The modern school has been undergoing reform for many years, and every teacher feels it very much. Along with new approaches to the education system, forms, and work methods, well-forgotten and time-tested old ones are returning.
The article will focus on such a form of written work as an essay. These tasks check not only the knowledge of students but also the degree of formation of general and specific skills in history:
- extract information from the document (dates, facts, concepts, phenomena, causes);
- apply contextual knowledge of history;
- generalize historical details of the document (conclude the text of the source).
Extracting, highlighting the main thing, processing, comprehending, connecting, comparing, analyzing, commenting, generalizing, tracing cause-and-effect relationships, formulating one’s point of view and proving it with facts, confirming conclusions with the text of the document – this is not a complete list of skills that need to be applied when performing such tasks. The same skills are necessary when writing a history essay. Of course, you can always check if your apa paper writing service can write such an essay, but we have prepared some tips for you.Â
So, what is a history essay, and how to write it?
Essay – (from French – “attempt, test”; from Latin echigo – “weigh, try, try”; genre of criticism, journalism) – a prose essay of small volume and free composition, representing general or preliminary considerations about a subject or for some reason (an essay that treats any problems not in a systematic scientific form, but in an accessible format). The “inventor” of the paper is the French philosopher Michel Montaigne (1533-1592).
In terms of content, essays can be philosophical, literary-critical, historical, artistic, artistic and journalistic, spiritual, and religious. There are also essays of descriptive nature, narrative, critical, analytical, reflective, etc. The report can also be personal and subjective (a history essay belongs to the second category).
This form of writing is not narrative but explanatory and affirmative-illustrative. The paper is not dominated by plot or logical sequence but by semantic analogies, parallels, and illustrated analysis. In it, the author expresses an opinion or a position and tries to prove it but not uncompromisingly assert it. Such work also has a moral color because the author says and confirms his appointment. The presence of a specific essay topic does not imply an exhaustive interpretation, definition, approval, or analysis. It is necessary to characterize the phenomenon from all sides without covering it completely.
An essay is not the most straightforward and unambiguous form of task. On the one hand, it refers to functions that can be completed only by students who have mastered the content of the historical course at a high level and are fluent in this problem.
On the other hand, this form of the task allows us to identify the following:
a) students who can think logically but with little convincing evidence,
b) who find convincing arguments but need help building a general, transparent, logical chain of statements and evidence.
The second situation is correctable: a child can be taught the algorithm for writing an essay, selecting the necessary arguments, using bibliographic knowledge, transferring knowledge from one subject to another, etc.
Let us dwell not only on such extreme situations, where it is simply necessary to apply the skills of essay writing but try to analyze our daily work. Can an essay help work with children more interesting, diverse, more profound? Why write an essay on history at all?
- An essay helps to learn. Pupils remember better what they write in their own words than what they read and listen to. It helps to put in order thoughts on the topic, build a logical answer, teaches to formulate theses and select arguments, select the most critical evidence, determine the range of issues related to the case, and think creatively.
- The essay involves fluency in the historical language, clearly presenting concepts, demonstrating an understanding of the subject, develops logical thinking and language.
- The essay dictates the need to use historical and general cultural concepts and quotes from historiography. The student can show their broad knowledge of the subject and express their point of view.
- The essay is a creative work that pupils like, which they are not afraid of: because, in the article, they pose problems that interest them. And if work on the formation of essay writing skills is carried out in the system, usually such results are only sometimes evaluated with a good mark.
The purpose of the history essay is to reveal the ability of students to independently express in writing a holistic opinion on a particular issue (topic, problem), in which they must show not only the ability to present the main thing logically but also to analyze the described subject from different positions, to argue their statement.
To write an essay, a student needs a good knowledge of the subject of reasoning, developed thinking, skills of coherent speech, and an understanding of the specific features of an essay, i.e., it is necessary to possess a wide range of skills and abilities that are born and developed in students with systematic work under the guidance of a teacher.
When writing an essay on history, the student must:
- Know the distinctive features of the essay as a form of work and the features of the historical essay;
- See the problem formulated in the topic of the work and clearly define its boundaries;
- Determine the subject of the article;
- Divide the essay into semantic parts (see the structure of the work);
- Identify the range of events, phenomena, and concepts necessary to answer the question;
- Illustrate statements with relevant examples and analyze them;
- Identify cause and effect relationships;
- Apply the apparatus of comparative characteristics;
- Use statistics, and quotations, apply knowledge of historiography;
- Structure information and present it logically;
- Make intermediate (current) conclusions, final and generalizations;
- Demonstrate mastery of the scientific style of speech;
- Format the work neatly by the requirements for citations.
Of course, an essay is a creative work. But to what extent should a history essay correspond to its genre features? Are there any peculiarities characteristic only for history essays, and what are they? The answers to these questions determine the criteria according to which the grade for the work is set. When answering this question, there is a certain contradiction between form and content because, of course, the history essay has certain features that somewhat separate it from the understanding of “free expression.”