global essay rubric

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7.2: Rubrics

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WHAT IS A RUBRIC?

A rubric communicates expectations and creates consistent criteria and standards by which to evaluate a performance or project. In writing, a rubric allows teachers and students to evaluate an activity which can be complex and subjective. A rubric is aimed at accurate and fair assessment, fostering understanding, and indicating a way to proceed with subsequent learning and teaching. A rubric can also provide a basis for self-evaluation, reflection, and peer review.

WHY ARE RUBRICS IMPORTANT?

Rubrics help to…

• bring objectivity to subjective scoring.
• take away the “guessing game” by providing students with consistent standards the teacher will be using to evaluate their writing.
• teach students to set learning goals and take the responsibility for their learning into their own hands by knowing what skills make up a desired performance so they can strive to achieve it.
• assist students in developing their personal ability to judge excellence, or the lack thereof, in their work and the work of others.
• assure students that there is equality in grading and standardized expectations.
• praise students’ strengths and identify their weaknesses because rubrics provide visual representations of areas of excellence and under-performance allowing easy identification of what areas to work on at a glance.
• provide a clear means for students to monitor their progress on specific criteria over a given period of instruction or time.
• ensure for teachers that they are evaluating student work fairly, clearly and thoroughly.

HOW DO I DO IT?

The English professors at Skyline College have worked together to create a shared rubric so that regardless of English class or instructor, students will be evaluated according to a consistent set of criteria based on a shared understanding of writing fundamentals. All of the materials designed to instruct, evaluate and comment on student writing in this Rhetoric are based on that departmental rubric. Contained here are three different approaches using Skyline College’s English Departmental rubric to evaluate and comment on writing. These rubrics can be used by students to evaluate one another, and they can be used by instructors to evaluate students. This provides further consistency and shared expectations as the students and the instructor use the same evaluating tool.

Composition Essay Rubric with Explanations

How to : Check the appropriate rubric boxes and provide explanations afterwards of the ratings. Using the information : For areas where a writer receives “needs work” or “adequate,” review that area in the Rhetoric associated with that topic and use the advice when revising.

Comments: further explanations behind the scoring choices along with revision advice (for more commenting space, insert electronically or attach additional page)

Literature Essay Rubric with Explanations

Composition essay rubric.

How to : Check the appropriate rubric boxes and provide explanations afterwards of the ratings. Using the information : For areas where a writer receives “needs work” or “adequate,” review that area in the Rhetoric associated with that topic (link below) and use the advice when revising.

Literature Essay Rubric

Composition essay rubric with integrated comments.

How to : Check the appropriate rubric box and provide an explanation of the ratings by answering the questions below. Fill out each section thoroughly to provide thoughtful and comprehensive feedback. Using the information : For areas where a writer receives “needs work” or “adequate,” review that area in the Rhetoric associated with that topic (link below) and use the advice when revising.

Literature Essay Rubric with Integrated Comments

9239 Global Perspectives & Research Team Project (2021)

Topic outline.

• Introduction
• Assessment criteria
• Presentation
• Reflective Paper

The main aim of this resource is to exemplify standards of the Cambridge International AS & A Level Global Perspectives & Research, Component 3 Team Project, and show how different levels of candidates' performance relate to the subject's curriculum and assessment objectives. 

Candidate responses have been selected from four Cambridge centres from the November 2021 series to exemplify a range of candidate responses across the presentation and reflective paper. All candidates seen in the recordings of the live presentations were contacted and permissions provided to use the videos from their Team Project submission. 

The candidate responses are followed by examiner comments on how and why marks were awarded so that you can understand what candidates have done to gain their marks and what they could do to improve. The examiner comments also helps teachers to assess the standard required to achieve marks beyond the guidance of the mark scheme and the syllabus. There is also a list of common mistakes. 

• Presentation (25 marks)

• Reflective Paper (10 marks) 

Now that you have read the assessment criteria, you may want to practise marking the presentations and reflective papers . Watch each candidate's presentation, making a note of the strengths and weaknesses and give a mark, before you read the examiner comments and marks below. Complete the same task for each reflective paper candidate response.

We want to give you a small explanation of why we choose poverty as a subject. The 3 of us do not suffer from the effects of poverty, however, others do. And with the ongoing pandemic, people tend to forget other problems like Poverty. And that is why we wanted to talk about it, to make sure people understand that it is still an ongoing problem and that it has gotten worse the past year!

Poverty, what is poverty? How can we describe poverty from an economic perspective? Poverty in the eyes of economists is a state in which a person, a community or a neighbourhood lacks the financial resources to achieve a minimum standard of living. So, poverty means that the level of income of a person or a group of people is below a certain threshold. This threshold is so low that basic human needs can just be met. Receiving income that is below this threshold is considered living in poverty. The effects of living in poverty can be horrendous, people living without proper housing, clothing struggling to be able to eat healthy food or drink water every day. Although poverty seems to be a worldwide problem concerning millions of people around the world, poverty is also different in a lot of countries. because the threshold that determines whether someone is poor or not can differ per country. However, the IPL international poverty line has been set at $1.90 per day. Global estimates are that around 689 million people live in absolute poverty right now.

Let's start with a local view of Poverty.

In Maastricht, around 8.2% of the inhabitants live in poverty. We have a place in the top 10 municipalities with the highest number of habitants living in poverty. When compared with the averages of the Netherlands as a country we have a higher average of people living in poverty in Maastricht, which shocked me. I was under the impression that Maastricht would score 'better' on this list. And that is another problem with poverty.

You can not always tell when someone lives in this state of poverty. People tend to not talk about it and sink into an even deeper hole without trying to get help for the situation they are in. This can make the situation for people in poverty even worse. if you get to the point where you live in poverty the smart thing to do is get help for your financial situation. let people know what you are undergoing and get help. In the Netherlands, we have certain safeguards in place where you can explain your situation and get help from financial advisors. They will help you to limit your expenses and will try to help you pay off your debt if that is applicable.

Even with this available help people still live in poverty. In the Netherlands, about 6.2% of the population lives in poverty. With a poverty threshold of €1090 per month which almost a million people don't pass. This seems rather alarming, however, it is an improvement when compared with the numbers from several years ago. In 2013 7.4% of our population was living in poverty! So we are making small progress on the national level.

So there is a slight improvement, however, are we going to keep that up or even improve the situation faster? I think we can keep the progress up. On a global level, people have been hit hard financially by the lockdown. Businesses had to close down and people have been struggling financially. However, with the election in the Netherlands promises of improvement and support for those who need it have started to arise.

When we take a look at Maastricht once again, we can see that people are fighting for change. 6 of the political parties have agreed to a program in which they will get 50 households who live in poverty and have extensive debts, a financial plan and a guide to slowly get their lives back on track. Furthermore, before the year is out they want to make a plan to attack the poverty in and around Maastricht.

On a national level, things are starting to change as well. Food Banks are starting programs to support the people who need to get their food at the food banks. An example of this support is the 10 point plan created by a food bank in Groningen. This foodbank helps its 'customers' with a 10 point plan attack on poverty. Some examples are:

1. Only buy things you can afford!

2. Getting help when in a big debt has to become faster, right now it can take up to 4 months to get people to listen to your story.

3. Trying to remove the own risk of health care for people who live in poverty.

when looking at the biggest picture, international poverty, I am not sure if we are going the right way. at least we should be able to do better. because of the differences between countries on poverty we do not have a clear view of the real numbers. We do have estimates of absolute poverty, the $1.90 a day, and from those numbers we can conclude that we must do better.

There are some great ideas and initiatives out there to help reduce poverty around the world. For example: Improving the transition from school to work of the vulnerable work population. And implementing policy measures to reduce household debt and vulnerability to housing price changes.

Another great idea is to create a worldwide organisation that makes a centralised policy around poverty and the battle against poverty. Another thing that would help would be to make sure people are warned about the risks of borrowing money. There are some regulations around these risks already however we could improve them, make sure that vulnerable people can not miss the warnings, maybe even make it harder for them to borrow money because it will eventually put them in even more debt and make them even poorer. And lastly, we need to make sure everyone has the opportunity to get out of poverty, We need to give the poor the tools to become financially healthy again. Courses on finance, debt and interest, financial advice and learn them how to get back on their feet.

• Multimedia materials Click here for multimedia materials
• Examiner commentary on the presentation Click here for examiner comments and mark awarded

So the problem, what is cyberbullying?: Cyberbullying is bullying with the use of digital technologies. It can take place on messaging platforms, gaming platforms and on social media. Cyberbullying includes sending hurtful and mean messages, impersonating people, embarrassing someone and Spreading lies about someone [uhm]. The incidents of depression and suicides caused by cyberbullying are rising. A growing problem that leads to depression and anxiety cannot be left unnoticed.

Global Relevance. So, this is Dr. Sameer Hinduja, and he is a Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida Atlantic University , and he said that 34% of students worldwide have experienced cyberbullying at least once in their lifetime. People that have experienced cyber bullying in their life time are nearly 2 times more likely to attempt suicide. Another global [uhm] cyberbullying research survey in 2008, found out that 43% out of 2,000 students that they have tested have said that they have experienced cyberbullying too. Then we have Ipsos, that’s an American study, has ranked the highest cyberbullying rates throughout the world and it is based on parents' testimony, because they are more likely to be concerned. [Uhm] the study is from 2018 and here you can see the results. India has the most cyberbullying rates and Germany, our neighbour country has 17%.

Local Relevance. In the Netherlands, the Association of Universities (VSNU) is going to draw up a plan to better support scientists that are intimidated and threatened. Professors and university educators face online hate campaigns, death threats and home harassment a lot. [Uhm] on this picture, the cover, you see Marion [uhm] Koopmans and shes on dutch television. She is part of the plan. [Uhm] in the article they talk about Catherine E. de Vries. She is a Dutch political scientist and she receives a lot of swear words everyday.  "I hope you get corona," was one of the death threats she has received. It even went so far that they made her address public and they threatened her family. She wants this to stop. [Uhm] online hate is rampant. Dutch moderators receive thousands of hate reports every day. Especially during elections and Sinterklaas. They end the article with: "We can't help the scientists, [uhm] , to silence those who are trying to, those who are trying to silence them through intolerance, sexism and threats, however we can support them. I disagree. I found a political solution and Britt, my team mate, has found  [uhm] an educational solution.

So, a political solution. I think that we can only.[uhm, uhm] tackle cyberbullying by tackling anonymity. A Dutch professor of social psychology, Paul van Lange, says the largely lack of social control on social media accounts is the perfect breeding ground for hatred to occur.

Bullies should be punished. When a target goes to [uhm] goes to court they should be able to sue the person that has violated them. However, it is in most cases hard to find the guilty party, due to the many majority of fake accounts online. [Uhm] meaning the people spreading the lies or rumours can’t be punished.

So I think you need to show proof of your identity, before making an account on social media. This means an improved verification process that allows for accurate identification of the person behind the account. This way cyberbullying will diminish.

[Uhm] In the Netherlands, [uhm] a Dutch singer named Gordon is fed up with all the anonymous hate reactions online. Since the large amount of anonymous hate reactions on the Press release website, he decided to no longer remain silent. He started a petition that has already been signed up more than forty thousand times. He said that you should hold people accountable for the things they post on social media and prevent people from hiding behind a false name when making offensive remarks. [Uhm] This is only possible with stronger real name policies and enforcement. [Uhm] In China they already took control of [uhm] social media and they have controversially banned certain social media platforms, and anonymizers. The operators of social networks are responsible for removing posts that are considered as rumours. Rumours are identified by undermining [mora] morality, the authenticity of information and undermining the social system. So these [uhm] Social networks should put them in different categories therefore they need several licenses. [Uhm] spreading false information and online hatred is a crime and is punishable for up to seven years in prison. This has in fact stopped false information and mean comments from spreading.

However in most, in some  countries [uhm] people are prosecuted for their opinion. So anonymity has its value. The Chinese government [uhm] has control because they don't want anyone directly threatening the government’s power. So any information that could harm the government's power will be deleted, because they will say it's false or it's a rumour even though it's not false or a rumour. So hiding their identity is [uhm] can be a value to be able to express your opinion there. And everybody should be able to encrypt their communications and personal data as an essential protection of their rights to privacy and free speech." The Chinese laws on social media simply limit those established standards of free speech. And governments shouldn’t determine what speech is true and what is not.

So, I think that tackling anonymity is still the best solution, because the negative aspects of anonymity outweigh the positive aspects. Especially, in America and countries within Europe, where everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right includes the freedom to have opinions and to receive or convey information or ideas. So, if you want to share your opinion, you may. There is just no excuse to hide behind a false name. Besides, the identity data does not necessarily have to be made public. They can be withheld from the judiciary. [If] Only if something that clearly involves false and harmful information, [uhm] the justice system should investigate it and know where the information came from, to be able to catch the bully. The rights to privacy will not be harmed when the court and government [uhm] can only look into your data when the judge approves it, just like the police needs a warrant before they can make an arrest. [Uhm], so, to be clear, all users should be subject to an enhanced verification process that enables accurate identification only when required by law [uhm], by law enforcement. When the sources can be traced, we can hold people accountable for what they post on social media, and we can catch the cyber bully and they can be punished accordingly.

These are my sources if you want to look further into this subject.

• Some candidates only identified their own perspective and did not refer to alternative views and approaches, including those of the other members of their team.
• Some presentations provided only an informative overview of their issue which describes what it is, rather than making an argument about why it is a problem and proposing a solution.
• Candidates made the mistake of not making any reference to their visual aids when speaking, meaning that they did not then support their argument.

Initially, our group work was quite organized. We agreed on the topic of illiteracy on day 1 after a class discussion. From then onwards, I took charge and brainstormed sub-topics and delegated them for us to research individually; [ Team member ] searched about the causes of the issue whereas I focused on the consequences. This method was effective as we could gather a considerable amount of information in a short period of time without any uncertainty as to who would research what. It was also useful as we realized early on that our issue was much more complex than we had thought and targeting specifically female illiteracy would allow for more focused, nuanced perspectives, and thus more interesting solutions. As for communication, most of our in-person meetings were in school rather than outside of school due to COVID risks. However, in between classes we talked and called frequently on WhatsApp which was sufficient enough to let us clarify our perspectives and keep track of each other's individual progress on our presentations.

• Examiner commentary on the reflective paper Click here for examiner comments and mark awarded

The teamwork went fine. All of us made sure that each one of us knew what was expected from them and attended the zoom meetings. We learned our personal team roles by the Belbin test, due to this we can now recognize our strengths and become more tolerant of our weaknesses. we tested our team fit in a practical team building exercise. When the introduction was finalized and the project was clear we were ready to brainstorm about the project in brainstorm sessions. During these sessions we were invited to join breakout rooms where we were given time to brainstorm. We chose our objectives, what are the goals and end product, divided team roles and appointed a scrum master. [Teacher] was our scrum master and made sure we did everything as we planned.  After brainstorming we chose three perspectives who were related to each other, had enough valid sources and were most related to the nuclear energy debate. We chose a topic that was both interesting and controversial making the subject debatable and relevant for this project. After doing quick research on different topics that meet our acquirements we decided that the nuclear energy debate fitted the best. The tasks were divided and each one of us chose a perspective. By choosing perspective, we assured that each one of us was interested and motivated in the subject. My personal perspective was the economical aspect., it is very relatable to the economics lessons I have been following for over three years so my knowledge I have built up was very useful for further research on the perspective. We helped each other out on the perspectives as we brainstormed on the topics during the sessions so we all were aware of each perspective. [Teacher] was our scrum master and made sure we did everything as we planned. He was in control of the time management and did a good job. Some members of the team were further than the others and were almost finished whilst the other members were still at the start of their transcript. To prevent this inconsistency within our time management in the future, we will have to re-evaluate personal progress within the group. The best solutions after researching each perspective were presented and evaluated. All the proposed solutions were compared and so we have concluded, nuclear energy must always be safe for the environment, environmental damage must be minimized at all costs and it has to satisfy three requirements; accessibility, availability and acceptability and it must be better for the climate. Thus being renewable, ecological and non-air polluting. This can be achieved by securing safety regulations and waste disposal management. The environmental and political aspect both agreed on the solution that human work should be replaced by machines for extra safety and to be sure no mistakes are made in the construction process. The placement of nuclear power plants should be far away from society to prevent disastrous situations. My interest and knowledge about nuclear energy, on a local and global scale, has increased. The research on the environmental, political and economical aspects changed the way I look at nuclear energy. At first, my belief was that it was extremely harmful for the environment and a very dangerous energy source, this due to things I heard in my city, Maastricht. people said that the local power plant, Tihange, is a threat to the environment of Maastricht and this formed my negative belief on nuclear energy. However, after this project I learned that nuclear energy has a great potential and is actually a good alternative energy supply that is better for the environment than fossil fuels. Environmental regulations like nuclear waste management must be made and further research on nuclear energy should be done to use nuclear energy to its optimum and replace fossil energy.

• Candidates sometimes only described what their team had done and did not identify strengths and weaknesses of their work together which would have led to an evaluation.
• Some reflective papers asserted what the candidate knows or believes about the issue and did not engage with how their thinking has changed or developed. This means that they did not reflect on the impact of alternative perspectives.
• Reflection needs to be on the effect of alternative perspectives on the issue. Some candidates reflected instead on their development of skills (of making presentations, for example, or doing research) which does not gain credit.

Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, how to ace the ap world history dbq: rubric, examples, and tips.

Advanced Placement (AP)

AP World History is a challenging class, and in order to get credit for it you’ll have to take an equally challenging exam. And one of the toughest parts of the test is the AP World History document-based question, or AP World DBQ. This question asks you to read and analyze documents on the fly, then write an argumentative essay…all in one hour. 

It can be hard to know what–and how–to study for the AP World History DBQ, especially when you don’t know which documents you’ll receive on test day. But don’t worry: we’ll break down everything you need to know about the AP World History DBQ so you can ace it on test day. (We’ll even give you AP World History DBQ example questions and an AP World History DBQ rubric example!) 

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• An explanation of what the AP World History DBQ is 
• A look at how the DBQ works on the AP World History exam
• A step-by-step process for tackling the AP World History DBQ
• A guide to studying for and answering the AP World History DBQ

Let’s get going!

What Is an AP World History DBQ? 

The document-based question (DBQ) is a question on the AP World History exam in which you are given a selection of seven documents and are asked to write an essay that incorporates information from at least six of them in a coherent argument based on a given prompt.

In other words: you’ll be writing an essay on a topic and incorporating resources that you’re given on the day of the exam! 

The DBQ tests over a wide range of skills , like writing, organizing thoughts, making arguments, making connections between different perspectives, and having a knowledge of world history. Yeah, the DBQs are definitely tough! That’s why it’s important to understand what the DBQ APWH is and how to best tackle it. 

How DBQs Work on the AP World History Exam

The DBQ format AP World History uses consists of a single open-ended prompt , and will focus on the time period of 1450-2001 .

Of the two free response questions, one is a long essay (worth 15%) and one is a DBQ. This means that the sole DBQ is, by itself, worth 25% of your total grade, making it the single most heavily-weighted question on the AP World History exam.  

Here are some actual AP World History DBQ examples from previous years’ AP World History exams:

• “Evaluate the extent to which economic factors led to the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920).” ( 2021 )
• “Evaluate the extent to which the Portuguese transformed maritime trade in the Indian Ocean in the sixteenth century.” ( 2019 )
• “Evaluate the extent to which railroads affected the process of empire-building in Afro-Eurasia between 1860 and 1918.” ( 2018 )

Of course, one of the things that makes AP DBQ questions unique is that you’ll be given seven documents to analyze as part of your essay response. Not only will you have to read and analyze these documents on exam day, you’ll have to include them as evidence in your essay to prove your argument! 

The seven documents you’ll receive will be a mixture of: 

• Primary texts : texts that were actually written in the time period you’re being asked about 
• Secondary texts : texts written by later historians that explain or interpret the time period 
• Images: usually either political cartoons or artwork from the time period 

How many of each type of document you get varies by year, so you’ll need to be comfortable using all three types to support an essay-based argument. 

To answer the AP World History DBQ, you’ll have to read through all seven documents and write an argumentative essay that answers the prompt. So not only will you have to come up with an arguable point, you’ll have to prove that thesis using evidence contained in at least three of the seven documents. If you want to earn full credit for your DBQ, you’ll actually have to use six of the seven documents to support your position! 

Just like in a sport, understanding how to score points on your DBQ is key to doing well on your exam. 

Understand the AP World DBQ Rubric

First, y ou need to understand what the expectations are and how your answer will be graded. Doing this will help you figure out what you need to study and which skills you need to brush up on. It’ll also ensure that you know exactly what a great DBQ response requires so that you earn as many points as possible! 

The good news is that the College Board has provided the AP World History DBQ rubric 2021 as part of their 2021 AP World History: Modern Sample Student Responses and Scoring Commentary document. The AP World History DBQ rubric contains all the information you need to know about how your response will be scored. 

Here’s how the rubric breaks down:

Thesis (1 Point) 

First you’ll need to create a thesis that “responds to the prompt with a historically defensible thesis/claim that establishes a line of reasoning.” In order to get this point you’ll need to make an arguable claim based on the documents that answers the question of the prompt.  

Contextualization (1 Point) 

In order to get a point for contextualization you’ll need to “accurately describe a context relevant” to the time period covered by the prompt. What this means is that you’ll have to describe the political, social, or economic events and trends that contributed to the topic you’re writing about. 

Some of this you’ll know from the provided documents, but some of it you will also be expected to know based on what you’ve studied in AP World History class. You’ll also need to relate your knowledge to “broader historical events, developments, or processes that occur before, during, or continue after the time frame of the question.” In other words, you’ll have to show how the events of this time period are relevant now or how they are similar to some other historical situation.

Evidence (3 Points) 

This category assigns points based on how well you use the documents provided to you on the test. 

For this category, you get one of the potential three points solely for if you incorporate specific evidence that does not come from the provided documents in a way that is relevant to your thesis. 

However, in order to earn the other two points, you must support your argument by using even more evidence from the documents provided . If you use three to five documents, you’ll earn an additional point. If you integrate six or more documents in your response, you can earn up to two points…and full credit for this category!  

Just remember: You can’t just randomly throw information from the documents into your essay, though, you have to use it in a way that supports your argument and accurately represents what the documents are saying . 

Analysis and Reasoning (2 Points) 

For the analysis and reasoning section, you get one point for explaining “how or why the document’s point of view, purpose, historical situation, and/or audience is relevant to an argument,” and you get one point for “complexity,” showing that you understand the time period that the prompt covers and use evidence to prove your understanding and back up your argument . 

Here’s what that means: you’ll have to prove how the documents are relevant to your argument, and your argument has to show that you understand the period you’re writing about. Additionally, you’ll need to write an essay that proves your argument in a way that shows you understand that there are a variety of possible perspectives about that time period or issue, and that not everyone in that period had the same experiences. 

If all that sounds like a lot...that's because it is! But don't worry. We'll walk you through the steps you can take to get prepared for your DBQ.

5 Steps for Tackling an AP World History DBQ

The AP World History DBQ is a complicated question that tests you over several different skills, so there isn’t a simple technique to ace it. However, if you master each of the individual skills it takes to do well on the DBQ examples, you’ll set yourself up to write a successful DBQ! response! 

Here are five steps you can follow to prepare for–and tackle!--the AP World History DBQ. 

Step 1: Use Past AP World DBQ Prompts to Practice

Taking practice exams is a great way to prepare for any standardized test–including the AP World exam. Not only do you get a chance to test your knowledge, practice tests also give you the opportunity to familiarize yourself with the test format…which is really important when it comes to AP World DBQs.

There’s good news when it comes to AP World DBQ prompts, though. College Board’s website has the actual AP World DBQ prompts from 2002-2020 available to download. This means you can take almost 20 practice AP World History exams, as well as access AP World History DBQ example responses and AP World History DBQ rubrics, for free!  

It’s good to take one practice test before you start studying intensely for it because that will let you know where your skills are now (and it’ll let you track your progress). However, the nature of a free response means that it won’t be easy for you to grade by yourself. When it comes to assessing your response, use the AP World History DBQ rubric and honestly assess whether or not you incorporated the information thoroughly and accurately. If that doesn’t work for you, you can always ask a family member, tutor, or teacher to give you feedback on your response as well! 

Don’t be afraid to use multiple AP World DBQ prompts as part of your test prep strategy. The more DBQs you do, the better prepared you’ll be on test day! 

Step 2: Practice Creating a Thesis

A thesis statement is a sentence or two, located in your essay’s introduction, that explains what your essay will be about. In this case, your thesis will outline the argument you make in your AP World DBQ. 

The most important aspect of your thesis is that it has to make a claim that is both arguable and relevant to the prompt you’re given. However, you don’t want to just restate the prompt in your thesis! 

Here’s what we mean. Say you’re given the following prompt:

“Evaluate the extent to which economic factors led to the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920).” 

You don’t want your thesis to be “Economic factors led to the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution,” since that just restates the prompt without adding in your own argument. To write a great DBQ, you want to make a specific claim about how and why economic factors led to the Mexican Revolution, and you want to be able to use the AP World History DBQ documents provided to prove it!

Here are two AP World History DBQ examples that College Board considers acceptable theses for this prompt:

• “Mexico’s inability to resist the political dominance of the United States and European powers was the most significant factor in leading to the revolution because foreign dominance prevented the Mexican government from enacting economic reforms.”
• “Ethnic tensions were just as important in leading to the Mexican Revolution as economic factors because much of the economic exploitation that was occurring in Mexico affected poor indigenous communities.”

See how these two examples both make specific claims? The first argues that foreign influences prevented the Mexican government from enacting economic reforms. This is a claim that the author can prove by showing how foreign governments interfered with the Mexican government, and how that action led to reforms being stalled. 

The second AP World History DBQ example thesis addresses something more complex: how ethnic tensions led to economic exploitation. The author can then use the provided documents as evidence that poor indigenous communities were exploited, and can argue that those actions led to the Mexican Revolution.

Outlines take a little time, but they'll keep your DBQ from derailing. (Staying on topic is key!)

Step 3: Practice Creating an Outline

Remember the AP World History DBQ is timed, and you’ll only have one hour to complete it! To keep your writing organized and on track, it’s a good idea for you to create a quick outline before you jump into writing your essay. 

Having said that, you’ll need to be careful not to spend too much time on your outline so you have enough time to write your DBQ. That’s why we recommend spending 15 minutes reading documents, 5 minutes outlining your essay, and 40 minutes writing your response. 

The most important things that your outline will need are an introduction and conclusion ! Your introduction sets up your thesis while your conclusion restates your thesis and explains how it’s relevant to the reader in some way–perhaps by showing that a similar claim could be made about another time period, or that the effects of the thesis are still being felt today. 

Apart from your intro and conclusion, you’ll need body paragraphs. Since you only have about 45 minutes to write this essay, you don’t want too many of them. Three or four body paragraphs will be enough to make your argument. The most important thing about your body paragraphs is that each of them supports your argument and incorporates information from the documents!

To help you out, here is an example of a usable outline for the AP World History DBQ:

• Set up your argument and include your thesis.
• You can break down your thesis into several steps, which will then become the topics of each body paragraph
• Tell the reader what they need to know about the historical situation. 
• Include any information you might already know from outside the provided documents.
• Make the first point you mentioned in your introduction.
• Use information from the documents to illustrate and prove your point.
• Include two or three documents that support your point 
• Just like the previous paragraph, use two or three different documents to prove the second point of your thesis
• If you make a third point in your thesis, explain it here using one or two different documents as evidence 
• Restate your thesis and summarize the main points you’ve made.
• Show how it’s relevant to the reader.

Your outline doesn’t need to be anything fancy–it just needs to give you an idea of how to structure your DBQ. Trust us: outlining might seem like a waste of time, but having a guide will make writing go much faster. 

Step 4: Practice Incorporating Quotes and References

As you write your essay, you’ll need to use examples from the documents provided–and each time you do, you’ll need to indicate which documents you pulled the information from . You’ll do this whether you are quoting your source or just paraphrasing it. 

Here are two attribution examples that College Board considers acceptable for the AP World History DBQ:

• (Document 1): “The finance minister tells strikers that unemployment is the result of supply and demand and is out of the government’s hands, a position which probably increased people’s discontent with the government because they were unwilling to help.”
• (Document 2): “The newspaper cartoon shows that the government was willing to use violence to put down popular protests against a rigged election system. Such oppressive government policies may have contributed to increased support for the eventual revolution.”

Note that both of these connect the contents of the document to the argument the author is trying to make. They don’t just paraphrase or quote the contents of the document for the sake of using them– you should use documents to support your argument!

Keep in mind that the College Board is pretty specific about how they want you to use AP World history DBQ documents. In the 2021 AP World History Scoring Guidelines rubric, College Board makes the point that you should “ describe and explain ” the contents of the document: By “describe'' they mean you should point out to your reader what about the document is relevant and illustrate it as if the reader did not have the document in front of them. 

From there, you’ll need to explain the document. That means you should use the document to show the reader why changes or situations in history have happened or why there is a relationship between two factors you’re writing about. 

Step 5: Understand Time Management

One of the most important skills you can acquire by taking multiple attempts at the AP World DBQ practice test will be time management. 

When you’re in the actual test environment, you won’t be able to use your phone to set a timer or alarm, so it’ll be difficult to keep track of how much time you’re spending on reading and re-reading the documents, brainstorming, and outlining. You want to leave yourself the majority of the time allowed (which will be one hour) for writing. 

College Board’s AP World History DBQ rubric recommends that you spend 15 minutes reading the documents and 45 minutes writing the essay . When you write your practice DBQs, be sure to use this format so you can get a feel for how much time you do (or don’t!) have for the question. Practicing with a timer is a great way to make sure you’re using your time wisely on test day! 

4 Tips for Studying for and Answering the AP World History DBQs

Now that you’ve read our step-by-step process for tackling the AP World History DBQ and have seen several AP World History DBQ examples, here are some expert tips on doing well on the AP World History DBQ . We’ve developed these tips based on the AP World History rubric to make sure you earn as many points as possible! 

Tip 1: Know Your Rubric

Go through the AP World History DBQ rubric 2021 and notice that it tells you exactly how to earn points in each category . Most categories are worth multiple points, so you need to know how to earn all the points possible. 

For example, the rubric is clear about how to earn points for your thesis statement. You’ll have to make sure that you have a thesis that states outright what argument you are trying to make if you want to earn credit for that category of the rubric! 

The scoring for the DBQ is pretty objective, and knowing exactly what the scorers are looking for will help you earn the most points possible.

Tip 2: Your Essay Can Contain Errors

In an AP World History DBQ, you’ll be able to make tiny errors and still be able to earn full credit for your response. 

Before you get too excited, there are big (and we mean big!) limits to this rule. For instance, you can’t misrepresent a document by saying an author makes one claim when they clearly aren’t. You also can’t write something that is obviously wrong, like that America continues under British rule because the revolution was unsuccessful! 

But you can make minor errors that don’t detract from your argument as long as you are demonstrating a knowledge of the time period and the ability to incorporate evidence to make an argument. So for example, you can make the mistake of saying that President Nixon’s impeachment hearings began in July 1974 (instead of May, when they actually began), and still earn full credit as long as you aren’t making an argument that depends on the accuracy of those dates.  

Tip 3: Write for Clarity 

One thing to keep in mind is that you’re graded on the quality of your argument and how well you prove it– you don’t get graded on how beautifully or fluently you write ! 

So, while you’ll want to use correct grammar and write as clearly as you can, don’t spend too much time making your writing beautiful. Instead, focus on clearly explaining your ideas! 

To this end, you won’t have points taken away for grammatical errors unless they make it difficult for the graders to see how you’ve used the evidence to make an argument. So while you want your writing to be as error-free as possible, it’s more important that you’re making your argument as clearly–and as persuasively–as possible. 

Tip 4: Write for Relevance

As you’re outlining and writing your AP World DBQ, ask yourself, why is this relevant to today’s readers? To earn a perfect score, you’ll have to tie your argument to another time period or historical situation. 

This is your chance to show that while the period you’re writing about may have been long in the past, the events are still relevant to us today ! This is why we read, write, and study history in the first place. So as you outline and write your DBQ, make sure you’re doing your best to show your reader why this historical moment or event is still important.

What’s Next? 

No matter what AP course you’re taking, you’ll want to have a study plan in place when it comes to exam time. This blog article can help you put together a prep strategy that works.

Not sure what a “good” AP test score is for AP World History? This list of the average AP test scores for every exam will help you understand how your scores stack up. 

Perfect test scores are great, but do you really need a perfect AP World History score? Our experts will explain the pros and cons of getting perfect 5s on your AP exams. 

Looking for help studying for your AP exam?

Our one-on-one online AP tutoring services can help you prepare for your AP exams. Get matched with a top tutor who got a high score on the exam you're studying for!

Ashley Sufflé Robinson has a Ph.D. in 19th Century English Literature. As a content writer for PrepScholar, Ashley is passionate about giving college-bound students the in-depth information they need to get into the school of their dreams.

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Understanding the TOK essay rubric

TOK Home > Free TOK notes > TOK essay guidance > Understanding the TOK essay rubric

After understanding the of the basics of the essay, your next step is to grasp how it is evaluated and marked, which is outlined in the ‘assessment instrument’. Your TOK teacher will give you a copy of this, or you can find it online in the 2022 TOK Guide.

The overall assessment objective of the TOK essay is to answer the prescribed essay title in a clear, coherent, and critical way. In order to do this, the assessment ‘instrument’ looks for five different skills.

STEP 1: Understand the TOK essay rubric

1. making links to tok.

The discussion within your TOK essay should be linked very effectively to the  areas of knowledge . Most, TOK essays expect you to discuss two AOKs, which will provide you with the context to explore and answer the prescribed title you’ve chosen.

2. Understanding perspectives

Your TOK essay should show a clear awareness of different points of view, and should offer an evaluation of them. This means considering how different perspective might approach the question in different ways.

3. Offering an effective argument

The arguments within your TOK essay are clear and coherent, and are supported by strong examples.

This means expressing your opinions clearly, and supporting them with original and meaningful real-life situations.

4. Keeping discussions relevant

Your essay’s discussions should offer a ‘sustained focus’ on the title. This means that you should be able to pick out any section of your essay, and be able to identify what question it is answering.

5. Considering implications

Your essay needs to not just present and evaluate arguments, it also needs to say why these arguments are significant, and what their implications are.

After you have grasped the rubric strands, you are ready to move on to choosing your prescribed title from the choice of six that are published in March or November – which we provide guidance on here .

Creating a TOK essay: our four-step guide

Click on the buttons below to take you to the four steps of creating a great TOK essay. Don’t forget that we have plenty of videos on this and other aspects of the course, and members of the site have access to a huge amount of other resources to help you master the course and assessment tasks.

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Make sure that your TOK teacher has given you access to all the documents and online material that support the essay. These include the TOK Subject Guide, the TOK essay rubric, and exemplar TOK essays (found in ‘MyIB’, which is accessible to teachers).   Make sure you go through our other pages on writing the TOK essay. You’ll find help on understanding what the is looking for, that works for you, what each of the should focus on, how to an effective TOK essay, and how to fill in your .   If your school is a  member  of theoryofknowledge.net, we have designed a series of lessons on the essay, with two formative assessment tasks. These will familiarize you with the essay rubric, knowledge questions, real-life situations, how to deal with perspectives and implications, and structuring an essay. If you are signed into the site, you can access these lessons  here .   You can also find out our thoughts on the TOK essay (and the TOK exhibition) in several webinars that we have delivered. The main one is the TOK Assessment 2022 webinar, but we also consider this form of assessment in our free webinars on the 2022 course. You can see these webinars on  this page  of the site.

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• Solar Eclipse 2024

What the World Has Learned From Past Eclipses

C louds scudded over the small volcanic island of Principe, off the western coast of Africa, on the afternoon of May 29, 1919. Arthur Eddington, director of the Cambridge Observatory in the U.K., waited for the Sun to emerge. The remains of a morning thunderstorm could ruin everything.

The island was about to experience the rare and overwhelming sight of a total solar eclipse. For six minutes, the longest eclipse since 1416, the Moon would completely block the face of the Sun, pulling a curtain of darkness over a thin stripe of Earth. Eddington traveled into the eclipse path to try and prove one of the most consequential ideas of his age: Albert Einstein’s new theory of general relativity.

Eddington, a physicist, was one of the few people at the time who understood the theory, which Einstein proposed in 1915. But many other scientists were stymied by the bizarre idea that gravity is not a mutual attraction, but a warping of spacetime. Light itself would be subject to this warping, too. So an eclipse would be the best way to prove whether the theory was true, because with the Sun’s light blocked by the Moon, astronomers would be able to see whether the Sun’s gravity bent the light of distant stars behind it.

Two teams of astronomers boarded ships steaming from Liverpool, England, in March 1919 to watch the eclipse and take the measure of the stars. Eddington and his team went to Principe, and another team led by Frank Dyson of the Greenwich Observatory went to Sobral, Brazil.

Totality, the complete obscuration of the Sun, would be at 2:13 local time in Principe. Moments before the Moon slid in front of the Sun, the clouds finally began breaking up. For a moment, it was totally clear. Eddington and his group hastily captured images of a star cluster found near the Sun that day, called the Hyades, found in the constellation of Taurus. The astronomers were using the best astronomical technology of the time, photographic plates, which are large exposures taken on glass instead of film. Stars appeared on seven of the plates, and solar “prominences,” filaments of gas streaming from the Sun, appeared on others.

Eddington wanted to stay in Principe to measure the Hyades when there was no eclipse, but a ship workers’ strike made him leave early. Later, Eddington and Dyson both compared the glass plates taken during the eclipse to other glass plates captured of the Hyades in a different part of the sky, when there was no eclipse. On the images from Eddington’s and Dyson’s expeditions, the stars were not aligned. The 40-year-old Einstein was right.

“Lights All Askew In the Heavens,” the New York Times proclaimed when the scientific papers were published. The eclipse was the key to the discovery—as so many solar eclipses before and since have illuminated new findings about our universe.

To understand why Eddington and Dyson traveled such distances to watch the eclipse, we need to talk about gravity.

Since at least the days of Isaac Newton, who wrote in 1687, scientists thought gravity was a simple force of mutual attraction. Newton proposed that every object in the universe attracts every other object in the universe, and that the strength of this attraction is related to the size of the objects and the distances among them. This is mostly true, actually, but it’s a little more nuanced than that.

On much larger scales, like among black holes or galaxy clusters, Newtonian gravity falls short. It also can’t accurately account for the movement of large objects that are close together, such as how the orbit of Mercury is affected by its proximity the Sun.

Albert Einstein’s most consequential breakthrough solved these problems. General relativity holds that gravity is not really an invisible force of mutual attraction, but a distortion. Rather than some kind of mutual tug-of-war, large objects like the Sun and other stars respond relative to each other because the space they are in has been altered. Their mass is so great that they bend the fabric of space and time around themselves.

Read More: 10 Surprising Facts About the 2024 Solar Eclipse

This was a weird concept, and many scientists thought Einstein’s ideas and equations were ridiculous. But others thought it sounded reasonable. Einstein and others knew that if the theory was correct, and the fabric of reality is bending around large objects, then light itself would have to follow that bend. The light of a star in the great distance, for instance, would seem to curve around a large object in front of it, nearer to us—like our Sun. But normally, it’s impossible to study stars behind the Sun to measure this effect. Enter an eclipse.

Einstein’s theory gives an equation for how much the Sun’s gravity would displace the images of background stars. Newton’s theory predicts only half that amount of displacement.

Eddington and Dyson measured the Hyades cluster because it contains many stars; the more stars to distort, the better the comparison. Both teams of scientists encountered strange political and natural obstacles in making the discovery, which are chronicled beautifully in the book No Shadow of a Doubt: The 1919 Eclipse That Confirmed Einstein's Theory of Relativity , by the physicist Daniel Kennefick. But the confirmation of Einstein’s ideas was worth it. Eddington said as much in a letter to his mother: “The one good plate that I measured gave a result agreeing with Einstein,” he wrote , “and I think I have got a little confirmation from a second plate.”

The Eddington-Dyson experiments were hardly the first time scientists used eclipses to make profound new discoveries. The idea dates to the beginnings of human civilization.

Careful records of lunar and solar eclipses are one of the greatest legacies of ancient Babylon. Astronomers—or astrologers, really, but the goal was the same—were able to predict both lunar and solar eclipses with impressive accuracy. They worked out what we now call the Saros Cycle, a repeating period of 18 years, 11 days, and 8 hours in which eclipses appear to repeat. One Saros cycle is equal to 223 synodic months, which is the time it takes the Moon to return to the same phase as seen from Earth. They also figured out, though may not have understood it completely, the geometry that enables eclipses to happen.

The path we trace around the Sun is called the ecliptic. Our planet’s axis is tilted with respect to the ecliptic plane, which is why we have seasons, and why the other celestial bodies seem to cross the same general path in our sky.

As the Moon goes around Earth, it, too, crosses the plane of the ecliptic twice in a year. The ascending node is where the Moon moves into the northern ecliptic. The descending node is where the Moon enters the southern ecliptic. When the Moon crosses a node, a total solar eclipse can happen. Ancient astronomers were aware of these points in the sky, and by the apex of Babylonian civilization, they were very good at predicting when eclipses would occur.

Two and a half millennia later, in 2016, astronomers used these same ancient records to measure the change in the rate at which Earth’s rotation is slowing—which is to say, the amount by which are days are lengthening, over thousands of years.

By the middle of the 19 th century, scientific discoveries came at a frenetic pace, and eclipses powered many of them. In October 1868, two astronomers, Pierre Jules César Janssen and Joseph Norman Lockyer, separately measured the colors of sunlight during a total eclipse. Each found evidence of an unknown element, indicating a new discovery: Helium, named for the Greek god of the Sun. In another eclipse in 1869, astronomers found convincing evidence of another new element, which they nicknamed coronium—before learning a few decades later that it was not a new element, but highly ionized iron, indicating that the Sun’s atmosphere is exceptionally, bizarrely hot. This oddity led to the prediction, in the 1950s, of a continual outflow that we now call the solar wind.

And during solar eclipses between 1878 and 1908, astronomers searched in vain for a proposed extra planet within the orbit of Mercury. Provisionally named Vulcan, this planet was thought to exist because Newtonian gravity could not fully describe Mercury’s strange orbit. The matter of the innermost planet’s path was settled, finally, in 1915, when Einstein used general relativity equations to explain it.

Many eclipse expeditions were intended to learn something new, or to prove an idea right—or wrong. But many of these discoveries have major practical effects on us. Understanding the Sun, and why its atmosphere gets so hot, can help us predict solar outbursts that could disrupt the power grid and communications satellites. Understanding gravity, at all scales, allows us to know and to navigate the cosmos.

GPS satellites, for instance, provide accurate measurements down to inches on Earth. Relativity equations account for the effects of the Earth’s gravity and the distances between the satellites and their receivers on the ground. Special relativity holds that the clocks on satellites, which experience weaker gravity, seem to run slower than clocks under the stronger force of gravity on Earth. From the point of view of the satellite, Earth clocks seem to run faster. We can use different satellites in different positions, and different ground stations, to accurately triangulate our positions on Earth down to inches. Without those calculations, GPS satellites would be far less precise.

This year, scientists fanned out across North America and in the skies above it will continue the legacy of eclipse science. Scientists from NASA and several universities and other research institutions will study Earth’s atmosphere; the Sun’s atmosphere; the Sun’s magnetic fields; and the Sun’s atmospheric outbursts, called coronal mass ejections.

When you look up at the Sun and Moon on the eclipse , the Moon’s day — or just observe its shadow darkening the ground beneath the clouds, which seems more likely — think about all the discoveries still yet waiting to happen, just behind the shadow of the Moon.

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