Chapter 4 The Multiple-Choice Questions
Chapter 5 The Document-Based Question (DBQ)
Chapter 6 Thematic Essay Questions
IN THIS CHAPTER
Summary: Develop a successful strategy for the multiple-choice section.
Key Ideas
• Multiple-choice questions test passive knowledge.
• The question always provides clues to the answer.
• They key is to quickly devise a process of elimination.
Introduction
Section I of the AP European History Exam consists of 80 multiple-choice questions. The directions are straightforward and they resemble the directions for every multiple-choice test you have ever taken. They read:
Directions: Each of the questions or incomplete statements below is followed by five suggested answers or completions. Select the one that is best in each case and then fill in the corresponding oval on the answer sheet.
So, you know the drill; you select the best answer of the five and fill in your choice. And you have probably taken enough multiple-choice tests to know that there is an important question you should ask: “If I am not sure of the best answer, should I guess?” The answer is: “It depends,” but we will get to that in a minute. Right now, ask yourself a few more questions: What does a multiple-choice question test? How did the authors of the exam come up with the 80 questions? Are there different kinds of multiple-choice question? How did they decide what order to put them in? Knowing the answers to these questions can help you develop a successful strategy for approaching them.
Passive Knowledge and the Premise
All multiple-choice exams test passive knowledge. The multiple-choice section of the AP European History exam will test your passive knowledge of European history from roughly 1450 to the present. That is, it will test your ability to recognize the best answer out of a group of possible answers to a specific historical question. The word “best” is important. It means that all multiple-choice questions are answered through a process ofelimination; you begin by eliminating the one that is most clearly not the “best” and continue until you have a “survivor.”
Additionally, a multiple-choice question and its answer try to say something meaningful about history in a single sentence. That is a very difficult thing to do. In order to do it, the question creates a premise which the test taker must accept. For example, look at the following question:
1. The most outstanding characteristic of Renaissance Italian society was
(A) the strength of the monarchy
(B) the power of the traditional nobility
(C) the degree to which it was urban
(D) the freedom allowed to women
(E) the development of cash-crop agriculture
The question proceeds from the premise that there was a single most outstanding characteristic of Renaissance Italian society. That is a debatable premise (was there really one that was more “outstanding” or noteworthy than all the other characteristics?), and a sophisticated student of history could debate (and indeed write a doctoral dissertation debating) the merits of several possible answers. Doing so would make you seem very sophisticated and knowledgeable, but it would be both silly and counterproductive on an exam.
The people who wrote the question realize that the premise is debatable, but they have constructed the question so that, if you accept the premise (and for the purpose of the exam, they insist that you do), there is an internal, historical logic that will lead you to the best answer, provided you have some knowledge of the significant aspects of Renaissance Italian history (and that is what the question tests).
Organizational Keys
How did they come up with the 80 questions? The high school and college teachers who created the AP European History exam followed these organizational principles:
1. The questions are broken down by era:
• Forty questions cover the era from roughly 1450 to 1815.
• Forty questions cover the era from 1815 to the present.
2. The questions are also broken down by general subject:
• Roughly 30—40 percent (or 24—32 questions) cover political and diplomatic themes.
• Roughly 20—30 percent (or16—24 questions) cover cultural and intellectual themes.
• Roughly 30—40 percent (or 24—32 questions) cover social and economic themes.
Knowing these two organizing principles of the exam only helps you in a general sense; they let you know that you have to devote about equal preparation time for the questions on the period from 1450 to 1815 and that from 1815 to the present, and about equal time for the three thematic categories. But knowing some other guiding principles can actually help you to answer specific questions.
3. The questions test basic principles and general trends, not memorization and trivia. Knowing that the exam seeks to test basic principles and general trends tells you that you do not need to memorize loads of dates and facts; rather you can use your knowledge to reason your way to the best answer. It also tells you that the best answer will not be an exception or an obscure fact, but rather an illustration of the basic principle or general trend.
4. The questions appear in “groups” of four to seven questions that are in chronological order. You should be able to tell where the “breaks” between groups are. When, for example, you see a question about World War I followed by a question about the Renaissance, you have come upon a break between groups. Identifying the groups of questions can be helpful; if you come upon a question that lies between a question about the Renaissance and one about the Scientific Revolution, you know that the event or process that it asks about occurred between those two eras.
5. The questions get progressively more difficult. Therefore the early questions have easy, straightforward answers. Do not read too much complexity into the early questions. Choose the most obvious answers.
The Kinds of Questions
There are several kinds of multiple-choice questions on the AP European History exam. Most of the questions are straightforward, find-the-best-answer questions like the one about the outstanding characteristic of the Renaissance above. However, there are two other types worth watching out for:
• There are questions that include the words NOT or EXCEPT. These questions give you five choices and ask you to pick the one that is not true or, following the premise of the question, the worst answer. In these questions, the words NOT or EXCEPT are always capitalized, so you will not miss them. Just be sure to remember that you are looking for the worst answer when you analyze the choices.
• Once in a while, there are questions that ask you to interpret an illustration. The illustration may be a map, a graph, a chart, or perhaps a poster or cartoon from a particular period of history. You will almost certainly not have seen the illustration before, and the authors of the exam do not expect you to have seen it. What they are looking for is your ability to “get” the illustration based on your knowledge of the period.
About Guessing
Should you guess? This is what the AP European History exam says about guessing:
Many candidates wonder whether or not they should guess the answers to questions about which they are not certain. In this section of the examination, as a correction for haphazard guessing, one-quarter of the number of questions you answer incorrectly will be subtracted from the number of questions from the number of questions you answer correctly. It is improbable, therefore, that mere guessing will improve your score significantly; it may even lower your score, and it does take time. If, however, you are not sure of the best answer but have some knowledge of the question and are able to eliminate one or more of the answer choices as wrong, your chance of getting the right answer is improved, and it may be to your advantage to answer such a question.
In other words, there is a guessing penalty, but it is small. A good rule of thumb is: If you understand the premise of the question and can eliminate one or two of the answers, then guess. If you do not even understand the premise of the question, skip it.
Developing a Strategy
OK. Let us put what we have learned into practice to answer that question about the Renaissance.
1. The most outstanding characteristic of Renaissance Italian society was
(A) the strength of the monarchy
(B) the power of the traditional nobility
(C) the degree to which it was urban
(D) the freedom allowed to women
(E) the development of cash-crop agriculture
Step 1: Identify the context
In this case, that is easy. The question tells us it is about Renaissance Italy. If the question were about a specific document, say Pico’s Oration on the Dignity of Man, we could figure out that the context was Renaissance Italy by remembering that Renaissance humanism stressed the dignity of man, or by noticing that the question started a chronological “group” of questions and was followed by a question about the Reformation.
Step 2: Identify the premise
As we noted earlier, the premise of this question is that there was one social characteristic of Renaissance Italian society that stood out more prominently than the rest.
Step 3: Decide whether you are working from a good knowledge base or a weak one, and begin the process of elimination
When your read the question was your reaction something like: “Excellent, I know the Renaissance”? Or was it more like, “Aargh! I should have studied the Renaissance”?
If you had the “Excellent” reaction, then you are working from a good knowledge base and your process of elimination would work something like this: “I know that Renaissance Italy, unlike the rest of Europe, was organized into independent city-states rather than large kingdoms, so the best answer is probably choice C, ‘the degree to which it was urban,’ because urban means lots of cities.” All that is left to do now is quickly scan the other answers to make sure there are no other contenders: “I know choices A and B are no good because strong monarchies and powerful traditional nobility are the characteristics of the rest of Europe at this time. Choice E is no good because agriculture is a rural characteristic and Renaissance society is urban. And choice D is out because Renaissance women were no better off than women anywhere else in Europe. My first instinct was correct, the answer is choice C.”
If you had the “Aargh!” reaction, you will have to operate something like this: “Okay, I know zip about the Renaissance, but I am throwing out choices A and B because I am pretty sure there were lots of strong kings and powerful nobility. How about choice D? Were women better off in Renaissance Italy? I have no idea, but I do remember that women were still fighting for equal rights in the twentieth century, so it is not very likely that they had it great in the Renaissance. That leaves choices C and E which are opposites; either Renaissance Italy was really urban or it was on the cutting edge of agricultural development. Urban? Hmmmm. Rome, Venice, yeah, Italy has lots of famous cities with a lot of famous old buildings; I am going with choice C.”
Both processes of elimination produce the same, correct, answer. The outstanding characteristic of Renaissance Italy was the degree to which it was urban. Now, before you go on to the next chapter, look at your notes regarding the processes of elimination you used to answer the multiple choice questions in Chapter 3. For the ones you got wrong, construct a process of elimination that leads to the right answer. If you feel ready, go to the back of the guide and do the multiple choice section of Practice Test 1.