History / Geography taught through L2: document work and argument in the target language
History and Geography are separate subjects in the European Baccalaureate, but both are taught and examined through your Language 2. The paper is marked for its discipline and for its language: you must analyse sources or documents, deploy precise evidence, and write an argued essay in the target language using the terminology of your textbook - not a translation of L1 terms.
Core moves
- Source criticism: establish nature, origin, purpose, audience and context, then use the content as evidence - of attitudes, of decisions, of change - rather than as a neutral record.
- History essay: a thesis, a structure that is causal or chronological by argument (not by habit), precise evidence (dates, treaties, figures, actors), and an evaluation of change and continuity.
- Geography: read maps, graphs, statistics and photographs; explain processes (urbanisation, erosion, migration, coastal management) with scale and named examples; use the L2 terms for push and pull factors, carrying capacity, sustainable development.
Worked example
A short extract from a 1919 speech by a nationalist deputy denouncing the peace settlement, with its date and provenance given.
Reasoning: the weak answer writes 'the source says the treaty is unfair, so it was unfair'. The strong answer asks who is speaking and with what interest (a deputy of the defeated state, whose career depends on nationalist support), when (before the terms were signed, or during the Ruhr crisis), and why the text was produced (to mobilise domestic opinion). It then uses the source as evidence of German attitudes to the settlement, not as evidence of the treaty's content, and corroborates with figures: reparations, territorial losses, the army limited to 100,000 men.
Traps
- Answering in L1. It is not marked, however good the history.
- Describing a document instead of evaluating it, or ignoring provenance because the content seems sufficient.
- Confusing cause with consequence, and listing events without a line of argument.
- Vague claims ('many things changed') instead of named, quantified evidence.
- Literal translation of technical terms rather than the expression used in your L2 textbook.