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!