AP History MCQ Strategy 1C: Pay Attention to Detail—Question Stem Edition
We've made our way through the realm of the question stimulus and arrived at the question stem—finally. But we're not out of the "obnoxious attention to detail" waters yet...
Before you read on, please make sure you’ve taken a look at the earlier posts in this series before you read today’s installment. These are meant to be cumulative and read in order, so they will definitely serve you best that way! Once you’ve done that, jump right in—and don’t forget to subscribe, if you haven’t already.
MCQ Strategy 1C: Pay Attention to Detail—Question Stem Edition
On all of the AP History exams (AP Euro, APUSH, AP World), each question has a stimulus (see last post), followed by 2-5 questions related to said stimulus.
A few clicks below, you can see a few examples of question stems (courtesy of The College Board). I have not included stimuli or answer choices with the stems because I want you to FOCUS on the question stem completely without that added context.
The reason for this seemingly strange choice: today, I am going to prove to you that the College Board is not terribly creative when it comes to different types of AP History question stems (though there are reasons for that, explained in the first post in this series). There are only a few different types of questions! Once you know the tells, you’ll be able to clock them the second you see them, which will give you a massive advantage regardless of the stimulus or answer choices you are provided.
What’s the advantage of knowing and being able to identify the different “types” of question stems?
Once you know the different types of question stems, you’ll know what task the exam writers are asking you to perform.
When you know what type of question you’re looking at, you’ll know what you’re being asked to do.
And when you know what you’re being asked to do, you’ll know how to approach the question. And when you know how to approach the question, you’ll know how to approach the process of elimination for the answer choices (spoiler alert: that’s the next—and possibly the most crucial—article in this series)!
The primary purpose of the MCQ section is to test your ability to analyze and engage with source materials. It is only the secondary purpose to test you to recall your content knowledge.
More specifically, multiple-choice questions assess a student's ability to:
Provide analysis and explanation of historical developments;
Identify the origins, context, and significance of primary and secondary sources;
Analyze and explain the perspective, purpose, context, and/or audience of the source (and each of these factors separately);
How the origins and context of a source may limit its usefulness as an analytical tool;
Interpret primary and secondary sources by identifying and analyzing arguments;
Analyze and compare arguments from different sources and show how they support, modify, or refute one another.
Interpret historical developments and processes in their specific or immediate historical contexts and explain how they fit into larger or broader historical contexts.
Identify and explain historical patterns and connections between and among historical developments and processes using historical-analytical skills, such as comparing and contrasting, analyzing cause-effect relationships, and assessing continuity and change over time (CCOT).
(Note: ALL of the above bullet points are also the required tasks for ALL of the other sections of the exam—but THOSE are topics applied in different ways for other days!)
Next time: MCQ Strategy 2—PROCESS OF ELIMINATION!
Next up, we FINALLY reach the answer choices.
Our next step is perhaps the most important one of all, and it’s certainly one of the most valuable skills you can take with you to other standardized exams: the process of elimination.
Trust me—you do NOT want to miss this one. It’s a game-changer. I will be showing you how to take the knowledge you gained over the past few newsletters (and over the past year in your class!) and take all of that up several levels with an incredibly simple but incredibly clever tool that helps you make the best use of your instincts (which are themselves a much better tool than you probably give them credit for!)
Tune in next time. Until then, please be sure to comment, share, and of course SUBSCRIBE IF YOU HAVEN’T YET.