History is a vast field which covers changes and developments in society over time. It is a great lamp which illuminates a variety of subjects like religion, military, political, economic, social, intellectual and scientific background.
Historians define the word History in different ways. Pallavi Talekau, Dr. Jyotrimayee Nayak, and Dr. S. Harichandan quoted different historians in History PAPER -V as mentioned below:
- According to Burckhardt: “History is the record of what one age finds worthy of note in another.”
- Henry Johnson states: “History, in its broadest sense, is everything that ever happened.
- Rapson said: “History is a connected account of the course of events or progress of ideas.”
It is such an interesting subject because it is not only based on the past but also covers a lot of modern history in detail by understanding current affairs and everything that happens around it.
Undoubtedly, history is an important and interesting subject, but almost all students find it a boring subject. Therefore, students are not willing to pay full attention while writing history assignments. And even they do not know how to write their assignments effectively.
Such students can buy assignment online to get high grades without investing time and effort. But before that, you can follow the top 10 tips to write a perfect European History assignment in 2023-24 that we shall discuss in the upcoming lines.
Tips on Writing European History Assignments
1. Understand the Requirements Properly
The first and foremost tip for writing an impressive historical assignment is to understand the assignment requirements. Mind all the instructions and consider the due date for your assignment submission.
For a better understanding of assignment requirements, Swarthmore College presents a detailed guide on Understanding Your Assignment.
According to these guidelines:
- Deep understanding of the purpose of writing assignments.
- Stick to the assignment criteria while brainstorming for a subject matter to follow the prompt.
- Ask your professor if you find something confusing for clarity.
- Look at the keywords written in your assignment to know what type of assignment your professor expects from you.
2. Choose a Historical Topic Carefully
History is a vast field that covers all aspects of society and changes and developments over time. You have to select first a broad topic; then, after narrowing down the general topic, you will reach towards the focused topic.
For choosing a good historical topic, you need to develop a strong historical question, and your focused topic will help you in this matter. So start with the broad topic as discussed in the book “Writing an A+ Research Paper: A Roadmap for Beginning and Experienced Writers.” Written by Douglas Grudzina and Boris Kolba, published in 2008.
They represent an exercise on how you start thinking about your AP European history assignment topic, as Rob’s (a student of Ella’s school) topic selection procedure starts with the Extensive Topic, then narrowing it by considering some factors, including your interstate, available resources, accessibility, and credibility of the topics. Lastly, read the focused topic to craft your assignment topic as shown below:
Always keep in mind that a good assignment topic is relevant, specific and concise with a clear purpose.
3. Use Primary Sources
To collect data for your selected topic, you need to gather information by using primary sources. A Primary source is defined as a source which provides first-hand evidence and raw information about a place, historical events, object, work or person.
Some primary sources include diaries, interviews, records, academic research papers, and fiction material. The primary sources of information are not only in written form. When writing a European History assignment, ancient buildings, old photographs, musical recordings and reminiscences are very important to give you clues and help in further research.
4. Use Secondary Sources
Use secondary sources of information to make your primary data more authentic. Your secondary sources are books, journals, magazines, research papers, and encyclopedias.
When you read these sources, you will learn how historians interpreted the information. And it will help you in writing your scholarly assignment based on the primary sources. Thorndike Library: College of The Atlantic gives a clear difference between the primary and secondary sources to conduct in-depth research.
5. Create an Outline
After collecting the important data, you need to create a strong outline by utilising your collected data. It will help you write an assignment by creating a list of all the content headings and subheadings in manageable order.
Your outline not only designs your assignment in a linear fashion but also divides your information and sets your schedule to which task to do at first and which should be at the end.
6. Follow the Standard Assignment Structure
Your European History assignment structure contains three major sections, including:
The Introduction
The introduction will be a roadmap to move your reader towards the rest of the European History Assignment till the end. Start your history assignment with an engaging introduction. In this section, introduce your selected topic and explain all the key points that you will discuss in your whole work.
Body paragraphs
Your body paragraphs contain all the information that will support the thesis statements that you mentioned in your introduction. All the paragraphs start with a topic sentence, proceed with the supportive ideas and evidence and conclude your paragraphs with a concluding sentence.
Conclusion
In this section, you have to re-state your thesis statement and research question. Summarise all the key points in a concise manner. So, give a clear answer to your research question at the end of the assignment.
7. Start with the Historical Thesis Statement
While writing your introduction, you need to start with a strong historical thesis statement. For that purpose, you have to ensure that your thesis statement is specific to your selected topic based on your deep analysis and research. Your thesis statement claims your argument about your historical question. While developing your thesis statements, you need to consider:
- It should not be based on your personal ideas, feelings and beliefs.
- It should be concise, relevant and coherent.
- It should represent the central concept of your whole assignment.
8. Use Critical Evidence
Your critical evidence will help you in articulating the main body section of your assignment to claim your argument.
The LibreTexts Library quoted Reike and Sillars (1993) defining evidence:
“Evidence refers to specific instances, statistics, and testimony when they support a claim in such a way as to cause the decision maker(s) to grant adherence to that claim.”
So, use critical and supportive evidence to support your historical thesis statement. Your evidence is authentic and depends upon your primary and secondary sources of information. You can arrange all the supportive evidence into paragraphs by following the assignment structure.
9. Cite Your Sources
Adding citations in the text and references at the bottom of your work will help you make your work more authentic, and you can claim that your European history assignment is plagiarism-free.
Cite your sources means mentioning all the sources (books, research papers, journals, webpage resources) from where you extract data and take an idea or concept. You can cite your sources by following your assignment instruction referencing style.
According to the University Of Alaska Fairbanks, you can cite your sources in the following ways:
- For books: Author, title, place of publication, publisher, and publication year.
- For web page resources: author, title of page, Web address or URL, and date of access.
- For articles: author, the title of the article, the title of the journal, volume, issue, date, page numbers, and DOI or permalink.
10. Proofreading and Editing
Last but not least, you need to proofread and edit your assignment to give it the finest look. Touro University gives a detailed guide with proven strategies for effective proofreading:
- Do not only depend upon grammar and spelling checkers
- At one time, proofread only for one error
- Divide your assignment into small chunks
- Read your assignment word to word slowly
- Read the assignment backwards
- Highlight all the errors and mistakes
After that, edit your assignment and remove all the mistakes from your content.
Conclusion
History seems quite a tough, broad and boring subject for students. When it comes to writing lengthy European history assignments, it becomes a troubling situation for students. Why it happens? Because students do not understand the assignment requirements demanded by their institutions.
Therefore, we have compiled a list of the top European history assignment writing tips to ease students’ writing process. But if you get off this hectic task, skip all the above steps and tips, and buy an assignment online from The Academic Papers UK to secure high grades.