How do I write a History essay?

Take out the important points of the event and form opinions about their short term consequences and long term consequences. Write it down. 1000 words isn’t that much. Remember to balance your opinions with an opposite view and state your facts clearly.

@zyz
OMG, that’s very hard for me :/ But I will read and then pick out the crucial facts. But what does the teacher mean by short term consequences and long term consequences?

The Indian Mutiny of 1857 was India’s First War of Independence, correct? Start out with a short summary about why it happened, and then you can go one of two ways—you can either do a paragraph about short term effects, paragraph about long term effects, conclude with how it influences the next event, or you can write a paragraph about each “topic” of effect – economic, politicial, etc. whatever you think was impacted by the Indian Mutiny of 1857, and discuss both short term and long term effect of that topic in one paragraph.

History is like gossip. Events that happen in the past has influence on future events, and the here and now. The purpose of studying history is to understand the why of now.

Short term consequences are things that happen immediately after the event. Long term consequences are things that were influenced in the future.

Your mom gets the position in Denmark.
Short term consequences: Your parents live apart, you go to an IB school and learn Danish
Long term consequences: Who knows yet? You get into a great university because of your IB degree, and work at an embassy because you’re fluent in Danish.

@BarnacleBill Yes this was pretty understandable, I will go after the steps and do my best… but its not supposed to be in bullet points? Should I write:
Introduction and then? :s

Write it in bullet points, then just go back and reformat each bullet into a paragraph.

@papayalily beat me to it.

ok.

@BarnacleBill Don’t forget – long term consequence, your parents lived apart, and now you’re irreparably damaged from the years of hearing your parents fight, and will never have a healthy relationship due to your fear of commitment and toxic tendencies.

@Thesexier See how that works?

@papayalily uh… I guess.

@Thesexier Just figure out everything now that can be blamed on the Indian Mutiny

The writing process consists of prewriting, writing, editing and rewriting. You don’t have to get it perfect in the prewrite. When I have to write something for work, which is just about a daily occurance, I usually draw it as an idea map to organize myself as I’m reading. It helps me to see the organization of the idea before I write it.

@Thesexier, in order to determine what is important look through your text for guides. Things that are in bold are usually key points. Also look at the paragraph headings, they will give you an idea of some of the important points of the paragraph. Take a look at the charts, lists, and graphs that are part of the text because those usually have summaries of the important details as well.

Take those important things and write a topic sentence that answers the question that simply states what you have gleaned from the text to be the short and long term consequences. Once you have that write an outline that supports your topic sentence. Your first paragraph should layout your argument including your topic sentence. In the body of your essay support your arguments for the short and long term consequences with three facts each; put your average argument first, your weakest argument next and end with your strongest argument. End with a paragraph summarizing what you have written.

Your history essay should not be that much different from you English essay except for the topic. The same rules apply to this type of writing no matter the subject.

@SuperMouse Unless it’s an actual textbook, and then the titles and stuff in bold has nothing to do with what follows.

@papayalily I am working on a detailed project regarding reading comprehension and have recently done hours of research on determining what is important in a text. In most texts the stuff in bold and the paragraph headings can be counted on to give an idea of what is important in the paragraph. Just out of curiosity, why would a publisher bother putting anything in bold or adding paragraph headings if they have nothing to do with what is being read? Also, if @Thesexier is writing a history essay odds are good he/she is learning about history with some kind of text.

It may be helpful to create an outline and then use it to guide the order of your writing. For example:

The Indian Mutiny of 1857

A. The Events Leading Up to the Mutiny
1. Event/Circumstance 1
2. Event/Circumstance 2
3. Etc.

B. The Mutiny
1. What Happened
2. Who did what
3. How did others respond

C. What Happened After the Mutiny (this is where you include the short and long-term consequences of the action).
1. Was it successful
2. Who was hurt/helped by the action

It strikes me that, because there are so many names for the mutiny (First War of Independence, Mutiny, Revolt of 1857, Uprising of 1857) that you already have some clues to the different perspectives and players.

@Thesexier extra Lurve for starting this essay today when it’s due on Tuesday. Good organizational skills!

@SuperMouse It’s not all texts, just a lot of them. They do it to mix it up because they think if they do just straight text we’ll skip it all. In the books that do it, it’s usually the first sentence that sums things up, not the bold. The second my teacher told me about that, my grades got a lot better and I stopped spending hours trying to figure out what exactly a paragraph detailing Isabella’s health decline had to do with the heading regarding the Catholic Church.