Long Essay Questions

Take a moment to review the rubric to the right.

What do you feel confident about?

What seems challenging about it?

• Claim (answers the question clearly in the intro or conclusion)
• Contextualization (relate broad historical patterns or trends to the prompt)
• Relevant Evidence (includes specific examples)
• Supporting Argument w/Evidence (explain how evidence supports the claim)
• Uses Historical Reasoning to Structure Argument (focuses on continuity and change, similarity and difference, cause and effect)
• Complex Understanding (considers multiple viewpoints to corroborate or qualify; includes both similarities and differences, continuities and changes, etc.; connections across time periods)

Breaking Down AP Questions

Evaluate the extent to which the Columbian Exchange led to economic changes in the Americas in the 16th century.

• Time Period: 1500s
• Region: the Americas
• Theme: Economics
• Historical Reasoning: Continuity and Change

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We’ll do some examples in small groups/individually in a few minutes.

The most useful information for answering this question:

• Plantation economy
• Encomienda system
• Cash crops: sugar, tobacco, etc.
• Silver mines
• Transatlantic and transpacific trade routes
• African slave trade

Not very useful information:

• Industrial revolution (wrong time period - 1800s)
• Change to silver currency (wrong region - East Asia)
• Conversion to Christianity (wrong theme - culture)
• European Age of Exploration (causation, not change)

Essay Planning

1. Make a two column chart:

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2) Generate a list of reasons and evidence and use your chart to organize it.

3) Write a claim and two (or more if necessary) topic sentences based on your chart.

4) Create body paragraphs in the following way

• Claim (and context)
• Topic Sentence #1 and evidence of change/similarity/cause
• Topic Sentence #2 and evidence of continuity/difference/effect/other cause

5) As you write, maximize your scoring of points - keep an eye on the rubric.

Here’s another example of planning and brainstorming

Planning the Long Essay

• Review the prompt (from last year’s AP test) and make a two column chart:

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2) Start asking yourself some questions as you brainstorm possible ideas:

• What trade routes and systems are we even talking about here?
• What kinds of economic goods and systems?
• How did Europeans get involved in East and South Asian economies in the Early Modern Era?
• What changes did European influence lead to?
• What were East and South Asian economies like before 1450?
• In what ways might they have stayed the same, even after Europeans showed up?

Prompt: In the period circa 1450-1750, European expansion affected the development of numerous East Asian and South Asian states. Develop an argument that evaluates the extent to which the economies of East and/or South Asian states in this time period changed in response to European expansion.

Writing a Paragraph

• Find a partner and pool your ideas.
• Together, write a simple claim that identifies a change and a continuity.
• European expansion led to ______ changes in East and/or South Asian economies; however, these economies remained ______.
• Assign one paragraph to each person; one person writes about the change, one person writes about the continuity.
• You have eight minutes to write your paragraph. Make it clear, not overly complicated.

Guidelines for writing the body paragraphs:

• Topic sentence should repeat the idea about the change or continuity from the claim: don’t get too fancy.
• Since you’re writing about continuity and change, you need to explain a bit about what things were like before the start of the Early Modern Era.
• Name specific details to get credit for historical evidence. Since this essay is about economics, this includes:
• Trade routes
• Trade goods
• Technologies associated with trade during this time
• Economic systems, organizations, etc.
• Explain how the evidence helps support your change or continuity - what does it show about Asian economies before and after 1450?