<p>"Analyze the political, diplomatic, and military reasons for the United States victory in the Revolutionary War. Confine your answer to the period 17751783."</p>
<p>"Providence appeared to be with the colonies that no longer desired to be colonies. A myriad of political, diplomatic, and military advantages all eventually produced a republican experiment that would shake the balance of power for centuries."</p>
<p>Because that Thesis had these problems..</p>
<p>This essay is well organized and well written, although the thesis could be a little more substantive.</p>
<p>I don't understand how that thesis could be improved?</p>
<p>Although your thesis was well-written, you really didn’t answer the question sufficiently (which is why your teacher recommended more substance). Your thesis is essentially a flowery, rhetoric-heavy way of saying “the U.S. had lots of things that helped it win”. </p>
<p>It’s not too difficult to correct this tendency. For example, instead of “military advantages”, you could say something along the lines of “superior military leadership”. You need more specificity, and less generality.</p>
<p>In short,</p>
<p>The question: “Analyze the political, diplomatic, and military reasons for the United States victory in the Revolutionary War.”</p>
<p>Your answer: “The U.S. had many political, diplomatic, and military reasons for winning the Revolutionary War.”</p>
<p>I had the same problems in APUSH at first. We have block scheduling at my school, so I had just completed AP Language when I started APUSH. In AP Language, my flowery, over-the-top prose was rewarded with superb marks because the questions were philosophical and contemplative in nature. In APUSH, writing well is never enough for a high score; you must substantiate your answers with your knowledge and concrete evidence. Your writing ability will give you an edge, but you’ll still need more if you want to score a 9.</p>
<p>Personally, the highest I even scored on an APUSH essay was an 8. On DBQ’s, my highest mark was a 7. It’s harder than you might think.</p>
<p>I’m starting to see how the essay process works. You need to show the reader you know what your talking about. You need to act informative like you were actually alive during that creation of history.</p>
<p>Through the times of rebalancing and restructure the Americans have been in an experiment which ended up creating, their intransitively balanced diplomacy, strategic military, as well as their congressional organizations, which was much more immensely innovative and superior compared to their previous mother country’s parliament.</p>
<p>Over the past years the Colonies have formed into the U.S. Its superior military, balanced political structure, and Diplomacy allowed succession. In the end Great Britain didn’t lose because of sheer will power, but because they failed to equal in these 3 aspects to the Americas.</p>
<p>You need to focus more on answering the question given. They want to know why the U.S. triumphed in the Revolutionary War. Your reasons are better: cooperate military, balanced political structure, and Common Sense Diplomacy are certainly more substantive than what you had previously. </p>
<p>Bear this in mind: your thesis is essentially a one to two-sentence answer to the prompt. The rest of the essay is just support of this thesis. If your thesis doesn’t sound like it’s directly answering the question given in the prompt, your essay will suffer. And I wish I could ignore the grammar mistakes, but your teachers certainly won’t. The last place you want grammatical ambiguity is your thesis.</p>
<p>EDIT: Okay, it seems you edited your last response. This one seems a lot better. You’re getting there.</p>
<p>I think I’m there. Its directly answering the question!</p>
<p>Because the United States had a superior military, harmonious political structure, and common sense Diplomacy; Great Britain failed to keep control in the Revolutionary War, which gave America the final needed edge to win.</p>
<p>Well, Providence reminded me of the city, so I think you shouldn’t be so verbose, since that confused me (though it may or may not confuse the graders, idk). Like, I think you need to be more like:</p>
<p>“During the Revolutionary War from 1775-1783, political, military, and diplomatic factors helped lead the United States to victory against the British. Politically, it (insert thing like stronger form of government or something like that), militarily it (insert thing like it had better generals and tactics), and diplomatically, it (insert thing like had alliance with Madagascar).”</p>
<p>Put something broad (ish) that analyzes the factors that led them to victory and can be supported with evidence in the body paragraph, so that you don’t just say, “They had a better military, diplomacy, and politics and they won because of that”.</p>
<p>This may or may not help you (since I am basically distilling my attack plan for good APUSH theses, which might not work well for your writing style), but I thought I’d post anyway. Sample thesis structure and explanation follows.</p>
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<p>Why I think this works (although I admit the wording is a little stodgy, but it’s impossible to get The Perfect Thesis in a stressful test environment):</p>
<p>You’re bringing up reasons why people might believe Britain would have an advantage over the US and promising to address & refute them later on in the essay. And you should. How I’d structure it…I’d have a paragraph on the military advantages the US held and I’d bring in an aspect of the British military structure that actually turned into a weakness. I’d do this for every paragraph if you have enough time & solid facts to do so.</p>
<p>Important to note: specific detail. Don’t say “harmonious political structure” without having explained what about it was harmonious. My essay intros would often be like this: hook, lead-in to an outline of what I’d discuss in the political section (so I’d reference my major point or points), outline of what I’d discuss in the diplomatic section, outline of what I’d discuss in the military section…then have my thesis, which would basically be The Statement: the US won because of x, y, and z.</p>
<p>The introduction works best as a map of where you are taking the reader in the rest of the essay. I admit my formula sounds horribly repetitive, but think of how little time the essay evaluator will have to figure out what you’re talking about. Hammer your points in. Hammer your arguments in.</p>
<p>Fancy wording is not important. I often had very long theses that would take up to three lines of binder paper (single-spaced), but if it’s clear and reflects the structure of the body paragraphs that follow, it’ll be fine.</p>
<p>Thesis critique:</p>
<p>The first one you posted does not have enough specific detail. I think the problem here might be that you were trying to go for something that sounded elegant and writerly, but you must, must elaborate on the specific points you intend to argue.</p>
<p>The second one is horribly wordy. Don’t try to be a good writer. Just try to be a clear writer. These are not English essays. Ideas first, clarity second, elegance third. And in that one all you are declaring is that the US political system is superior to the British system (“…which was much more immensely innovative and superior compared to their previous mother country’s parliament”), when you must say that the American advantages were political and diplomatic and militarial. Address all the points with excruciating clarity. It needs to be obvious precisely what you are arguing at all times.</p>
<p>Third thesis. You still don’t have specific detail on why the military was superior, why this balanced political structure was superior, and what the American diplomatic advantages even are. Also, “Colonies” and “Diplomacy” should not be capitalized. You must give reasons why Great Britain “failed to equal in these 3 aspects to the Americas” (which, by the way, could be worded more clearly as “failed to equal the American colonies in these three aspects”, and write out the number three).</p>
<p>Your fourth thesis is much better. I can’t find much to fault except MORE SPECIFIC DETAIL would be better, and it might be good to give reasons as to why these advantages hurt the British or helped the colonists in the war.</p>
<p>I believe there are sample APUSH essays available from the College Board from past test-takers. They should be freely available online, so you might want to check it out. Look at the 7/8/9 essays and see what their theses look like.</p>
<p>it’s flowery. I had the same problem. Avoid words like “myriad” “plethora” and “many,” etc. Instead, give short, but not vague, examples. It took me a long time to kick the habit, but with enough practice, i got a 5 on the exam :]</p>
<p>I tried to get as much relevant specific detail I knew without making it too “wordy”.</p>
<p>Is this a good one?</p>
<pre><code>America won the Revolutionary war of 1775 because it had an advantageous Diplomacy which brought alliance with France, Spain, and the Republic of Dutch and Netherlands and many others Britain enemies, as well as a superior military of Guerrilla Warfare, and a harmonious political structure.
</code></pre>