Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Your IB History HL IA

These past IAs are from a very useful website that I have used throughout my IB career. Using inspiration from these papers can help develop your own. There is nothing wrong with using inspiration, but it is best to be careful so you don’t plagiarize. For our example topic, our research question can look like this: “To what extent did economic factors contribute to the fall of the Qing Dynasty?”

Research Time:

Now is the most important step. (I know, I already said that, but every step is really important.) This is where you will be finding sources to defend your claim on the question you created. I recommended the website, JSTOR, as it provides academic sources, both primary and secondary sources. It was very useful and all of the sources that I used in my IA came from this site. Of course, this doesn’t mean you can’t just google evidence on Google from non-academic sources, but it is better to find and use academic sources. Additionally, if your school doesn’t have access to JSTOR, Google Scholar is also really good and can provide academic sources, however, there are chances where it can give less credible sources too, so be careful with Google Scholar. This section will take the longest time, so utilize your teachers to the fullest. I promise it can and will go a lot smoother if you ask your teachers for help and guidance. Also, have grace with yourselves because researching is not easy for everyone.

Outline and Writing:

The outline needs to be detailed and structured. It will help you organize your research to ensure a nice flow. Everyone knows the basic outline: intro, body 1,2 &3, and conclusion. The history IA should be pretty similar except the bodies won't be like an English IA. The intro will consist of your research question, a quick analysis of your sources’ values and limitations, background information, and then your thesis as the last sentence. From there are your “body paragraphs” where you expand on your thesis. This is what it’ll look like:

Let’s say our thesis is: “Economic factors were crucial in the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912, as rampant corruption, fiscal mismanagement, and the failure to modernize the economy caused the dynasty’s stability to waver and began to erode public support, leading to a revolutionary movement.” The first paragraph would be to prove the section about “rampant corruption” leading to the fall. Similarly, the other paragraphs would be about fiscal mismanagement and failure to modernize and its correlation. Then you finish with a reflection and conclusion. In a reflection, you’ll discuss your methods of research and their effectiveness. Then you’ll reflect on the challenges and the solutions you created, as well as the limitations of your sources. Lastly, the conclusion would be a summary of your investigation, defining and explaining the significance of the investigation and directly answering your research question.

Finalizing:

The last and biggest thing is to finalize your paper. This step needs you to peer review like your life depends on it. I would suggest peer review at least four times if you have the time. Even ask your teachers to review your essay. Remember though that your teacher only has one chance to look at and review your paper, so utilizing other students is very important. The BIGGEST thing is to check your citations and make sure your formatting aligns with your chosen format, if not this can lead to your accidentally getting flagged as plagiarism, and we don’t want that.

When you finally go through these basic steps and reach the end, your essay will be on its way to IB to be graded! Now you’ll have one less thing out of the way. Following these steps will allow you to create a pretty structured and compelling history IA that meets IB’s criteria!