PEAZIT Aha card
Go straight to resources ↓Who says so, and how do they know?
A source is a trace or an account. Ask who created it, when and why; an author’s testimony is not automatically a complete picture.
| Question | What to establish |
|---|---|
| Who? | Author and relationship to the event |
| When? | Creation date and event date |
| Why? | Purpose, audience and possible interest |
| How do they know? | Direct experience, reported news or inference |
One worked example
- A 1918 diary: “I heard that a train arrived.”The diary is a contemporary source for what the author recorded.
- The author writes “I heard”.This is not direct eyewitness evidence of the arrival.
- Compare a railway record or another account.The claim about the train needs further checking.
Watch out: A biased source is not automatically useless. It may reveal the author’s views; assess reliability for the specific question.
Goal, prerequisites and card origin
What you will learn: Separate an author, a source’s creation and the event it describes.
What you need first: Understand short text and dates.
An original PEAZIT working card. Independent expert review and effectiveness testing have not yet taken place. · v1
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A source is a trace or an account. Ask who created it, when and why; an author’s testimony is not automatically a complete picture.