Social Studies 30-1 · Diploma prep
The two assignments
Part A is half the exam: one response interpreting three sources, and one paper arguing a position. Here is each one with practice sources, a worked plan, and what every scoring category is actually looking for.
The sources below were written for this site to work like exam sources. Alberta publishes real released Part A material and scored student exemplars — see the diploma prep page.
- 1. Assignment I: Source Interpretation
- 2. Assignment II: Position Paper
- 3. Building an evidence bank
Assignment I: Source Interpretation
Worth 20%: Interpretation of Sources 12% (three sources, scored separately at 4% each), Relationships 6%, Communication 2%. Suggested length 500–1400 words. You do not take a position.
The task does not change from one administration to the next — only the sources do. That makes it the single most practisable piece of writing on any diploma exam: find three sources anywhere, and do it again.
Practice sources.
Source I — from a speech: “Every rule we add to protect people from failure also removes a decision they were entitled to make. A society that cannot tolerate a citizen's bad choice has stopped treating that citizen as an adult.”
Source II — description of a political cartoon: a figure labelled the market pulls a sled carrying a much larger figure labelled society. The sled's runners are stuck in a snowdrift labelled inequality, and the caption reads: “It was lighter when we started.”
Source III — from a government report: “Collective programs — public health care, income support, universal schooling — are not a departure from individual liberty. They are the conditions that make it usable by people who would otherwise be free only in principle.”
Interpret each source to show how it links to liberalism, and explain the relationships among the three.
A worked plan
- Source I: a classical liberal position. It treats individual autonomy as the highest value and sees state protection as a reduction of it — the phrase about being treated as an adult frames regulation as paternalism.
- Source II: a critical view of the unregulated market. The market cannot pull society forward once inequality has built up, so the cartoon argues that economic freedom alone becomes an obstacle — a modern liberal or social democratic critique.
- Source III: modern liberalism stated outright. Collective programs are not presented as limits on liberty but as the conditions for it — liberty in practice rather than in principle.
- Relationships: all three are arguing about the same question — what freedom requires. I and III disagree directly about whether the state enables or erodes it. II sits with III on the consequences of leaving the market alone, but reaches that position through a critique rather than a principle, which is a difference worth saying out loud.
| Category | What earns it | What loses it |
|---|---|---|
| Interpretation of Sources (4% each) | Saying what the source argues, naming the ideology or perspective, and pointing to the words or image details that show it | Summarizing the source without interpreting; naming an ideology with no evidence from the source |
| Relationships | Explaining how the three connect — agreement, tension, or a progression — with reasons | Handling each source separately and never comparing them |
| Communication | Organized paragraphs, controlled language | Notes, bullet points, or a response that never settles into prose |
Watch out: this assignment does not want your opinion of the sources. Arguing that Source I is wrong spends words that earn nothing — the marks are for interpretation and relationship.
Assignment II: Position Paper
Worth 30%: Analysis of Source 6%, Argumentation 8%, Evidence 8%, Communication 8%. Suggested length 750–1600 words.
Practice source. “A crisis is when a society finds out what it truly believes. Everything it suspends — a right, a market, a freedom — it suspends because it decided something else mattered more.”
To what extent should the perspective reflected in this source be embraced?
A worked plan
- Analyze the source first. It claims that emergency measures reveal a society's real priorities rather than betraying its principles — a pragmatic view, closer to collectivism in a crisis than to classical liberalism.
- Position: embrace it to a limited extent — crises do expose priorities, but what a society suspends under fear is not the same as what it values, and the test is whether the suspension is temporary and accountable.
- Argument 1 — the source is right that crises reveal priorities. Evidence: wartime economic controls and rationing; emergency public spending during the Great Depression.
- Argument 2 — but fear produces decisions a society later disowns. Evidence: the internment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War, and the later apology and redress.
- Argument 3 — so the real test is limits and accountability. Evidence: emergency powers with sunset clauses and review; the debates over pandemic restrictions and where they ended.
- Conclusion: embrace the source's insight, reject its implication that whatever is suspended deserved to be — a society's values are visible in how it restores what it suspended, not only in what it gave up.
| Category | What earns it |
|---|---|
| Analysis of Source | Establishing what the source argues and which ideological perspective it reflects, with evidence from its wording, before you respond to it |
| Argumentation | A clear, defensible position held consistently, with counterargument acknowledged and answered rather than ignored |
| Evidence | Specific and accurate examples from history and current affairs — named, dated, and connected to the claim they support |
| Communication | A structure a reader can follow, controlled language, and a conclusion that resolves rather than repeats |
Argumentation and Evidence together are 16% — more than half this assignment. A paper that analyzes the source well and then supports its position with vague generalities is giving away the larger part of the mark.
Building an evidence bank
The idea: you cannot revise the source, so revise what you will bring to it. Eight to ten examples you know in detail will answer almost any prompt.
| Theme | Examples worth knowing properly |
|---|---|
| The market and its limits | The Great Depression and the New Deal; the post-1980 shift toward deregulation; the 2008 financial crisis |
| Collectivism in practice | The Soviet Union under Stalin; the postwar welfare state; public health care in Canada |
| Rejections of liberalism | Nazi Germany; authoritarian responses to unrest; the Cold War and its proxy conflicts |
| Liberty against security | Wartime internment; post-2001 security legislation; pandemic emergency measures |
| Citizenship and dissent | Civil rights movements; Indigenous self-determination and treaty rights in Canada; climate activism |
- Know each example concretely — who, when, what changed. A date and a consequence beat a paragraph of atmosphere.
- Practise attaching examples to opposite positions. The same event often supports either side, depending on what you draw from it.
- Keep a couple of current examples fresh, since prompts often invite them and markers notice when the most recent evidence is decades old.