Free-Response Question Tasks



Essay Question Tasks

When writing a DBQ or FRQ, the first priority for you is to understand exactly what tasks a question is asking you to perform. You should then focus on writing a clear, concise, and well-supported response. When appropriate, you should provide examples to support their responses.

To this end, it is critical that you understand the instructions and action verbs that are often used on the AP Exam. You may be asked to discuss, describe, explain, analyze, and so on. These are not all identical tasks. Furthermore, the question may call for more than one task, such as both describe and explain. The following list of commonly used action verbs will help you understand the exact tasks that you will be required to perform.

• Describe. A description involves providing a depiction or portrayal of an event or its most significant characteristics. Descriptions most often address “what” questions. For example, if you are asked to describe the sectional tensions that led to the Civil War, you must do more than simply list facts—you must actually describe the tensions.

Example: Americans have been a highly mobile people. Describe and account for the dominant population movements between 1820 and 1900.

• Analyze. This task usually requires separating a phenomenon into its component parts or characteristics as a way of understanding the whole. In response to this prompt, you should explain how and why something occurred.

Example: Analyze the extent to which the American Revolution represented a radical alteration in American political ideas and institutions between 1775 and 1800.

• Discuss/Consider. Discussions generally require that students explore relationships between different concepts or phenomena. Identifying, describing, and explaining could be required tasks involved in writing a satisfactory discussion. Write discuss/consider essays as you would an analyze essay.

Example: Discuss the impact of territorial expansion on national unity between 1800 and 1850.

• Explain. An explanation involves the exploration of possible causal relationships. When writing an explain essay, you should identify a cause and effect relationship and describe in detail how the cause led to the effect.

Example: Explain why Reconstr4uction (1865-1877) failed to bring social and economic equality of opportunity to the former slaves.

• To What Extent. This prompt is similar to explain. You must identify a cause and effect relationship and argue which causes were more or less important in causing the effect.

Example: To what extent did economic and political developments as well as assumptions about the nature of women affect the position of American women during the period 1890-1925?

• Compare/Contrast. This task requires students to make specific links between two or more concepts. To do this correctly, you must discuss both similarities and differences, even if the prompt just says compare. It is very important that you give equal attention to both of the things you are comparing.

Example: Compare the expansionist policies of Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James K. Polk.

• Evaluate. An evaluation or assessment involves considering how well something meets a certain standard. It is important to identify the standard used in the evaluation. If no standard is explicitly given in the question, you should take care to clearly identify the ones that you choose to employ. Often, evaluate questions ask you to argue which factor(s) was most important. You will need to rank several events or factors, then specify which is the most and lease significant, and support your rankings using historical fact.

Example: Evaluate the relative importance of the following as factors prompting Americans to rebel in 1776: parliamentary taxation; restrictions of civil liberties; British military measures; and the legacy of colonial religious and political ideas.

• Assess the Validity. Asks you to argue how true a given statement is. The statement will not always be 100% true; it may be true in one category, but false in another.

Example: “Throughout the Colonial period, economic concerns had more to do with the settling of British North America than did religious concerns.” Assess the validity of this statement with specific reference to economic and religious concerns.

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