so you want to figure out how to earn full points on a DBQ Well Point your ear holes this way because I'm about to splain it up real simple in three steps and everything I'm about to say applies to APUSH AP World and AP Euro since they're all scored on the exact same rubric so if you're ready to get them brand cows milked let's get to it okay now step one to earning full point starts before you even start writing and that means you need to know how to understand exactly what they're asking you about in The Prompt and this is real important because in case you haven't encountered a DBQ prompt written by the fair Folks at the college board they can often make you feel about as confused as a fart in a fan Factory so let me show you three keys to understanding and unlocking that mired mess of a prompt the first thing you need to do is make a note of what time period they're asking you to write about if they ask you about immigration in the second half of the 19th century and you write about immigration in the first half of the 19th century you burnt and if the prompt gives you centuries write out the actual year numbers for example if they want you to write about the 16th century right out 1500s now I know that sounds Elementary but when you're under pressure you are Dum than you think it's just a law of the universe so make sure you get the dates correct and by the way if you're doing this digitally as you will for the national exam they will have annotation tools for you so make sure you use them to this end and the second thing you need to do is Mark the category or categories in which they want you to write for example the 2024 aush DBQ was this evaluate the extent to which the institution of slavery shaped United States Society between 1783 and 1840 now in that prompt you need to Mark or underline or make a note of that word society that is is the key word your essay is going to need to deal with how slavery affected Society in that date range and I'm not sure that I can overstate how important it is to keep that category in the front and center because in this case you're going to see slavery and you're probably going to get a little excited because you remember the Missouri Compromise or the Three-Fifths Compromise and all the rest but those are mostly political causes and effects of slavery not social effects and that essay even if it's the most brilliant piece of historical writing and the history of historical writing won't get you any points now to be clear those two political things has social ramifications and that's fine if you're right about that but just make sure you're focusing on the social piece of it and then the third thing you need to do is either notice or decide which historical thinking skill is going to frame your essay now I say notice or decide because sometimes they're just going to tell you what the skill is and then sometimes they won't and you have to decide which thinking skill is most appropriate for your essay for example in the AP Euro prompt from 2022 the historical thinking skill is explicitly stated which of these reasons caused the English Civil War so your essay needs to demonstrate causation but in this right here from the 2022 APUSH exam the historical thinking skill is not explicitly stated so that means you could write a causation essay here or you could write a continuity and change over time or whatever writer's Choice okay now before we get to step two let me mention two resources that might help you in writing your DBQ first is a DBQ planning sheet which is free and linked below the second is my apsa Cram Course which has videos from this guy that you're not going to find here on YouTube in this course I explain in detail every skill and every rubric point for the DBQ and the leq and the SAQ so if that sounds like something that may help you then get your clicky finger out and do your wor okay so now you understand the prompts because you're a proper genius and then the second step is to read and understand the documents that they give you and I reckon this is where many of you start to get a little sweaty don't worry I'm going to show you how to handle these documents and offer a couple of tips that you may not have known before so crack them brain folds open and remember what I'm about to say now you're going to have seven documents after your prompt no more no less and the suggested reading period for the documents is 15 minutes and I think that's about right for what you need to do with them and let me tell you what that is first read the the documents one at a time quickly and by quickly I mean maybe a minute or two each and I can already hear the great weeping and nashing of teeth rising up at this point some of the documents are hard to understand and I need to spend more time on them now listen you do you boo but over the course of the school year you need to get enough practice with interpreting documents that you can read and understand them relatively quickly now pay attention here because what I'm about to say is probably not intuitive to most students and yet it can make the difference between a high-scoring essay and a low-scoring essay that wrecks your future prospects and ensures that you will in fact live in a van down by the river okay here it is when you start reading the document don't start by reading the document what you talking about Willis you actually need to start reading here at this citation and I know that profoundly distracted monkey in your brain is going to want to skip over that because he judges it to be unimportant like this is an academic document and they just have to site their sources because of dumb things like academic Integrity or whatever your brain monkey is going to try to convince you that this is a throwaway line that makes no difference to your essay but that monkey is a chump this is arguably one of the most important important lines in the whole document it's going to tell you who wrote it or who produced it it's going to tell you the year that it was written or produced and it might offer some critical information that you might not otherwise know and here's why that's so important here's a document from the 2024 AP World DBQ about how communism affected Soviet and or Chinese Society so if you started reading here it would take you a minute or two if you're at the top of your game to understand that it represents a negative view of Communism and its attendant repressions in the Soviet Union but if you're not at the top of your game you might have to read it a couple times to understand that point but here's the magic if you start here at the citation you'll already know that this document is critical of Stalin's communist policies because it was written during the period of Reform known as D stalinization like when you're under pressure and time is short it's huge to have this much help before you even start reading okay second summarize the main idea of the document in your own words off to the side don't quote it summarize it and this is going to feel hard and that's because it is hard your synapses are going to be firing like crazy but summarizing these documents is going to help in writing about them so just write down the main idea and move on and again if you're doing this on the digital exam make use of those annotation tools that they give you and then third group your documents now this isn't required on the rubric but it's often the difference between a high-scoring and a low-scoring essay so as you're reading through the documents and summarizing them right next to it what kind of document it is if it's a document about economics write economics if religion then write religion if social write social or positive impact or negative impact and so on these are going to be your grouping categories and the rule of thumb is to have two to three categories since that's about all you you can do with seven documents but that's not a hard rule it's just a suggestion anyway once you have your categor set up and your documents organized under them you now have the beginnings of a thesis and the structure of your essay now the one thing you don't want to do with your documents is write an essay that basically goes like this in document one it says in document two it says and document three it says Etc it is almost impossible to get a high score that way and it's usually a signal to the reader that the person who wrote this essay doesn't know how to handle evidence so grouping your documents will save you from that error and finally step three is to actually write your say so let me go through the rubric Point by point so you know exactly what you need to do in order to earn all seven points and I'll just talk in generalities here and if you want more specifics I got a lot more videos that you can reference so the first point on the rubric is for the thesis and you can earn up to one point here now arguably the thesis is one of the most important things you going to write in this essay because it frames your entire argument your thesis should be your entire argument in miniature so the rubric says that you earn this point by writing a historically defensible thesis that establishes a line of reasoning so what in the fresh heck does that mean well let's take it wanted a Time first it must be historically defensible that means you have to take a position here was the English Civil War primarily caused by religion or politics which one was it did imperialism affect economies to a great extent or not much at all which is it did the United States develop a national identity between 1800 and 1855 or not really so your thesis needs to take a clear position and also this means that your thesis needs to be factually correct like if your thesis says that the Emancipation Proclamation caused European Imperial expansion then no that's like not true in any Universe discovered or undiscovered actually I suppose it could be true in a universe in which time runs backwards but unless you get someone from that Universe to evaluate that argument then you know it's not going to work second the thesis has to establish a line of reasoning that means you need to demonstrate how you're going to prove the argument that you're making and you do that by dropping vocabulary into your thesis and here's what I mean the United States developed a national identity to a great extent from 1800 to 1855 now that is historically defensible it takes a position but it does not establish a line of reasoning this thesis would not earn the point but watch what happens when we take that argument and establish a line of reasoning despite the exclusion of minorities from the American national identity the majority in the United States did develop a national identity to a great extent as a result of the nationalizing forces after the war of 1812 and the expansion of democracy during the age of Jackson now notice I've done three things here first I acknowledge a counterargument there are documents about Cherokee Indians and women and black Americans that demonstrate their marginalization second I use the language of the prompt to frame my arguments that's important because it ensures that your writing about what you're supposed to be writing about and third I established a line of reasoning by using specific historical evidence I wasn't vague I named these pieces of evidence and though I'm not even sure that's the argument I would make on that essay The Thesis would earn the point so just make sure that you're packing that thesis tighter than a Scottish haggas and you'll be golden and if you want a formula for the thesis I'll give you one restate the important parts of the prompt because A and B so use the language of the prompt to frame your argument and then A and B will be your specific historical evidence it's basic but it checks all the boxes for the thesis Point okay okay the second point is for contextualization and you can earn up to one point here now contextualization is there to situate your argument in the larger historical context now the rubric tells you that you can explain the historical context before during or after the time period of your prompt but by far the most intuitive way to earn this point is by explaining the relevant events that occurred before your given time period And so in order to earn this point your contextualization should be about two to four content-rich sentences that describe historical events related to your prompt and that's important your contextualization needs to be related and relevant to the topic of the prompt so for example you've got your thesis arguing about the effects of European expansion in African and Asian economies in the 19th and 20th Century so your contextualization needs to go backwards in time and explain how we got there so it needs to explore either the second wave of European imperialism and how that came about or African and Asian economies before the time period or ideally both now you can't just talk about events that happened before the time period you have to talk about related events that occurred before the time period and you have to be specific again drop V vocabulary words into this talk about the Spanish Colonial Empire and the Americas and the cash crop systems whatever be specific okay now another question how far should you go back in your contextualization well you're looking at the immediate context the general rule of thumb here is about 50 to 100 years and closer to 50 than 100 and that's just a general guideline it really depends on the prompt okay now we get to the evidence section as I mentioned you'll have seven documents to work with and I'm going to give you the point breakdown first and then show you how to earn them so in this section you can earn up to three points one point is awarded for successfully describing in the contents of three documents in relation to the prompt and then two points are awarded for supporting your argument with at least four documents okay so that's the two points in the evidence section you can earn the remaining one point by writing about evidence related to your prompt but which is not mentioned in the documents and this is called evidence beyond the documents if you do that successfully that's one point so two points for the documents and one point for evidence beyond the documents for a total of three points okay now that was a lot let me just explain a little and let's start with your handling of the documents now I hope you notice that there are two different ways of handling the docum you can describe them or you can support an argument with them describing gets you one point and supporting gets you two so what's the difference well describing a document is exactly what it sounds like you say something like document one says and then you accurately summarize the document not a quote but a summary if you do that three times one point but you're not here for one point you're here for full points baby so let's see how to use at least four documents to support an argument the first step is to describe the content of the document document one says and then accurately summarize the document in your own words and I know there are teachers out there rolling their eyes at me like documents don't say people say don't start your sentence with document one say look I know and I agree with you but for Simplicity and Clarity I'm going to explain it like this so you know do whatever you want to do so you summarize the document and then you begin the next sentence with this shows or this demonstrates and then write about how that document proves your thesis you've always got to be tying your evidence back to your thesis and this is the best way that I know how to do it so to me the key to getting this point comes down to two things first is the grouping of the documents which I already talked about back in step one second is topic sentences so for example suppose I group documents 1 3 and 5 as economic documents so in order to use these in support of an argument I'd start by writing a topic sentence for the paragraph that explained why economics was the cause of such and such and then within the paragraph I'd use my documents as evidence to demonstrate why that is true okay the next part of the evidence section is the one point for evidence beyond the documents now to earn this point you need to connect a specific piece of evidence not mentioned in the documents to the argument of your essay this requires you to name it explain what it is and then connect it to your argument so three things name explain and connect people tend to lose this point because they can usually name a piece of evidence but then they forget to explain it or connect it and there's no specific place that you need to do this just stick it wherever it's relevant to your argument and one more important thing to mention here is that your evidence beyond the documents needs to come from the same time period that is given in the prompt and then the last section of the rubric is for analysis and reasoning and for this section you can earn up to two points the first section is about sourcing documents and you can earn one point there for sourcing at least two documents now this is one of the harder things for most students to do so let me try to explain to Source a document means that you show how that document's historical situation audience purpose or point of view is relevant to the interpretation of the document the acronym here is happy and I'll tell you about the why in a moment so the source for historical situation means to place that document in its larger historical context so if your document is Lincoln's second inaugural address then it might be important to know its historical situation which is to say the American Civil War and then to source for audience you need to demonstrate why it's important for us to know to whom this was written so a personal letter might say something much different about a person then a political stump speech and the difference comes down to audience and then to source for purpose you need to explain what a document was intended to do not what it says but what it did so if you have a nationalistic speech from a leader of a colonized Nation then you need to tell us what that speech actually was intended to accomplish like did the speaker want the people to rise up and demand Independence because of this Etc so to source for point of view you need to answer the question why does he or she say what he or she says in the way that he or she says it and the Special Sauce of point of view analysis comes from the end of that question in the way that he or she says it now you only have to perform one of these sourcing skills for each document you try to source so for example if you're going to Source document two you don't have to go through all four of those sourcing skills just choose the one that makes most sense for that document so your sourcing sentence should say something like the historical situation of this document is X and that matters because and that second sentence is the why of happy why does your sourcing analysis matter to the interpretation of the document and your overall argument if you don't do that for your sourcing you're unlikely to earn the point so do that for two documents and actually i' would recommend three in case you get one wrong and then you're going to get that point and then the final part of this section of the rubric is awarded for complexity and you can earn one point for this skill and the rubric gives you like seven different ways to earn this point but I'm only going to explain the two most straightforward methods first you can earn complexity by successfully using all seven documents to support your thesis it doesn't have to be fancy it doesn't have to be elegant if you do for all seven documents the same thing you did for those four documents in the evidence section then boom complexity Point second you can earn complexity by successfully sourcing four documents instead of two again the skill is the same you just have to do it two more times and if you do that boom complexity point and then the very last thing you need to remember about the complexity point is that it can be awarded for part of the essay so if you choose any of these other ways to earn complexity which in my opinion are harder than the two explain then you can demonstrate that skill in a well-crafted paragraph which is to say the whole essay doesn't necessarily need to be complex Okay click here to see my other videos on the various skills needed for the DBQ and you can click right here to grab my apsa cramp of course and I'll hold your hand through all the writing so good luck on those dbqs and I'll catch on the flipflop I'm lout