Understanding US History (AP)
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Writing Essays for United States History
Types of Essays
There are several types of essays that historians write. The AP United States history exam focuses on two types. One is called the free response question (FRQ) and it is the type of essay students are most familiar with already. Free response essays should answer the question clearly with a thesis and evidence to support the thesis. The Document Based Question is the other type of essay AP tests ask student to write. Document Based Questions (DBQs) expect students to read and analyze documents which give information to answer a question. The key to DBQs is the ability to understand how the documents support each other (or not) and to figure out the perspective each of the authors is writing from so you can correctly understmnand their document.More information about the both the DBQ and Free Response Essays is in the pages below.