Chapter 4: Cracking the DBQ

DBQ typically has 4-10 documents that cover one topic that your essay is based on. Work through the documents to find how they relate to each other, what changes can be seen over time, how the author's background may have influenced the contents of the document, and so on. There was a sample of the DBQ directions. What they mean:

1. Create a relevant thesis and support it with the documents.
2. Analyze the documents. You should be able to explain the following:

• What was the context (historical, political, or cultural environment) in which the document was authored? What else was going on around the author at the time this was written?
• How does this author's frame of reference affect what they wrote and why? What is the author's position in society (gender, age, educational level, political or religious belief system)? How do these attributes inform what the author writes?
• How does the content and tone of the document relate to the other documents? What does one document say that another doesn't? What accounts for these differences?
• When was the document written? Who was the intended audience and what was the author trying to express?

3.Group the documents, preferable in three different ways.

4.Identify and explain other documents or points of view and how they would add to your argument.

The chapter then showed a basic rubric for the DBQ, then a check list, then the expanded rubric. Use all the time you need to plan your essay.

1. process the question
2. Build a framework
3. Work the documents
4. Frame them and group them
5. Analyze and add
6. organize the documents

After the chapter went through those steps it said a little more about timing then gave a practice question with documents of different constitutions. This is really confusing so I hope that we're doing all this in class too!

Chapter 3:Cracking the Essay questions

There are three essays to write after the multiple choice section of the exam:the document based question(DBQ), the change-over-time essay, and the comparative essay. The DBQ gives you a set of documents that you base your essay on. The change-over-time essayasks you to analyzechanges and continuities (wouldn't that be like traditions or customs?) that occured in a certain period of time. The comparative essayasks you to compare and contrast two episodes (Star Wars 1&2? ha ha just kidding), cultures , religions, or other historical phenomenon from a given period. Your thesis statement would be telling the reader what you're going to be talking about before you talk about it. There are 9 possible points you can get on each essay and writing a good thesis is worth 1 to 2 of the points.

• Do you have a comprehensive, analytical, and explicit thesis?
• Is your thesis acceptable?

An analytical thesis includes a clear description of why the central claim of your essay is correct. A thesis isn't just one sentence;it can be a group of statements. Together, statements must

• state your claim clearly
• define terms, context, and chronologyof events under discussion.
• describe why your claim is true

Oce you craft a strong thesis, make sure that the rest of your essay supports the basic ideas your thesis intorduces. Two most common essay cues are analyze and compare and contrast. Analyzing: explain how, why, something happens, and wht the impacts were. Compare and contrast: explain what causes the similarities and differences - in essence, to analyze why.Use key phrases.

DBQ thesis

• Open with something like, "After reviewing these documents, it is clear that..."
• Rephrase the question as an answer. Include all key phrases.
• Adress each part of the question with a statement and a document reference or an example

then there was stuff about the other two essay and what there thesis' should have but this is a lot of typing and I think that in the next two chapters about the exam I'm not going to be so thorough!

Essays should be a minimum of 4-6 paragraphs.

Chapter 2:Cracking the multiple choice Section

The first 5 chapters of the book don't get into any history yet so I'll just take notes on what the chapters are about. At the beginning of this chapter it talks about how sometimes guessing after doing all the work you can is okay. If you get stuck on a question and keep thinking on it then you're wasting time. You only have about 45 seconds for each question. If you rush through then you might chose a wrong answer because you read the question wrong. You should read answers with a critical eye so you can process the answers more quickly. Using process of elimination helps make your chances of getting correct answers better. You should read answer choices as "wrong until proven right". The book suggests to skip questions that you can't eliminate any of the answers. There are 4 steps to answering a multiple choice question:1)Read the question and put it in your own words. 2)Answer in your own words. 3)Process of elimination. 4)Guess and go. There were a few sample questions but I haven't learned any of the history yet so I couldn't answer the questions. I think I'll go on and after I finish the history section go back and answer the questions.

Part 1- Chapter 1:Welcome to the world of AP World History

In this chapter it didn't start on years, major ideas, major events, major people, or developing trends. It's more of an introduction to the AP world history exam. It explained that there will be 5 major periods of history in the exam. The chapter also started explaining the types of questions and the scoring. It explained that a good score is four or five but 3 is okay also. The end of the chapter talked about getting the most out of the book and taking the practice tests.

The Princeton Review- Cracking the AP World History Exam

I just got the book today. It finally came in the mail. It looks like it's definitely going to take all summer to get it read! Will start reading and taking notes soon.