In my last article, I listed out some preparation strategies aimed at helping you ace the CBSE history examination. But you must not forget that writing elegant and coherent answers is as important to impress the examiner. So, keep these tips in mind as you go about preparing yourselves for that D-day!
Earlier, I asked you to remember all the answers in points. Well, that’s exactly how you are required to write them as well. Normally, the number of points you make in an answer must be proportional to the weightage given to that question.
Every point must have a subheading (preferably written in black ink) and then a paragraph that expands on that heading. Making headpoints is really important because that helps in bluffing (avoiding euphemisms on purpose) the examiner. Remember that in reality, he/she has less than 3 minutes to correct your entire answer script. So that he/she may just read the headpoints and ignore the actual content, and well, award you points!
Sometimes when it comes to answering 8 marks questions, creating eight distinct points seems difficult. In such cases it’s advisable to form 4-5 substantial points and then add an introduction and a conclusion to your answer. In fact, you must do it for all the three 8-markers.
How much to write is often a big contention among students. In most cases, the instructions given in the question paper will give you reasonable guidelines about the same. But after all, it’s an 80 marks paper. So, you can safely go for writing longer answers in case you’re able to maintain a good writing speed throughout. Personally, I used to devote about half a page for each 2 marker; 1.5-2 pages for each 4-marker and about 3-3.5 pages for each 8 marker. Passage based questions can again be answered in approximately 2-2.5 pages. Please note that I have a relatively small handwriting. You can make suitable changes in accordance with the size of your handwriting.
Broaden your horizons. While penning down your answers, please don’t limit yourselves to what’s given in the textbook. I’ll strongly recommend you to express yourselves freely and write whatever other relevant information that you know. Once again, while writing about the Mauryan administration, you can talk about Megasthene’s account in his book Indica. In the same vein, you can talk about Padmaavat (of course, you now know a lot more about it!) while writing about masnavis. Likewise you can write about the functioning of the persian wheel (as given in Baburnama) while answering a question on sources of irrigation in Mughal Empire. Topics like Sufism, Bhakti, Tantra, Buddhism, national movement etc. have a lot of scope of expressing what you know beyond the text. Remember that history becomes fun when you relate it to your present life!
In some questions, it’s better to report the answer with the help of a flowchart or some other graphical representation. Even though this isn’t necessary per se, it makes the answer more elegant and impressive. Please refer to my previous article in order to get a hint about when to use flowcharts.
Some of the questions are asked directly from the boxes (I’m referring to the passage based questions). And it feels like you don’t have enough information to answer the question reasonably. In such circumstances, please feel free to write about your own inferences and extrapolations in order to expand the answer.
P.S.- In this article, I’ve skipped other tips like underlining keywords, maintaining a legible handwriting etc., that have been written about at length in other general articles.
Hope these tips help!
Comments