Personal study
Contents
Background of the Personal Study
A Personal Study is a vital part of the AQA History A-level course. It is the sequel to the Course Essay that students prepare for and sit in Year 12. Unlike the Course Essays, the Student chooses any topic area/s from the History Syllabus that they find interesting. This "interesting" topic can be found in either of the TWO units that will be studied. At BRGS the chosen units are E and U, European History- War and Conflict, and British History- Britain from 1951 to 1997.
Whilst any topic can be chosen from either unit, the student may not, for example embark upon a most interesting comparison between, i.e., Stalin and Margaret Thatcher. The student is also required to choose a sensible topic to study, and cannot study anything outside of the chronological restraints of the syllabus, i.e., "Mrs Thatcher's ability to sink the Belgrano without sinking her own political career allowed Tony Blair to invade Iraq with only 43% of the country's support or indifference." would not be allowed as the War in Iraq began after 1997- interesting question though... and for all you going 'Tony hated Maggie...' he- in fact- idolised her, and she idolised him... until she realised he "wasn’t"' a Conservative" at least...
The student will then research this topic, and produce an "Outline Form". On this they write the question they will attempt to answer in fewer than 3500 words, a "Brief Plan" of how they will answer it, and a list of probable sources that they will attempt to use in their work. This "Outline Form" is given to the student's teacher who will assess how likely it is the student can complete the question well, using their plan and their sources. If the "Outline Form" is suitable, it will then be sent to a moderator, who will attempt to make dubiously humorous comments on it, and use as many !'s as possible in two lines (even compared to Mr Grehan's humour- this stuff is BAD).
The "Outline Form", having been passed by the dubiously humorous moderator with illegible writing, can then be tackled by the student.
How To Tackle A Personal Study
Option One: What the student is meant to do
Upon receiving their accepted "Outline Form" the student buys many books relevant to the topic that they are studying (the type of book will depend on the type of history being studied) The student immediately drafts their Personal Study, and hands it to the teacher. The teacher then comments, and the student revises their draft into the final piece of work. This course of action is advisable.
Option Two: What the student does
More commonly, a student confident of their ability, or of the amount of time left, and often outraged by the costs of postage and packaging, purchases only the chepeast source/s available, and does minimal research (the amount to convince their teacher that they have at least done something).
Suddenly the student finds themself in March, with little free time and a 3,000 word essay to write on a topic, which very soon becomes the most boring thing ever known to man. The Student has no time to draft their work, and therfore writes it "off the cuff" hands it in, and ends up re-writing very large portions of it. Whilst doing this the student will often notice how bored they actually are as they find searching for cartoons immensley more interesting than re-write sections of their work. Thankfully, the cartoons can form a part of the personal study; unfortunately the rule "a picture is worth a thousand words" is not fully applicable in this case.
