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Writing About History

This skills primer began by introducing you to the patterns of thinking you need to really understand
history. The next section pointed out ways to be smart about reading your textbook. This third and
final section turns to the writing skills you need to develop for the AP® history courses and exams. Our
focus now shifts from receiving input to providing output: you will learn how to share your under-
standing of historical thinking skills through writing. We will begin by addressing components that
apply to all the writing tasks you’ll encounter.

To successfully demonstrate what you know, you have to answer the question that has been asked. This
sounds simple, but many students get in trouble on the exam by failing to address the prompt in front Historical Thinking Skills: A Primer
of them. Every prompt contains several elements, and you need to pay attention to all of them as you
plan your response to the prompt:

• A periodization or date range expressed in years. Obviously, you need to be sure your response
Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
addresses this era. One of the most common problems in student essays on the exam is providing
historical information from the wrong era. this sample.
• A task expressed as the main verb of the prompt: compare, describe, explain, analyze, and so forth.
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Pay attention to this task verb, as these tasks are not the same, and your answer must do what the
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prompt asks you to do. Worth Publishers.
• A subject, expressed in two important types of nouns. A proper noun refers to a specific historical
entity: Calvinism, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, etc. A common noun typically refers to a historical
by Bedford, Freeman &
concept: a key historical idea (imperialism, nationalism) or process (industrialization, expansion
of empire). Sometimes this process is limited in time, but often it is a pattern that occurs over a
relatively long period.
• A historical thinking skill or reasoning process. This is often embedded in the task verb of the
prompt: compare, evaluate, explain, analyze. Good answers on the longer questions will involve
more than one thinking skill, so that you will need to contextualize, compare, analyze arguments,
make connections, explain continuity and change over time, and assess sources all at the same
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time, just as historians do.
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SHORT-ANSWER QUESTIONS

The main issue to note about the short-answer section of the AP® exam is how quickly you need to
respond to the writing tasks. You have to answer three questions in 40 minutes, which means that you
have about 13 minutes per question to understand the question, brainstorm your response, and then
write your answer. This task does not require that you form a thesis or create distinct paragraphs. It is
a brief response to a very focused question.

LONG ESSAY QUESTIONS
The Long Essay Question (LEQ) and the Document-Based Question (DBQ) share many defining
features. This section applies to both the LEQ and the DBQ, while the following section includes
specific suggestions for the DBQ.

Each type of essay requires the use of the historical thinking skills and reasoning processes, in combi-
nation with one another. That is, every essay requires you to discuss the historical context of the subject
you’re writing about, to appropriately use relevant evidence, and to demonstrate one or more historical
reasoning processes.

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