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.