MASON LOGEROT: Hey, everybody.
Welcome back to AP Daily.
My name is Mason Logerot, coming to you
from Pflugerville, Texas, in the Austin area,
where I teach at Pflugerville High School.
And today we're going to talk about the DBQ, all
the document-based question, kind
of the big behemoth of the AP test, the thing that
brings together all the skills that you've learned this year.
And we're not going to look at all parts of it
because I'm going to save some of the fun for Amy
in videos 7 and 8.
But today we're going to talk about the documents.
How can we use those for our evidence?
And also, how can we source them also?
So if you watched my previous video about the long essay
questions, you already know that you have a 100-minute block
of time to write both essays.
And remember, it's not going to be a thing where the test
proctor says after 60 minutes, "OK, time to stop with the DBQ.
Pencils down.
Now it's time to go on to the LEQ."
It's not like that at all.
It's 100 minutes to write both essays.
So as I said in the previous video,
the College Board suggests 60 minutes for the DBQ,
40 for the LEQ.
I might say maybe 65 minutes for the DBQ, maybe 70,
but definitely don't go over that because you need time
to write that LEQ as well.
So just remember, time is going to be an issue with this.
So make sure that you are practicing as much as you can.
There are DBQ questions in AP Classroom.
Talk to your teacher about how to access those.
So you'd get some good practice with reading and analyzing
the documents quickly without making sure
that you miss-- without misreading them and making
mistakes.
And one way to do that and do it quickly
is try and group the documents together.
If you see maybe two or three documents that
seem to be making the same argument,
put those together in a paragraph.
If you can't do that and some documents don't really work
well with others, that's fine.
If you're going to struggle with it, don't freak out.
Just do what you can.
But try and group as many of them together as you can.
But remember, your essay is going
to start with your context and thesis.
I covered both of those in the previous video.
So go back and watch that, if you haven't already.
But the big thing is, y'all, you've got to use all seven
documents.
And according to the rubric, you only
have to use six to make an argument.
But you were going to use all 7.
Because if you make a mistake on one,
as long as you've used all seven, you use six correctly,
you'll get the points for using the document.
But let's say you only use six documents and you accidentally
mess up on one-- and that happens a fair amount--
you've only used five correctly, you
don't get that second point.
Make sure that you're using all seven documents
and make sure as always that you are answering the question.
So there is actually a link to a PDF
in the description of this video that has all seven documents.
If you want, go ahead and pause right now
and read over those documents.
We're not going to cover all of them in this video
because we don't have time to do that.
But maybe take a second, look over some of them,
and just sort outline what type of argument
you might make if you were going to write this DBQ.
Or hey, if you're feeling like you
want to write a full DBQ right now, pause the video
and do that as well.
Or if you just want me to give you the answers,
that's fine as well.
But either way, go ahead and open up that PDF now.
I'll wait for you.
Pause and then come back when you're ready.
So let's look at this question.
We're going to talk about the Enlightenment
and how it continued to influence
political and social debates.
But if you've already looked at some of the documents,
you know that the document is not going to say,
"Here's how the Enlightenment continued
to influence political and social debates,"
not going to do that at all.
You're going to need to read it and understand and think
about what you know about the Enlightenment
and bring that to bear on the documents
to see if the Enlightenment is influencing
political and social debates in that document.
And like I said before, try and get two or three documents
together in a group.
If you do that, you're in a good spot.
So what I want to do today is look at document 1, this one
right here from Edmund Burke, and we're also
going to look at document 6 from Zhang Zedong.
So if you have not looked over these,
go ahead and do that now, at least these two documents.
Like I said, we're not going to go through all seven today.
We don't have time to do that.
But read over these and see if you
can find an argument that they are both making, because there
is an argument there.
So how can we group these two particular documents together?
Well, notice that the question says, "the extent to which."
When you see a question that says "the extent to which,"
you are welcome to say, "not at all."
That can be an extent to which.
Because in this case, both of these documents
are sort of rejecting those traditional Enlightenment
ideas.
So you can make an argument that says Enlightenment thought
did lead to political and social changes,
but not all philosophers embraced the ideas.
And here, I'm going to show you in these two documents evidence
that not all philosophers embraced the new ideas.
I put here document 1 that Edmund Burke
rejected the idea of Rousseau and said that England
should have a monarchy.
And document 6, he's arguing that the idea
of liberty and Enlightenment idea of liberty
is going to lead to anarchy in China and that
the type of French--
type of Revolution is not needed in China.
So here we see example of two different documents
that are rejecting Enlightenment ideas,
and that is a perfectly good argument to make in this essay.
So now, what about the sourcing point?
This is a point that I've seen a lot of students
in the past not even attempt.
It's a hard point to get, no doubt about it.
But you need to at least give it a shot.
And the way you do that is for three of the documents,
go into a deeper analysis of it and put yourselves
in the shoes of the author and think about the author's point
of view, purpose, situation, or audience and talk
about how it's relevant to your argument.
So the thing is you can't just identify it.
You have to explain and give the "so what?"
Hey, this person is a member of Parliament.
I've identified his point of view.
Cool.
So what?
What's so important about that?
And like I said, put yourself in the shoes of the author.
Why did this person put pen to paper and write this document?
And you're going to find that information oftentimes
in the sourcing line of the document.
So make sure you read the sourcing line of the document.
So here we've got Edmund Burke, who you may
have heard that name before.
Maybe you've never seen it before.
It's totally fine if you don't recognize
the names of the authors.
They usually don't use documents from famous people in the DBQ.
Sometimes they do, but usually not.
But I know that this guy is a member of Parliament.
I also know that he wrote in 1790,
right during the Revolution in France.
We're getting somewhere here.
This guy's writing from England during the French Revolution,
and he's apparently pretty important
in the British government because he
is a member of Parliament.
So I've identified the historical situation.
I've identified the point of view.
But so what?
And here's our "so what?"
He's actually pretty worried that the ideas
of the French Revolution could spread to England
and could cause a revolution there or possibly
even personal danger for he himself, who is not supporting
the French Revolution.
So notice I gave a little bit of historical situation,
a little bit of point of view.
Technically, you only have to do one of those things,
the point of view and the situation and all that.
But if you have two of them mixed in there,
that's totally fine as well.
So what about this one here?
We've got Zhang Zedong.
He's writing in 1898.
Hmm.
Some big things are happening in China in the late 1800s.
So what does this tell us?
Well, remember, this is a time when China is being threatened
by European imperialism.
We talked about the opium wars in class.
Remember the whole spheres of influence thing, where
China is getting carved up by major European powers
and by Japan?
Well, that's a pretty important historical situation
to understand why he's writing.
So if I'm going to turn this into a sourcing statement,
here we see the Chinese government very quickly losing
support--
you also had the Boxer Rebellion in there as well--
as they're being threatened by European imperialism.
So here's this guy, writing where
he's denouncing the Enlightenment
and saying that it's wrong, that it's not
needed in China to try and gain support
for traditional Chinese governance.
So we have our historical situation here.
We have our point of view--
because he's a court official, and he's trying to keep power.
So we've given the "so what?" of it as well.
So the big takeaways from today's video--
first off, you're going to use all seven documents.
You're going to look over them.
You're going to look for similar themes and arguments.
How can you group them together?
You're going to start your essay off
with your context and thesis.
Again, if you need more information about that,
go watch video 3.
Make sure that all seven documents
are being used to form an argument
and then attempt to sourcing for at least three documents.
I would suggest probably doing four.
Because, again, like we've been saying, if one of them is wrong
or one of them is not complete enough,
that's OK because you used it for three others.
And you'll get that sourcing point.
Thank you all so much for watching.