The final question of the exam asks you to give your judgment on the dispute that you have previously been discussing. This question is extremely straightforward, yet the majority of students score zero for their answer to it!

Fortunately, it’s only worth 1 mark, but it’s the easiest mark on the paper to get so you might as well make sure that you get it.

Question Format

The question may be expressed as something like “State your reasoned judgement as to whether Eddie knew that the dog was on fire” (or whatever the topic of the paper is), but may be put more briefly: “State your reasoned judgement.”

Strategy

The reason that most students don’t get this mark is that most students don’t directly answer the question. If the question asks you to say whether Eddie knew that the dog was on fire, then you must say whether Eddie knew that the dog was on fire; saying that it wasn’t Eddie’s fault, or that the dog wasn’t on fire won’t get the mark.

To be completely sure of this mark, echo the language of the question; e.g. write “My judgement is that Eddie did know that the dog was on fire”.

If the question is in the brief form “State your reasoned judgement”, then look back to the start of the section, before the questions about corroboration and conflict. There it will say “Come to a reasoned judgement as to whether…”; what follows is precisely what you should address when you state your judgement.

If you do this, then the only way that you can fail to get the mark for this question is if your answer clearly contradicts what you’ve previously written.

Note that there’s no need to back up your answer with reasoning; you’ve already done that in answering the previous questions.

Sample Questions and Answers

Question:

“State your reasoned judgement as to whether Tony Blair knew that there were no WMDs in Iraq.”

Good answer:

“Blair did know that there were no WMDs in Iraq.”

Bad answer:

“There weren’t any WMDs in Iraq.”