AP Test 2020

Before Answering the Question

• Read the question carefully

  1. What is the Historical Thinking Skill in the prompt (Compare and Contrast, Continuity and Change Over Time, or Cause and Effect)

  2. What is the theme of the prompt (political, economic, or social)?

  3. What is the time period of the question?

• • Keep in mind that these three parts of the question are quintessential to passing. You will be under pressure, so take the time to be sure you are writing about the right theme, time period, and with the appropriate Historical Thinking Skill. It's the correct dissection of the prompt that will make using your Magnum Opus easier and pave the way for more points in your essay. It's going to massively facilitate planning, and YOU WANT TO PLAN because then YOU DON'T HAVE TO WASTE TIME THINKING, your essay falls into place.

  • Ex 1: Analyze the multiple causes of and various responses to (1) smuggling activities (2) in the Caribbean region during the late eighteenth century (3).

    1. Historical Thinking Skill: Cause and Effect, and this can be phrased as cause and response, beginning and result, etc... You're going to frame your these as a 'Because X then Y' kind of style.

    2. Theme: Economic. Smuggling is tied to trade, so this is an economic focus. Now, mercantilism was the go to economic system, and that system heavily affected political policy to protect national wealth. Moreover, the methods by which smuggling was or was not stopped also affected peoples social lives. So make sure that you have the correct theme (economic) and keep in mind how you can connect it to other themes in order to better set up your complexity point.

    3. Time Period: Late eighteenth century, it just says it, but I figured I'd cover it just in case.

  • Ex 2: Using the documents, compare and contrast (1) the attitudes of Christianity and Islam (2) toward merchants and trade from the religions' origins until about 1500 (3).

    1. Historical Thinking Skill: ... Compare and Contrast

    2. Theme: Religion = Social. Now this is one of those that might seem to be an economic focus because they talk about trade, but it's about how Religions view trade. If there's some confusion in the theme when you read the prompt the documents should clear it up. That said, if you want to connect themes to set up complexity you can more easily do that with questions like these that layer one theme onto another.

    3. Time Period: 0 CE -- 1500 CE, which is a time range that you're unlikely to see for the exam (because it's just so large and the course no longer covers anything before 1200)

  • Ex 3: Evaluate the extent to which (1) Christian missionary efforts motivated European Imperial expansion (2) in nineteenth-century (3) Africa.

    1. Historical Thinking Skill: Evaluate the extent to which, one all of you are incredibly familiar with at this point; Continuity and Change Over Time.

    2. Theme: Imperial Expansion; political. Now this one is even more closely tying two themes than the last one, but this time it's social and political as opposed to social and economic. In reality this is even better, once you clarify any thematic confusions you might have by looking at the documents. If you want to set up complexity here you want to work in an economic slant as well, but that's really easy with African Imperialism because the whole idea of Imperialism is to sap wealth over time back to the Imperial country (so from the African continent to Europe).

    3. Time period: 1800-1899

• Group your documents

• • Your documents kind of come pre-grouped, and you want to group them because it helps you assign them to body paragraphs or sections of the paragraphs. This also predisposes your reader to be under the impression that you analyzed your documents. It's often easiest to group these according to the Historical Thinking Skill, but sometimes it can work off sub-themes as well, for example

    • Cause and Effect groups:

      1. What were the causes

      2. What were the effects

    • Compare and Contrast

      1. What changed

      2. What stayed the same

    • Continuity and Change Over Time

      1. What changed over time

      2. What stayed the same over time

    • Thematic groupings

      1. Priests talking about African Missionary expansions

      2. Imperial politicians talking about African expansions

DBQ Essay Outline

1. Intro

   • Thesis

     • "Although (1), because (2) and (3), therefore (4)

       1. Counterargument. This is to start to set up your complexity point. If you don't even want to try for complexity (keep in mind it's difficult to get and only 1 out of 10 points, so if you are worried about time you may want to ditch it to make your life simpler and make time less of a factor).

       2. Evidence one, in this case something specific that ties together the documents in the first group

       3. Evidence two, in this case something specific that ties together the documents in the second group

       4. Your argument.

   • Context

     • What happened in history that led up to this point, in about 3 sentences. You do this by talking about the important things happening in the century leading up to the focus of the prompt (so it has to relate to the prompt as well).

   • Paragraph 1

     • Transition sentence (typically it restates a relevant evidence point, though here it might be both evidence points because the DBQ only has five documents so the groups are smaller).

     • Tackle the first group of documents

• • • • Summarize them by HIPing them. Keep in mind that they say you only need one but because the rubric gets pretty subjective here and you all have your own individual strengths and weaknesses you want to use the easiest three; Historical Context (what's going on in that immediate place and time), Intended Audience (who are they specifically talking to), and Purpose (why does this specific document specifically exist, what are they trying to accomplish?).

      • Tie them to the argument. This means you take a sentence or two to explain why the document proves your answer/argument.

1. • • Do the same for the second group of documents

   • Paragraph 2

     • Transition sentence. This can reiterate the two evidence points from the first body paragraph, and it's possible to do this just because the shorter DBQ format allows you to separate outside evidence from the documents. Normally I don't recommend that, but given the way points are distributed across the rubric I'd rather make sure that you have a significant amount of points by the time you're done with your first body paragraph, hence this outline structure.

     • One to Two points of outside evidence backing up your first point in your thesis. This should be accomplished pretty easily given your Magnum Opus.

     • One to Two points of outside evidence backing up your second point in your thesis. This should be accomplished pretty easily given your Magnum Opus.

     • Complexity point. Now this is entirely optional, but if you already introduced a counter argument in your thesis you're going to restate it here and shoot it down with a piece of historical evidence. Then you're going to explain how the theme (Economic, Social, or Political) ties to the other two, and then you're going to elaborate on how that leads to events in the century after the time period of the prompt (like you would in post context). You could do this in two to three sentences, and you set up a counterargument and shot it down, tied the prompts theme into other themes, and elaborated on how it affects future history which ties it across time.

   • Conclusion (Try to have one, it can be short)

     • Thesis. Restate it

     • Post-context; how does the stuff relating to the prompt that you wrote lead to what happens next. Make sure it's not the same post-context that you used for complexity. Finding two effects of the stuff you talked about in the century after the prompt should be simple with a well organized Magnum Opus.

Supplemental Materials

• AP Review Packets by Heimler's History

• Princeton Review AP World History 2020

• Alternative DBQ Planning Sheet

• Sample 2020 DBQ