It is the halfway point of the year and I am frantic in trying to make the scores on my dbq’s and frq’s better. I always think I wrote a good essay since it has a fair amount of outside info and they are analyzed but I keep getting 2’s and 3’s. What am I doing wrong in my essays that keep getting me low scores? On the official ap grading table, my teacher usually checks the “3” category on the outside info part (Includes some outside information but needs more) and the rest are on the “2” category. I don’t see what I am doing wrong…how much outside info do I need to go up to the 4’s and 5’s? Also, how do I exactly make an APUSH thesis? My thesis looks a little like “The causes of the Civil War can be analyzed to where to extent to which they were effected, whether they were vast ones or not-such as the social differences between the North and South and the economic growth and expansion prior to the Civil War.” What kinds of thesis will be considered as either “strong” or “superior”? Oh and how do I analyze key issues? I thought it meant describing them and talking about their impacts but apparently there is more to them. What kinds of essays receive a score of at least 6/9? Some example essays would be very helpful in this thread. And one more thing, does an essay that lacks “academic tone” get graded poorly? Because with only 45 minutes to write an essay, I don’t see how good of a paper it can possibly get in terms of its tone.</p>
<p>I am in the same boat as you. I can make good APUSH thesis statements and intros but what makes them great and superior? Also, to answer Korean101 question about outside info, there needs to be 50% outside info and 50% from the documents. My teacher told me for the DBQs, you should ALWAYS cite and use more than half the documents given to you on the day of the exam. An example of that would be if there is 10 documents, you would use 6 of them in your essay. But please, someone help us!!</p>
<p>First you want to use almost all the documents, you can leave out two at the most. Korean101 your thesis restates the prompt it doesn’t provide any analyzes, how or why. ex. Although the Civil War resulted in the supremacy of the Republican party for the next fifty years and led to a constitutional revolution regarding African American rights ,blacks in the South were virtually g, y abandoned by the North in 1877 and subsequently dominated by the white-supremacist Democratic party of the “Solid South. Thus, to a larger extent, the Civil War did represent a revolution the Civil War did represent a revolution constitutionally and in national politics but it was not a complete revolution regarding social and political issues in the South." that is a good intro. also go to <a href=“http://www.northsideprep.org/ncphs/depts/social_science/asearcy/APUSH/Writing&Presenting/writingtheapushessay.pdf[/url]”>http://www.northsideprep.org/ncphs/depts/social_science/asearcy/APUSH/Writing&Presenting/writingtheapushessay.pdf</a> for more information.</p>
<p>How does the DBQ structurally differ from the Open Response? How many paragraphs should they each be? And where should the thesis be located?</p>
<p>There’s no set number of paragraphs needed for an essay. Arrange it ideologically. If the question asks you to compare and contrast two items for example, you could organize the essay by having one body paragraph that compares and another that contrasts. Your conclusions need not be profound, but do wrap up the essay in some way. The DBQ should be structured the exact same way as an FRQ. Basically, a DBQ should be a fully fleshed-out essay that happens to have support from the documents. You should be able to take away the documents and still have a full response.</p>