburg's perspective and being a memoir, that he may have been diverting attention for German collapse away from his own failings/the German army's failings and towards a lack of resources etc. Did you do similar?

Yep pretty much! I think I also said how since it is a memoir Hindenburg may have altered/exaggerated (something along those lines) the events etc.

(my actual response made more sense by the way, I've just seriously forgotten everything hahaha)