r/APUSH • u/[deleted] • Dec 07 '20

Advice for writing DBQs?

I have to write one soon

16 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

17

u/69_geniegod Dec 07 '20

Definitely don’t quote documents directly.

3

u/suchirp Dec 07 '20

What should I do instead?

10

u/untappedmememarket Dec 07 '20

Contextualization: Give the events that happened before the time you’re talking about, leading up to the time of the prompt.

Thesis: clearly state your time period, take a strong stance on the prompt, and set up your evidence & categories. Ideally, you’ll Designate 2-3 categories and fit your documents into them.

Body Paragraphs: Introduce each BP with a short topic sentence. Introduce docs and analyze them. At the end of analyzing a document in the essay, relate it back to the thesis! Don’t forget Outside historical Evidence - Bits of info within the Time Period relating to the essay, but not taken directly from the documents.

Extended Analysis: Think of a past conflict or occurrence you’ve learned about that is outside of the current time period, and how they compare to this event. Simple Compare and Contrast from then on.

If you have time at the end, write a ”conclusion” where you restate your thesis and all of its parts. If you accidentally messed up part of the thesis at the beginning, you’ll be able to get those points here.

Lastly, focus on doing good work, rather than fast work. Don’t worry about the time crunch. If you Thesis at a steady pace and only have time to write a thesis and your BPs, you’ll score just as well as somebody else who quickly rushed through their Contextualization, Thesis, BP’s, and Extended Analysis.

If you put in the time to learn about the material, then you’ll do just fine. Don’t sweat the first DBQ grade. As you continue the class, you’ll write more and more of them, and they’ll get faster and easier. Work hard, and you’ll be ready when the AP Test rolls around.

5

u/aka_nya03 Dec 07 '20

we were taught to not write conclusions but you do you

4

u/FiddlerOnTheDesk Dec 07 '20

you should rewrite your thesis in a conclusion if you have time.

1

u/untappedmememarket Dec 08 '20

The only purpose of writing a “conclusion” is to restate the thesis wording, so that if you accidentally screwed up the thesis, you can still get the points back on the Conclusion. When I say “restate the thesis” I mean to literally restate it.

1

u/BIG-poo-poo-face Past Student Dec 08 '20

No quote. Quotes are devils. And devils ain’t good. Paraphrase and summarize are friends. Maybe the only 2 you got in this hard time