What is the best way to analyse a primary source given to us in the exam?

When analysing primary sources, it is important to consider 3 main things (i) who is writing the source? (ii) what can you infer from the source? (iii) How does this match up to the knowledge you have on the events explained in the source? Source analysis is about understanding what the source is telling us firstly, why it is telling us this particular version of events, and how accurate a representation the source is of the event compared to the contextual knowledge you know as a history student. It is about trying to understand why the event has been depicted in a certain way, and how you know this. The examiner wants you to display two things; firstly that you can read a source and understand it, and secondly that you know it is useful for certain things but can acknowledge all sources have their own purpose and their own agenda. It is important also to display the knowledge you have in order to critique the source. For example, if the source was depicting Hitler's reaction to the Reichstag Fire, we might consider how and why his explanations of how the fire started may differ from the information you have learnt in class about why the fire started. All sources will be useful to us as historians in some way, and we must not brush them off as being not useful as are 'biased.' But, we must use our class knowledge to tell us why their particular agenda and angle, once recognised, can be used to help us understand differing points of view on the same situation.