MASON LOGEROT: Hey, everybody.
Welcome to AP Daily.
My name is Mason Logerot.
I'm coming to you from the Austin, Texas area--
Pflugerville to be exact where I teach at Pflugerville High
School.
And today, we're going to look at multiple choice questions
and basically answer how do we answer them.
So before we start, let's kind of
make sure we know the basics of the multiple choice section
on the AP World History exam.
First off, you got 55 questions, 55 minutes.
I'm no math whiz.
But I think that works out to 1 minute per question.
So keep that in mind when you think about your pacing
during the test.
If you've got 10 minutes left, but you still
have 20 questions to answer, you need to hurry it up.
On the flip side, if you've got 10 minutes left
and you only have five questions,
maybe you can slow it down a little bit
or go back and look at your answers.
The other thing to remember is that every single question
will have some kind of stimulus that goes with it.
So it might be a primary source, a secondary source, a map,
a chart, a graph, a picture, something.
And you have three or four questions
that go with that one stimulus.
So the good news is you don't have
to read a passage for every single question.
That'd be way too much.
All right.
This next point is really important.
Y'all, you don't have to get every single question right.
Some of you when you're taking a test in class,
you're used to getting 90%, 95% of your questions right.
You don't have to do that here.
And I tell you that for two reasons.
One, I don't want you freaking out in the middle of the test
because let's be honest here.
AP tests are tough.
I'm not to lie and say they're easy.
We know they're tough tests.
And I've seen students get discouraged in the test
before because they're thinking, oh no, I've missed several.
I'm going to fail.
Don't worry about it.
Get as many as you can right.
And the other reason why I tell you this
is that eliminating answers is a pretty good strategy on the AP
test.
If you can eliminate a couple of answers
and leave yourself with a choice of two, that's OK.
Just think of it like this.
If you can walk away from the multiple choice section going
I know I got half the questions right and on the other half,
I took my best guess between two answers,
well, you do the calculations, that's going to be 75%
you get right.
And that's really good score on the multiple choice section.
You're doing well above average if you get that many correct.
The other big thing--
always pay attention to the title of the stimulus
and pay attention to the sourcing line.
And I know your teacher has drilled that into your head,
but I'm going to drill to your head one more time.
Pay attention to the sourcing line on the stimulus.
All right, so I want to look at a couple of examples
of multiple choice questions.
And actually, if you look into the description of this video,
there's a link to a PDF.
So you have a couple of options here.
If you want, you can pause the video right now and go work
on the questions yourself.
Or if you just want me to give you the answers,
I'm about to do that as well.
But either way, go ahead and open up that PDF
now so that you can read along and look at the questions
as we're going through them.
So if you want, go ahead and pause right now.
I'll give you a second to open up that PDF and then unpause.
All right, welcome back.
So let's see what we have here.
We've got a picture with a pretty long description
about a constellation.
We see it's a copy from 1430 by a 10th century
Muslim scientist.
All right, I'm going to follow that away for later.
That seems like it might be important.
All right.
So we know that it's from the 1430s.
We know we're in the Islamic world.
So then I want to start kind of brainstorming
some what do I remember about this time, especially when it
comes to science and math.
Well, I remember my teacher talking way back
in the beginning of the school year--
because this stuff is the stuff you covered back in the fall--
there were a lot of scientific and mathematical advancements
in the Islamic world in this time.
And I remember that a lot of them
were based on ancient knowledge from Greece.
All right, but how did those ideas spread
to the Islamic world?
Well, some of it going back to ancient times
and Alexander the Great.
But from like 1200 to 1450, a lot of it's
through trade because we know that there's some major trade
routes on the Indian Ocean and, of course, the Silk Road going
through the Muslim world.
All right, so just keep those things in the back of your mind
because they're going to help you later with these questions.
So let's look at our first question.
Muslim scientists and how they participated
in intellectual and scholarly exchanges.
All right, like I told you all, we're
going to eliminate some answers because I think
that's the best strategy here.
Even if you know the answer as soon as you see it,
please make sure you're looking at all four answers
because a lot of times, there's going
to be an answer that looks right but it's not
going to be the best one.
So if you eliminate answers, you can get to the best one
because it's going to force you look at all four.
Let me get rid of A, being recipients of funding
from foreign rulers.
We know that a lot of times, rulers
will be patrons of the arts and of science
but not from foreign rulers.
That's not going to work.
What else can we get rid of here?
How about D, superior scientific knowledge from Western Europe.
Remember, Western Europe right now in this time period--
that's feudalism.
There's not a lot of advancements
in the sciences and math or an art coming from Western
Europe in this time period.
I'm going to get rid of B as well.
This is serving strictly as copyists of earlier works.
Now remember, the description of this picture
did talk about how this was a copy,
but that's not the only thing that was going on.
They weren't strictly as copyists.
And so what we're left with is answer C,
expanding upon the legacy of earlier scientific works
but also conducting their own research.
That's how we get these advancements
in math and science in the Islamic world.
So while B seems like it could be an answer,
C is a much better one.
All right, let's talk about another one here.
Here, we've got incorporation from pre-Islamic societies.
And that can be best used as evidence that?
Let's take a look at these four answers.
I think we can get rid of B pretty much off the bat.
European merchants and trade outposts--
again, this is pre-1450.
We know that we really don't see a lot of long distance
trade come through Europe into Central Asia.
Also, let's get rid of C as well because again, we
know that a lot of these advancements
came from other cultures and were
built upon in the Muslim world.
So we're getting rid of C as well.
A?
Yeah, no.
Educated Muslims weren't really speaking European languages
because again, remember, there's not a huge European influence
in that region prior to 1450.
But here, Muslim states and empires
are central to the process of intellectual transfer,
again, by promoting trade across those states and empires.
Let's do one more with the stimulus here.
Scholarly activities in the Muslim world
continued despite the?
So something bad must have happened
that could have stopped scholarly activities
but did not.
So let's look at our answers here.
And I think we can get rid of B, expansion of the Song
dynasty into Muslim Central Asia,
because the Song dynasty didn't expand into Central Asia.
Remember, if you think about where the Song dynasty was,
it's mainly in the Eastern part of what is today China.
All right, look at A. Because you see with A,
it says Crusaders.
So you think, OK, well, the Crusades
were happening during this time.
But notice that A says the conquest of Baghdad.
Baghdad was not taken over by European Crusaders,
so we can scratch that one out.
Now, look at C.
The Byzantine reconquest of Palestine and Lebanon
is not going to work either because these Crusaders usually
weren't coming from the Byzantine Empire.
It was not a reconquest there, so we're
going to get rid of that one.
And we're left with our best answer, the fragmentation
of the Abbasid Caliphate because, again, this
is the time of the Mongols and the end of the Abbasid
Caliphate.
But even despite that, we still see scholarly activities
continuing in the Muslim world.
All right.
Speaking of the Mongols, we've got another prompt here.
And take a look at the source.
And if you want again, you might want
to pause the video so you can read over it.
But when I see a long passage like this,
the first thing I'm going to do is look at the sourcing line.
All right, so we have the king of Hungary.
So that tells us this is coming from a pretty important person.
He is the king.
He's writing to another very important person in the Pope.
And it's happening around 1250.
So we know that in 1250, the Pope
is a big, big deal in Europe.
And we know also this is the time
of Mongol threats to Europe and to Asia, of course.
The other thing I'd like to do is do a very quick summary
of each of the paragraphs.
I don't need to read it real intently
before I look at the questions.
But do a very quick summary just before you
look so at least know where to look for answers.
And then if you have to dig deeper into the source
after you look at the questions, that's
usually going to be a good idea.
So real quick.
If I'm doing a very, very quick summary of this,
the first paragraph is hey, we need help.
The Mongols are coming after us.
The next paragraph, none of the Christians are helping.
No Christians in Europe are helping us out.
And then the third paragraph is you're
helping these people overseas, but why
are you not helping Christians in Europe when the Mongols are
about to attack?
Now, let's look at a question.
This one's about features of Europe
and the period from 1200 to 1450.
And why is it that Hungary is not
getting the military assistance that they requested?
So just like last time, let's eliminate some answers.
We can get rid of parliaments that can check royal authority.
That's an issue well after 1450, not so much
in this time period.
The Reformation, also after 1450.
So by the way, make sure that as you're reviewing
and as you're studying, you have sort of a timeline of world
history and major events.
You don't necessarily need to know exact dates.
But you do need to know general time frames of when things
like the Reformation happen.
The Hanseatic League--
OK, yeah.
That's starting to grow.
But that really has nothing to do with this question at all.
But our answer A here, numerous feudal states,
as we've already talked about, conflict with one another,
yeah, they're not going to be sending military aid.
All right.
What about this one where it says the fourth paragraph?
So by the way, if it does say in the third paragraph,
in the fourth paragraph, make sure you
go back and read much more carefully
that part of the source.
But here, we're talking about the papacy's failure
to aid the Hungarians while what else is happening.
All right, so let's find some bad answers here.
One, I would get rid of missionaries to China.
That is something that's going to happen
later but again, after 1450.
Same thing with maritime exploration
in the Indian Ocean.
Again, you need to know after 1450.
All right, so we've got two left here.
And both of these were happening in 1200 to 1450.
So this might be a situation where you're like, well,
I've got down to two decent answers.
Maybe I need to take my best guess.
Or go back and look at that fourth paragraph
because it talks about overseas.
Well, the Iberian Peninsula where Spain and Portugal are
today, that wasn't overseas.
That's part of Europe.
So we're left with here is talking about the Crusades
in the Middle East.
So pay special attention to those little phrases
like that in the passage.
But like I said, even if you missed it,
if you had to take a guess between B and C,
that's not the end of the world.
All right, last one here.
So it says all the statements are factually accurate.
But again, look at the third paragraph.
So go back and look at that more carefully if you need to.
But what was his reasoning for inviting the Cubans
into Hungary?
So why would he invite this particular group
to help them fight the Mongols?
We got to get rid of some answers here.
Well, they had settled in Hungary.
And yes, they had been granted local autonomy.
But does that really mean that he's now
going to invite them to help with the Mongols?
It's not really a reason for that.
They're ethnic Turks who spoke a language that was
intelligible to the Mongols.
But again, how is that necessarily
going to help in fending off the Mongol invasion?
Some slave soldiers have become rulers of parts of Egypt.
But again, how is that really going to help?
But here with D, these guys are nomadic warriors
they know how to fight the Mongols who
are also nomadic warriors.
So this is a situation where even
if you didn't know anything about this group, that's fine.
You can still answer these questions
by thinking about what's the most logical answer that
can come from.
So key takeaways from our work today.
First off, I know that you're going to pay attention
to the sourcing line.
I know your teachers nail that in your brain.
And I'm going to do it as well.
Pay attention to the sourcing line.
Make sure you read all four answers
because again, there's going to be an answer that looks right,
but it's not the best answer.
Always eliminate your bad answers.
If you can get rid of a couple and you
have to take your best guess, it's totally fine.
But my biggest piece of advice to you in the multiple choice
section or anywhere else in the AP test, don't freak out.
You've been working hard all year long.
Trust your process.
You're going to do great.
But just make sure even when you're feeling down during
the AP test-- and you're going to feel down at some point--
you fight through it and you keep working.
All right, thank y'all so much for watching.