This skills primer began by introducing you to the patterns of thinking you need to really understand history. The next section pointed out ways to be smart about reading your textbook. This third and final section turns to the writing skills you need to develop for AP history courses and exams. Our focus shifts away from you receiving input toward you providing output: sharing your understanding of Historical Thinking Skills through writing.

There are different types of essays on AP history exams, but two essential skills apply to all of the essays you’ll encounter. First, to successfully demonstrate what you know, you have to answer the question that has been asked. Sounds simple, but many students get in trouble on the exam by failing to address the question in front of them, which is called the “prompt.”

Every prompt contains three elements, and you need to pay attention to all of them as you plan your response. First, each prompt deals with a subject, expressed in two important types of nouns. A proper noun refers to a specific historical entity — Puritanism, the Confederacy, the New Deal. A common noun typically refers to a historical concept: a key historical idea (republicanism, liberalism) or process (industrialization, western expansion). Sometimes this process is limited in time, but often it is a pattern that occurs over a relatively long period. Your answer must deal with all of the subjects of the prompt, not just some of them. Second, the prompt specifies a periodization or date range expressed in years. Obviously, you need to be sure your response addresses this era. One of the most common problems in student essays is providing historical information from the wrong era. Third, and most importantly, the prompt contains a task expressed as its main verb: compare, describe, explain, analyze, and so forth. Pay attention to this task verb, as these tasks are not the same, and your answer must do what the prompt asks you to do.

It doesn’t matter how strong your content knowledge and historical skills are if you can’t communicate clearly what you know. Every essay needs to have a specific, focused thesis in the introductory paragraph that makes an argument addressing the prompt. Your thesis should be as brief as possible while still addressing the complexity of the topic. If your thesis explicitly responds to each of the three prompt elements clearly and accurately — if it includes the subjects, the time period, and the task — you will have a strong thesis. And you’ll be on your way to a persuasive essay.

Every essay needs to be organized into distinct paragraphs. The number of paragraphs depends on the complexity of the prompt. Typically, however, two body paragraphs won’t be sufficient to address the topic thoroughly. What’s most important is that you clearly announce the point you’re going to make in each paragraph through a topic sentence that effectively covers the subject of the paragraph. Any content in the paragraph that doesn’t support the topic sentence doesn’t belong there.

Finally, every essay requires you to make use of evidence to support your claims. The type of evidence also differs depending on the type of essay. The document-based question (DBQ) requires you to reference the documents included with the question, while the other essays require you to draw on information that you know. In every case, however, you need to both discuss relevant historical information you’ve learned during the course and then explain how that information supports your claim.

While many of these writing suggestions would apply equally to essays in other academic subjects, the essay types on AP history exams are all geared to the concerns of historians. Each type of essay requires the use of the Historical Thinking Skills discussed earlier, often in combination with one another. For example, every essay type requires you to discuss the historical context of the subject you’re writing about and to appropriately use relevant evidence to develop an interpretation and argument about the past. Every essay requires you to go beyond simply listing factual information to analyze that information. In fact, “analyze” is commonly used as a question prompt in all types of essays.