Social Sciences: History, Geography, and Civic Education
History
Focus on the broad outlines you can defend with dates: the medieval Bosnian state and its charters, the Ottoman period and its administrative and cultural legacy, the Austro-Hungarian era from 1878, the First and Second World Wars, the socialist Yugoslav period, and the events of the 1990s leading to the Dayton Agreement of 1995, which established the constitutional structure of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Know the difference between a primary and a secondary source, and be able to explain cause and consequence rather than only listing events.
Geography
Revise the relief of Bosnia and Herzegovina - the Dinaric mountains, the Sava river basin in the north, the Neretva and Bosna river systems, and the short Adriatic coastline at Neum. Know the cantonal structure, climate types (continental in the interior, Mediterranean influence in Herzegovina), population distribution, and the difference between renewable and non-renewable resources. Map-reading questions test scale, coordinates, and relief symbols; a scale of 1:100 000 means 1 cm equals 1 km.
Civic education
Understand the separation of powers, the levels of government in Bosnia and Herzegovina (state, entity, canton, municipality), the role of the constitution, human rights and the rights of the child, elections and the secret ballot, and the duties of a citizen. Distinguish a right from a duty - education is both, voting is a right, paying taxes is a duty.
Worked example
A map has a scale of 1:50 000 and two towns are 6 cm apart. Real distance is 6 × 50 000 = 300 000 cm = 3 km. The trap is forgetting to convert centimetres to kilometres, which shifts the answer by a factor of 100 000.
Rule of thumb
For any source question, name the type of source, its author and purpose, and then state what it does and does not prove.