LIZA KNIGHT: Hi, my name is Liza Knight,
and I teach at JH Rose High School in Greenville North,
Carolina.
And I welcome you to our first session of AP daily practice
sessions for AP comparative government and politics.
Today, I'm going to work through some practice
multiple choice questions with you
to get you ready for that exam.
I encourage you to click on the link that's
just above this video here and you
can download a PDF of the questions
that I'm going to be working through today.
All right, let's get started.
Now, first let's talk a little bit
about what you should expect on the multiple choice
section of the AP exam.
There will be 55 multiple choice questions,
and you will be given 60 minutes to answer these questions.
This will count as 50% of your exam score.
Now, 40 to 44 of those questions will be individual questions
without a stimulus, meaning there
will be nothing to help you answer
the questions other than the questions and the answer
choices.
But you will also see three sets of quantitative analysis
questions.
This is where you will be given some sort of graph, chart,
table, map, or infographic, and you
will be asked to use the information
from that quantitative source to answer the multiple choice
questions.
And it is sets of questions because
each quantitative source will have 2 to 3 questions that
go along with it.
You will also see two sets of qualitative analysis questions
where you will be given a text-based, secondary source,
and you also answer 2 to 3 questions that go along
with each secondary source.
And of course, the multiple choice
will cover all five units of this course
and include questions from all six of our course countries.
Let's start looking at some examples of the multiple choice
questions that you'll see on this year's exam.
This is an example of a nonstimulus question.
So you will start with taking a look at the question,
and it says, which of the following
best explains different checks that the legislatures have
on the executive in the United Kingdom and in Mexico?
You have four different answer choices, always an A, B, c,
and D. And of course, you'll want
to begin by fully reading through the questions
and the answer choices.
Then I encourage you to really focus
on the countries that appear in the question
and the core concepts that you've learned in this course.
So for this particular question, you
would want to focus in on that word checks, checks
and balances is a term you've learned in this course,
and we're talking about checks that a legislature would
have on an executive.
You also want to focus on the countries
that you're being asked about.
And in this case, that's the United Kingdom and Mexico.
Now, I encourage you to pause and take a minute to figure out
the answer for yourself.
And then when you're ready, hit play again
and we'll talk through it.
So let's begin by eliminating some answers
that we know are incorrect.
So we see here that this would be incorrect
because right in this first part,
it says the UK prime minister is from the minority party.
We know that's not true.
The UK prime minister is going to be from the majority party.
So immediately, because part of this answer is wrong,
we can eliminate it.
We can also eliminate answer choice C,
because in the second part here, we
see where it says while in Mexico, the government is less
stable because the president can call
for a vote of no confidence.
That is not true.
It is the UK that uses a vote of no confidence not Mexico.
So we can eliminate answer choice C.
We can also eliminate answer choice D, because it says,
in the UK, the legislature controls domestic policy
with little input from the prime minister.
That also is inaccurate.
Thus, we can eliminate D making B our best answer choice.
Even though the UK and Mexico have
different types of political systems, one a parliamentary,
and one a presidential, in both countries,
the legislature can be a powerful check
on the executive.
That is our best answer for this question.
Let's take a look at another nonstimulus based question.
Which best explains why Islam plays a larger
role in the political culture of Iran than that of Nigeria
despite Muslims making up a majority of the population
in both countries?
Again, you have your four answer choices.
Let's look for the key countries in terms in the question.
We see that we're focusing here on Iran and Nigeria,
and our core terms are Islam and political culture.
Now, pause again, answer the question for yourself,
then click play when you're ready to talk through it.
We can eliminate answer choice A here because it says,
unlike Nigeria's society, Iran's society
is male-dominated and thus more compatible
with an important political and public role
for Islamic candidates.
That's not true.
Both countries tend to be more male-dominated.
So we can eliminate answer choice A.
We can also eliminate answer choice B
because it says that candidates for Nigeria's legislature
must be vetted by a council of clerics
before they run for office.
That's true of Iran, not Nigeria.
So we can eliminate answer choice B.
We also can eliminate answer choice D. It says,
Iran is a theocratic regime, which is true
while Nigeria is a democracy, but it also says,
so Nigeria's government denies religious candidates
the opportunity to run.
That is not true.
Religious candidates are allowed to run in Nigeria,
so that makes that one incorrect.
Which means C is our correct answer.
Muslims in Nigeria make up the majority and only
some of the states of the country,
and we know that's predominantly the north.
So different regions have different religious influences
upon political culture, unlike Iran
where Shia Muslims are a majority
throughout the country.
Let's look now at an example of a quantitative analysis
question that we might see something similar on the AP
exam.
Here is the quantitative stimulus.
We see here we have a graph.
And the prompt ask us, which of the following
occurred in Russia and most likely
caused the change in the data from 2012 to 2014?
Once again, we have four answer options.
Now, before you answer this question,
we obviously want to look at the question
and see what information we can gather.
So we see that we're talking about Russia here,
and we're talking about a cause of a change in the data
from the dates 2012 to 2014.
But with a quantitative source, we also
really want to study the data that we're being given
and read everything surrounding that charter
graph to make sure we use all the clues that can help us
answer this question correctly.
So always check out the title.
The title of the quantitative stimulus is very important.
And this one is Russian Trust and Institutions
from 2012 and 2014.
And we read underneath that it says,
it's measuring the percent of Russians
who say they trust each institution
to do what is right almost always or most of the time.
We also always want to look at the key
to see how we should read the data.
And we see here that the lighter bar on this graph is 2012 data
and the other bar is 2014 data.
Always important to check out the key.
Now, once we've done this and looked at it carefully,
we then want to look at the answer choices
to determine the best answer.
So I encourage you to pause for just a moment
and answer the question for yourself
and hit play when you're ready to talk through it.
The correct answer to this question is going to be C,
Russian nationalism increased due to relations
with neighboring countries.
Now, this is backed up by the data in the graph.
We see that for every single institution,
there is an increase in the percent of Russians
that almost always are most of the time
trust this institution, because we can see that the 2014
line is higher than the 2012 line
for every single institution.
So when we're looking for an answer choice,
we need one that's backed up by the data,
but that also is true.
And that is the one that is both.
Now, A would be incorrect because there
is no change in dominant party between 2012 and 2014.
It's still United Russia, the party of Vladimir Putin.
B is also incorrect because the economy of Russia is suffering.
And a devaluation of the currency,
that's going to lower this data, that's
going to lower trust in institutions, not raising it.
So that doesn't explain what we're seeing in this data.
And D would be incorrect because we
know that in Russia, they have rule by law, not rule of law.
So our public officials aren't being held accountable
for corruption, which means we can eliminate D,
making C the best answer.
And hopefully you know that in early 2014,
Russia starts the process of annexing Crimea, which
increases nationalism, which helps
explain this change in the data, making C the correct answer.
Let's look now at a second quantitative analysis question.
This question says, which of the following
is an implication of the data for Nigeria?
Again, our four answer choices.
We want to look first at the question.
It is asking us to look at information for Nigeria,
and it is also asking us to identify an implication.
What is this data implying about Nigeria?
Now, let's study that data.
Always read your title--
Corruption Perceptions Index from 2001 to 2016.
Check the key.
We see that the solid line is Nigeria,
the dashed line is Mexico, and the dotted line is Russia.
We want to be focusing on that solid line
so because our question is about Nigeria.
You've got to look at the key to make sure you're
looking at the right data.
And there's one other really important thing
that I want to point out for this data source.
See here this note.
It tells us that a score of zero is
total corruption, the most corruption
a country could have.
And a score of 100 would be no corruption.
That's really important, because we may not
remember that from when we studied the Corruption
Perception Index.
So that note helps us see that although for Nigeria, the line
is going up, that is actually showing
a reduction in corruption.
And we have to understand that to be able to get
this question correct.
So always look at the notes.
Those notes are going to help you figure out
the correct answer.
Pause and answer the question.
Hit play when you're ready to talk through it.
Correct answer here is going to be C. We can see from the data
that the government has reduced corruption.
As that lines go up, that shows that corruption
is being reduced in Nigeria, but it still
continues to be a major issue.
And we can see that it is still the lowest score, which
means it has the most corruption out of Nigeria, Mexico,
and Russia.
So C is the correct answer here.
A would be incorrect because the trend
is showing us that corruption is actually getting better
rather than getting worse.
B would be incorrect because corruption is still an issue.
They still have a low corruption perception index
score, which indicates a lot of corruption in the country.
And D would be incorrect because they have not
gotten rid of all corruption.
So C is the best answer here.
Let's look at one more question together today.
And this is an example of a qualitative question here.
The question asked, which of the following
best describes the speaker's perspective
about the authority of Iran's government?
Here are your answer choices.
Let's diagram the question.
We're looking at Iran and our concept is authority.
I encourage you to take a moment, pause, read the source,
annotate as you read, and hit play when you're
ready to go over the answer.
Now, as I'm annotating, I'm definitely
going to look at the source.
And this is important.
I see the Supreme Leader Khamenei made this speech
after the 2017 elections.
And key phrases that stand out to me
are vibrant elections, long voter lines, high voter
turnouts, establishing republicanism, but then also
the emphasis on Islam and the revolution.
And I know that's referring to the revolution of 1979.
So I'm seeing democratic terms and theocratic terms,
which leads me to B as the best answer.
The leadership of Iran uses the revolution of '79
and the election results as a source of authority.
Nowhere in it does it say that elections are
more important than theocracy.
We know that's not true for Iran.
And certainly C would be incorrect
because the supreme leader would not
be suggesting removing some of his own power and authority.
But B is the best answer based on this text source.
Now that we've been over a few multiple choice questions,
here's some reminders for you.
Make sure you read the question and answer choices carefully.
Make sure you focus on key terms and concepts,
and maybe even underline or circle those as you read.
Make sure you study a quantitative source
very carefully.
Always read the note and the key as we did as we practice.
If any part of the answer is false,
go ahead and eliminate that answer choice.
It can't be true.
It can't be correct.
And finally, read and annotate those qualitative sources
so that you make sure you focus on what the source is implying
or suggesting.
Thank you so much for watching this session today.
I hope it will help you as you prepare
for your AP comparative exam.
If you feel like you need more practice,
I encourage you to look at AP classroom and to tune
in to the next video where my colleague, Suzanne Bailey
will talk you through FRQ1.
Good luck on your exam.