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Source and Interpretation Skills
Quick questions on Provenance: nature, origin and purpose - OCR A-Level History skills
4short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What is nature?Show answer
The nature of a source affects its value: a private letter is valuable for candid opinion, an official record for administrative fact, a speech for public persuasion, a memoir for retrospective reflection (with the risk of hindsight). Identifying the nature precisely tells you what kind of evidence you are dealing with and what it can reliably reveal.
What is turning provenance into evidence?Show answer
The move that earns top marks is to use provenance to say what the source is valuable for, rather than to dismiss it. A hostile source is valuable for revealing hostility; a self-justifying source is valuable for the case its author wished to make. By tying nature, origin and purpose to the enquiry, you turn every source, including the most one-sided, into usable evidence.
What is q1?Show answer
Explain how the purpose of a propaganda poster affects its value as evidence. [10 marks, AO2 style]
What is q2?Show answer
What are the three elements of provenance? [2 marks]
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