If you're stressed about how to prepare for your AP World History FRQ, you're going to
want to watch this video because in it, we're going to go over five steps to tackling FRQs
to help you score a four or five.
This is the first video of a two-part series.
So if you enjoy this video, be sure to check out our follow on part in which will give
us some AP World History FRQ tips and test taking strategies that you can use heading
into test day.
Without further ado, let's get started.
The first tip when it comes to tackling your AP World History FRQs is to know exactly what
you're going to be graded on and how you're going to be assessed.
How are points distributed by the College Board?
Here you can see on the screen that there are a ton of ways that you can score points
when it comes to your SAQs, DBQs or LEQs.
So here you can see that in this SAQ, there are three points allocated for the question.
And what you'll also note is that there are specific scoring guidelines that graders are
looking for as they work through your answer response.
So make sure that you start understanding these rubrics because if you don't understand
how you're going to be graded, you're not going to know how to write your response.
The second step when it comes to tackling effective AP World History FRQs is to flag
every directive word that you may be asked of.
The reason why you do this is so that you know that you're directly answering the question.
So the most common words that the College Board would like to use with the AP World
History exam are words such as identify and explain.
As you can see what we've done here is we've highlighted in the 2019 Short Answer Question
number one, the words that the College Board is asking you to perform in your response.
So from this example, you can tell that oftentimes, you'll be asked to either identify or explain
something.
But what does that mean?
Well, if you're asked to identify something, it means that you need to provide a one or
two sentence answer that directly answers the question within the proper time period.
When you're asked to explain something.
This is where you're going to typically need three sentences.
The first sentence is for you to answer the question and the next two sentences are for
you to show your evidence and show your why.
So this is where you're going to refer back to specific facts that support your answer.
One of the biggest mistakes that students make here is providing a response that is
outside of the time period that's being asked.
So make sure that whatever your response is that it's within the allocated time periods
that's in the question itself.
In this second example, we can see how we flag the different directive words and the
time period in a DBQ question, as we've highlighted the key operative directive, which is to evaluate
the extent of something, and we've also highlighted the time period, which is the 16th century.
So when you're flagging the directive or key phrases, there are two things to keep in mind.
The first one is what is the historical reasoning skill that's being asked of me.
So typically, when it comes to the DB cues or the LEQs, you'll be asked to compare explore
causes, or to discuss change in continuity over time.
And the second part is what's the time period.
These are the two most important parts when it comes to identifying what the DBQ is asking
you.
Alright, so that's two steps down in terms of writing effective AP World History FRQs.
Before we head on to step number three, be sure to like and leave a thumbs up on this
video so that we know that this is helpful content for you and subscribe to our channel
so that you'll be notified when the follow on video on AP World History FRQ test taking
tips is released.
Now let's head into step number three.
The third step is to make sure that you plan your response before you start writing.
taking just a few minutes to map out your thoughts can provide a greater deal of coherence
and clarity to your response so that your reader is not feeling like you're going from
one direction to the next direction from one sentence to another.
Too often students jump way too fast into just answering the question that they ended
up actually not answering the question.
So taking a second to gather yourself to collect your evidence, and see how it connects to
your answer is a really important step when it comes to tackling the AP World FRQs to
serve as a compass.
There are two steps that you can always ask yourself.
The first one is what's the historical reasoning skill that's being asked of me here?
Am I being asked to compare something to look at the causation of something to look at the
change or continuity over time?
And the second one is, what is the time period being asked of me?
And what do I already know about this time period?
Then when it comes to writing the specifics to the DBQ, there are seven things to keep
in mind.
The first one is, what type of DBQ is this?
Is this something asked me about the social impact, the political or economic situation?
The second question is, how are the documents that have been provided going to be grouped
together in my response?
What are two or three different groups that I can put documents in?
The third one is what is the sourcing of documents?
Right?
What do I know about the author's point of view or what can I gather from what's being
presented to me?
The fourth question to ask yourself is what's my thesis can be agreed or disagreed upon?
Is it clear I've stated my position.
The fifth question is, have I planned to use at least six documents since that's an unnecessary
component in order to score full points on evidence?
And the sixth question is, is my intended outside evidence specific and relevant to
the question as well as the time period?
And finally, how am I going to introduce complexity into my DBQ?
Do I have a sense of how I'm going to do that?
Or am I just going to ignore this component and focus on the other parts of my DBQ?
These are the sorts of questions that you want to be able to ask yourself as you're
working through and planning out your response.
When it comes to the LEQ or the long essay question, you're going to want to ask a lot
of the similar questions to the DBQ section.
The question might be, do I have a defensible thesis?
Is there a clear line of reasoning here?
Another question you might ask yourself is, is it clear how I'm going to place things
into historical context so I'd get that contextualization point.
Another question is, do I have specific evidence that's relevant to the question and the time
period.
And finally, have I planned how I'm going to introduce complexity?
Asking yourself these sorts of questions as you plan your response is going to help you
craft a stronger response than just word vomiting everything that you learned in class.
Remember, the College Board is using the free response section in order to test your ability
to connect the dots of what you've learned in class to a broader question.
So you want to make sure that you can fluidly navigate the historical time period with accuracy.
This means that planning is super essential and that you're not going to want to skip
it.
So whether it's just spending three to five minutes of your writing time to do so, it's
really important.
So keep this in mind.
Our fourth step when it comes to running effective AP World History FRQs is to make sure that
you've double checked that you've made explicit references to connections in your writing.
One of the common pitfalls that students have when it comes to the FRQs is not using documents
or evidence to actually advance their argument.
It is not enough in your response, just to summarize that you understand what the document
is.
You have to actually show how that document connects back to your thesis that has a clear
line of reasoning.
In the past Chief Readers have expressed that students often actually understand the historical
content, but they aren't able to present that evidence in a compelling way that will earn
points in their response.
The easiest way for you to check yourself here is to remember the word therefore, make
your argument describe your evidence from what's provided or what you know, and then
say that therefore, followed by the argument that you are trying to make.
In other AP subjects, teachers have called this showing the why or closing the loop in
your response.
So this is really important and a point of emphasis across any AP course that you take.
Our fifth tip when it comes to writing effective AP World History FRQs is to make sure that
you're practicing practicing and then practicing some more.
Sometimes students do a really great job of understanding the rubrics and how they're
going to be assessed, but they don't practice enough to actually put what they know of the
rubric into action and applying it towards points for themselves.
So one of the easiest ways you can do so is to team up with a friend and to work through
pass released FRQs, and then grade each other's work with the scoring guidelines.
This will serve two purposes.
The first one is familiarizing yourself with the scoring guidelines of how the grader is
actually grades student responses.
And the second one is to see how another student might have approached the same question that
you were asked and give you a broader perspective of how others may interpret the question being
asked.
After a while, you might start to develop a checklist that you'll use on test day.
Here's a five question checklist that we might ask ourselves.
The first question is, do I have a thesis?
Is there clear evidence to support my thesis and a line of reasoning?
The second question is, have I explained what happened immediately before and the time periods
to earn the contextualization point?
The third question is, is the evidence that I've used actually supporting my thesis.
Have I included bridge words such as therefore or because to demonstrate my argument?
The fourth question I might ask is, have I discussed sourcing.
Have I thought about the author's point of view or the audience that the author was intending
to write this for and how that might impact the author's writing?
And the fifth and final question I might ask myself is, is there an attempt to earn complexity
in my response?
If not, how can I incorporate that.
Three additional resources that you may find helpful as you start preparing for your AP
World History exam?
The first one is College Board's AP Central, which provides all the past released exams
complete with scoring guidelines, Chief Reader reports as well as sample responses.
This will help you understand what earns you points and what doesn't earn you points as
you start practicing.
There's no better source of practice for the FRQ's than the actual past exam questions.
The second resource that we have is Albert's free AP World History review guide.
This is a free review guide on our blog that provides you with a step-by-step guide that
you can use to start pacing yourself as you start using your different AP World History
resources and preparing for the FRQ's, as well as the multiple choice sections.
The third resource is Albert's AP World History course.
This provides hundreds of practice questions as well as original FRQs to stack on top of
your AP Central FRQs so that you can start learning by doing from our detailed explanations
as well as our sample responses.
Lastly, if you found this video helpful, leave a comment below as to what you found most
helpful.
And be sure to like and subscribe to our channel because like I mentioned at the beginning
of this video, this is just part one of two in which in our next video, we're going to
go over 37 AP World History FRQ tips and strategies when it comes to mastering the FRQs that you
may find helpful that are specific to the SAQ, DBQ, as well as the LEQ.
But that's it for this time, guys.
I'll see you next time.