- [Voiceover] Alright, in this video, we're talking
about the document-based question, or DBQ,
section on the AP US History exam.
Now, this is one of two main essays that are
on the exam.
One is based on documents that are provided to
you and the other is based on your own knowledge
of the subject.
So you'll get 55 minutes to do this portion of
the exam and it's generally recommended that
you spend about 15 of those minutes planning
your answer and about 40 of those minutes
actually writing your answer.
Now your mileage might differ, you might find that
you're someone who wants to spend a little bit more
time planning or your somebody who can plan
really fast and write well.
In any event, you want to go in with a plan about
how much time you're going to spend on
each part so that you don't get surprised at the
end of the period that you still have a couple
paragraphs left to write but you're out of time.
So for the DBQ section, you're going to get a
question that asks you to analyze changes or
continuities over time, something that really gets
at the heart of how things in history change over time.
So unlike the short answer questions, which are very
specific about one period in time, this is asking you
to take a broader look at US history and write an
essay about one of its major themes.
Let's take a look at this question.
Analyze major changes and continuities in the social
and economic experiences of African Americans who
migrated from the South to urban areas in the
North in the period 1910 to 1930.
Well that gives us a lot of information about the
kinds of things we should concentrate on.
First, we're looking at social history and economic
history, we're looking at African Americans, and
we're looking at this migration pattern.
This is the period of the Great Migration, as they would
say, when many African Americans who lived in
the South moved to the North for new factory jobs
in this time period which certainly included
World War I.
And you can see from the time frame that we're
talking about a fairly early 20th century time period
ending in 1930, so you don't want to be talking about
the experiences of African Americans in the Great
Depression or in World War II, or in the Civil Rights
Movement because that's much later.
Now you might be able to end on a note that shows
your knowledge of what's to come, but really for the
meat of this essay, you want to stick to the time
period in question.
To answer this, we're going to want to write an
essay and, at the very least, I would go for your
standard five paragraph essay where you have an
introductory statement, introduction, which includes
a strong thesis statement and we'll get to how to
write one of those soon.
And then, three paragraphs of body text, each that
is trying to prove a point brought up in its topic
sentence, and a conclusion, which wraps up what
you've said and ties it up with a bow.
Now to do this, you're going to have to
consider and analyze about seven to nine
primary documents, which are provided for you
by the exam.
You should include all, or maybe all but one, of
those primary documents in your answer.
Now you don't have to go into detail about all
of them, but you should include analysis of some
of the arguments, some of the biases, and some of
the larger ideas behind some of those documents.
You should also be prepared to give some
outside information that shows that you really know
the material and can give context to it.
So that's what these questions are about
and how you should go about answering them.
In the next video, we'll start looking at primary
documents and getting ready to make a thesis statement.