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First, every essay needs to have a specific, focused thesis that makes an argument addressing the prompt.
It doesn’t matter how strong your content knowledge and historical skills are if you can’t communicate
clearly what you know. Your thesis should be as brief as possible, while still addressing the complexity
of the topic, and it should be either at the beginning or the end of the essay. We suggest the beginning,
as this will help structure your essay. If you explicitly respond to each of the prompt elements clearly
and accurately, you will have a strong thesis — and you’ll be on your way to a persuasive essay.
Second, every essay needs to contextualize the topic in the question within broader historical events,
developments, or processes that occur before, during, or continue after the time frame of the question.
This can be short-term context or long-term context (or both), but you need to relate this directly to
the topic, not just mention it vaguely with a phrase or reference.
Third, every essay requires you to make use of evidence to support your claims. As with contextualiza-
tion, you should relate the evidence you provide directly to the argument you are making, and it
this sample.
should be accurate. How much evidence should you use? There is no hard and fast rule, but in general,
Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
the more the better, as long as it is relevant to the question.
Worth Publishers.
Fourth, you need to show your historical reasoning skills through analysis. You do this by developing
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an argument (and providing evidence for this) that makes a comparison, discusses causation, analyzes
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continuity and change over time, makes connections with other times and places, or does all of these.
Although essay questions are not scored for spelling or grammar, the more organized your answer is,
the easier it will be for the person scoring it to understand your argument. Thus your essay needs to
be organized into distinct paragraphs. The number of paragraphs depends on the complexity of the
by Bedford, Freeman &
prompt. Typically, however, two body paragraphs won’t be sufficient to address the topic thoroughly.
What’s most important is that you clearly announce the point you’re going to make in each paragraph
through a topic sentence that effectively covers the subject of the paragraph. Any content in the para-
graph that doesn’t support the topic sentence doesn’t belong there.
DOCUMENT-BASED QUESTION
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The Document-Based Question, or DBQ, essay is a defining feature of the AP® European History
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exam. Of all the essays, this one tends to make students the most anxious, but much of this anxiety is
misplaced. Once you understand the DBQ, you will feel less worried about it and may even come to
find it your favorite type of essay. Unlike the other essays, in which you have to call on your memory
to provide all the evidence, the documents in the DBQ form the basic evidence you need to use. You
also have your “Four Steps to Argumentation” to assist in organizing your essay. You’re already more
prepared than you think!
To do well on a DBQ, as on the LEQ, you need to have a coherent thesis that responds to all parts of
the question, you need to set the issue in context, you need to provide evidence, and you need to analyze
that evidence. What is different about the DBQ is that it contains the evidence that you will primarily
rely on to form your answer. For 2 points, you will need to describe the content of at least six docu-
ments and use this to support the argument you make in your thesis. To gain an additional point, you
will need to discuss at least one additional piece of specific historical evidence (beyond that found in
the documents provided) that is relevant to your argument.
In your analysis, you will need to put the documents in conversation with one another by comparing
them, noting how they contradict, support, or qualify one another. This means thinking about how
the documents relate to each other. Since the documents in a DBQ don’t directly refer to each other,
you have to use your deductive skills to see connections.
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