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Crafting a Successful Extended Essay in History: Tips and Strategies

Learn the essentials of formulating a research question, avoiding bad topics, and diverse research methods to enhance your history essay. Get expert advice on quotations, citations, working habits, and tips for efficient research.

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Crafting a Successful Extended Essay in History: Tips and Strategies

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  1. Extended Essay in History Initial tips from Þorsteinn and Guðmundur

  2. The Research Question • Is it suitable? • Can it be asked and answered? • Is it worthwhile to answer? • Dangerous research questions: • Those that are too wide. • Those that are “obivous.” • Those that you can not answer due to lack of sources available to you. • Those that are too narrow. • Those that are subjective. • Those that are purely hypothetical (pseudo history)

  3. Bad Questions and Topics • How did the Versailles treaty affect world history? • too ... ? • How was Jónas frá Hriflu dressed at his funeral? • too ... ? • Who was Adolf Hitler and what was he like? • too ... ? • Why was Joseph Stalin so cruel? • too ... ? • Would Germany have gone to war without Hitler? • too ... ? • Governmental phone taps in 1990s Iceland: extent and purpose. • too ... ?

  4. Forms of Research • Don’t restrict yourself to a narrative! • This is perhaps the most common problem with history essays • The point of a research essay is not simply to tell a story – regardless of whether it has a happy ending or not. • Comparitive essay • Compare and contrast examples A and B with regards to question X. • Bibliographical essay • What has the historiagraphical development been like in a certain narrow topic.

  5. Two Actual Questions • How was the Holy Roman a continuation of the Roman Empire? • Problems with definitions (“what’s a ‘Roman’ Empire”) and sources (nobody has claimed this directly since the 19th century). • How did the Western Icelanders manage to create a distinctly Icelandic colony in Canada? • Problems of defintions – what does it mean to be ‘distinctly Icelandic’.

  6. Two more • How important was Diocletian in the history of Rome? • This one isn’t half bad ... if rephrased and answered well. • E.g. “Did Diocletian’s rule save the Roman Empire?” • How important was the role of the Orthodox Church in the creation of Moscow Russia? • This one is actually quite good.

  7. Quotations and citations • When refering the reader to your sources it is customary in history to use footnotes • Ixnay on the racketbay! • Direct quotations: • Placed in quotation marks. • Used to ‘spice up’ the text • Citations: • Used much more than quotations. • Save up valuable space

  8. Working habits and tips • Keep your sources at a distance • Talk to your sources – don’t let them dictate to you • Remember that they are not absolute truths – you should evaluate them not let them control you • Photocopy the title page of every book you borrow from the library • This will save you valuable time later on – you will need the full title, place and date of publication later on. • Start building the bibliography right away • Time saving! • Once you quote someone put in a reference right away • This way you won’t have to look for the source later on • And remember ... use footnotes!

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