Write As Historian: WRITE AS A HISTORIAN: REREAD AND EvALUATE

How you use the 40 minutes allotted for the long essay depends on what you believe will work for you. However, allowing plenty of time to understand the task and gather your evidence before you start writing will likely make your writing easier and stronger. Be sure also to leave enough time at the end of the 40 minutes to reread and evaluate your essay.

As you evaluate your essay, start at the most basic level: Did you fulfill the task the prompt requires? Check the key terms of the question and the key terms you use in your response, and be sure they align.

For an easy reminder of what else you should look for as you evaluate your essay, remember this sentence: The clearest essays require care. The first letter of each word, T, C, E, R, and C, can remind you of the key elements your essay must contain:

1. Thesis/claim. The thesis must make a historically defensible claim that responds to the prompt and lays out a line of reasoning. It must also consist of one or more sentences located in one place, either in the introduction or the conclusion.

2. Contextualization: Place your thesis in historical context, relating the topic of the prompt to broader historical events, developments, or processes that occur before, during, or continue after the time frame of the question.

3. Evidence: Provide a number of specific and relevant pieces of evidence, and clearly show how they support your thesis.

4. Reasoning: Use the historical reasoning process of comparison, continuity and change, or causation to frame your argument. Use an organizational strategy appropriate to the reasoning process.

5. Complexity: Check that you have woven a complex understanding throughout your essay (or fully developed it in one place). Look for an explanation of multiple variables and both causes and effects, similarities and differences, and continuities and changes; connections across and within periods; the significance of a source’s credibility and limitations; and the effectiveness of a historical claim.

Application: After answering one or more of the long essay questions on the next page, use the reminders in the sentence “The clearest essays require care” to evaluate your essay. Make revisions where you believe you can make your essay stronger, clearer, or more aligned with the rubric expectations.

For current free response question samples, visit: https://apcentral. collegeboard.org/courses/ap-world-history/exam