If you're looking for help, when it comes to the free response
section of the human geography exam, you've come to the right place.
In this video, we're going to go over 11 tips that you can start using today to
help you prepare to get that four or five on your next AP Human Geography exam.
This video is brought to you by Albert.
If you haven't already created your free account to start practicing for your AP
Human Geography exam, do so by clicking the link in the video description below.
With Albert, you'll get access to hundreds of practice questions and
detailed explanations as well as FRQs to help you prepare for your AP HUG exam.
Without further ado, let's jump into today's FRQ tips.
The first tip when it comes to tackling the AP HUG free response section
is to make sure that you're working through past free response questions.
One of the most important things that students overlook is getting
enough exposure to these sorts of questions that they'll be asked
on their AP Human Geography exam.
Remember, you're going to get about 25 minutes to answer every
single FRQ that's thrown your way.
So you need to make sure that you start practicing the sorts of questions so
that you can understand the pacing that you'll need come test day.
The College Board releases all the past free response questions
to help you get this practice in.
So what can be helpful is for you to pull the last three to five years of
free response questions, and then to block out time in the weeks and months,
leading up to your actual exam day to practice through these years questions.
Practicing is pretty straightforward.
All you need to do is set aside a timer for 25 minutes and see how it goes.
From there, you can grade your response and also see where your strengths and
weaknesses are based on the rubrics that the College Board has shared.
Doing this with a friend can also be super helpful because you guys can grade each
other's work with the rubric in mind.
Whatever approach you do end up taking, the important thing to remember
here is that you are practicing and practicing and practicing when it
comes to the free response section.
Our second tip when it comes to the free response section is to
make sure that you are rereading the question and marking it up.
As recently as the 2019 AP HUG exam, students made the mistake of misreading
the question and giving a wishy-washy or unspecific answer to the particular
question that was asked of them.
As a result, they lost significant points and they didn't do as well
as they could have on their exam.
For example, on a question related to urbanization and pollution, students
described the link between these two concepts in way too general terms.
Students failed in providing complete enough responses that
included concepts like edge cities incorporated into their response.
Better responses would talk about how edge cities led to more sprawling
and less compact urban areas where there once was wilderness or farmland.
Making these errors in generalization can be avoided by taking more
time in reading the question.
Don't just start immediately answering the question after
you read it for the first time.
Instead, spend three to five minutes to think about how you're going to structure
your response to score maximum points on each of your free response questions.
We also recommend that as you're reading the prompt, you underline the key words
or phrases in the question itself.
For example, when you see a word like analyze, explain and so on, you're
going to want to make sure that you take note of that so that you are actually
demonstrating the skill the College Board wants you to show in your response.
The very first step when it comes to tackling any AP human geography free
response question is to make sure that you truly understand the prompt.
Tip number three, piggybacks on tip number two, which is to make sure that
you locate the verbs in the question.
There are a few common verbs when it comes to the College Board
and the AP Human Geography exam.
The College Board loves to use verbs like analyze, assess, evaluate,
identify, discuss, define, and so on.
So by understanding what each of these verbs means you're going to be
able to better craft your response.
For example, when you're asked to analyze something you're being asked
to use at least two sentences to find the relationship between two
things or concepts, explain that relationship and then draw some sort of
conclusion that is backed by evidence.
Or if you're being asked to discuss something, you're being asked to
take both sides and to debate on the different points on both sides
with at least three sentences.
You can check out our accompanying blog article, if you want a complete
breakdown of some of the most commonly used verbs when it comes
to the AP Human Geography exam.
But we highly recommend that you locate the verb in the question to
help you in answering your question.
A key thing to remember here is to make sure that you're always using
specific details and supporting evidence when it comes to your FRQs.
Before we head into tip number four, if you're finding this video helpful,
do us a favor and hit that like button below so that we can help this video get
discovered by more AP HUG test takers.
Tip number four is to create a list of common geographic themes
that you can incorporate into your free response question.
The five common themes of AP Human Geography are location,
place, human environment interaction, movement and region.
Get comfortable forming multifaceted arguments on these five common themes.
For definitional breakdowns of each of these five themes, be sure to check out
our accompanying blog article and the link in the video description below.
To keep this video short and sweet though, we're going to move on to our next tip.
Our fifth tip when it comes to your AP Human Geography free response
section is to make sure that you're answering the question and nothing more.
Remember how we mentioned in the 2019 exam, how students had
way too general of responses?
Well, the same thing applies when it comes to making sure that you answer just
the question that's being asked of you.
If, for example, a question asks you for two examples, you don't need to
give three, just give two and move on.
Soft language is not what you want in your free response answers so try
to avoid using phrases like I think, or in my opinion, instead, aim to be
succinct, answer the question dead on and then move on to the next question.
There is no reason for you to be info dumping, everything you know about a
particular theme or concept in each of your free response questions.
The six tip for you to remember is that AP Human Geography free
response questions are not your typical five paragraph essays.
This is not an AP English FRQ.
So you don't need something like an intro, three supporting
paragraphs followed by a conclusion.
Now this doesn't necessarily mean that the free responses don't
require you to be analytical.
With less room for discussion, you want to make sure that your
responses are detailed and specific as possible with supporting evidence.
Concrete and specific examples are the difference between scoring full points
and getting points lost due to you being way too general in your response.
Our seventh tip is to approach their free response section with AP AP.
In mind, the AP AP method is to analyze the prompt plan, your response attack,
the prompt and then to proofread.
So, you're first going to want to analyze what's being asked if you.
Circle or underline the key words or phrases that you need to in order
to fully understand the prompt.
Then from there, you're going to want to start planning out your response.
How are you going to structure your response?
What supporting details or evidence are you going to bring in?
Attack the essay is pretty straight forward.
Now you execute on the plan that you just set in place.
And then finally you need to proofread.
Make sure your response is coherent, cohesive, and also that you don't
have any particular misspellings or mistakes that you didn't intend
when you first attack the essay.
By using this AP AP method, it can be a great way for you to make sure
that you're tackling all the key points when it comes to the AP Human
Geography free response section.
Our eighth tip, when it comes to AP Human Geography free response questions
is to review past responses that are provided to you by the College Board.
The College Board includes breakdowns of good student responses,
average student responses, as well as bad student responses.
So if you're not familiar yet with how the graders are going to be
using their rubrics to score you, this can be a great way for you to
familiarize yourself with their methods.
Understanding the nuances behind why student A got full points whereas
student B missed two or three points can make the difference between
scoring a three, a four or even a five.
Tip number nine is to make sure you're making it easy for your
reader to follow your thoughts.
The easiest way to do this is to follow a logical thought of sentence sequencing.
It's really important that you do this because you have to remember that your
AP readers are grading tons of essays.
So the easier you can make it for your reader to follow along with
what you're writing, the easier it is for them to give you points.
If, for example, you had a topic sentence talking about how rapid industrialization
in new England led to a crisis in maintaining public infrastructures.
Then you would want to make sure that your next sentence has a logical next
step from that topic sentence, this would mean making sure that your follow
on sentence could elaborate or provide more specific details that support the
topic sentence that you just referenced.
If you weren't following that lead topic sentence with specific evidence yet, it
might be a further clarification of the topic sentence that you just introduced.
What's also helpful is to make sure that you're labeling and numbering
each part of your response in the margin of your answer booklet.
By doing so, it'll make it way easier for your reader to go through your responses.
It can also be helpful to underline key terms or words of
things that you are defining.
If you're using maps or charts, make sure that you're using corresponding
labels in your responses to make it easy to follow and overall, just
make sure that your handwriting is as a neat and legible as possible.
If you find it helpful as well, you can add a line break between your
responses, just to add a little bit more padding between each of your responses.
The benefit of this as well is that in the case where you move on to another
FRQ, you can then go back later on and add on more information that you
may have forgotten earlier on when you were first responding to the FRQ.
Tip number 10 is to make sure that you are practicing your pacing.
As we mentioned earlier, you're going to get about 25 minutes to answer
each of the free response questions that are presented to you on testing.
This means that you don't want to end up spending 50 minutes on one FRQ
and only leaving a handful of minutes for each of your remaining two FRQs.
Instead, we recommend that you read through each of the free response
questions and then tackle the one that you feel most comfortable wit first.
This will allow you to build up your test confidence and get into flow when it comes
to tackling your free response section.
Overall, we recommend that you spend five minutes planning out your responses
followed by 20 minutes to actually write out each of your responses.
Pacing is so, so important.
So make sure you keep this in mind when it comes to your AP Human
Geography free response section.
Our final AP Human Geography free response tip is to use SPEED in your nounces.
This acronym stands for social, political, environmental,
economical, and then development.
In general, the progresses and processes of human geography can be
lumped into one of these categories.
So the SPEED acronym can be a great way for you to break up your readings,
organize your arguments and make the overall course more manageable.
There you have it 11 free response tips when it comes to tackling
AP Human Geography's FRQ section.
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