ap world history causation essay

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Causation in the AP Histories

7 min read • june 24, 2020

Jennifer Dumas

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College Board Description

Causation is one of the historical thinking skills focused on in AP World History.  Understanding causation is important, as much of AP World History deals with understanding the causes and effects of historical developments and/or processes.

The causation historical thinking skill asks students to examine the following:

The causes and effects of a specific historical development or process

The relationship between causes and effects of a specific historical process or development

Understanding the difference between primary and secondary causes and between short-term and long-term effects

The relative historical significance of different causes and/or effects

The purpose of this study guide is to examine each of the above reasoning skills in a bit more detail.  So, let’s get to it!

Causation Historical Reasoning Skills

Causes and effects of a specific historical development or process.

In terms of causation reasoning skills, this is what we might call the “base level” skill.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that it is easy, but that this is the first level of understanding causation.  

When College Board asks you to find the causes and effects of a specific historical event or process, what they want you to do is to identify SPECIFIC causes and/or effects of said event or process.  No generalizations here!  

For example, if you are asked to find a cause of World War I, you couldn’t just say relationships between countries - that is too vague.  In all honesty, anybody could say this about any war, and it would be true. This doesn’t show that you know the specific causes of World War I.

So, Instead, say a cause would be entangling alliances.  You see, entangling alliances are specific to World War I, and this shows College Board that you know exactly what you are talking about when it comes to one cause of World War I.

💭 Practice:  See if you can find the causes and/or effects of ONE of the following events or processes

The rise of Islam (process) 

The Opium Wars (event)

The Russian Revolution (event)

❗ TIP:  To help you identify causes and effects, it’s really beneficial to use some type of graphic organizer that will help you organize your information.  The easiest one to use, and one of the most effective, for causation is a simple C/E chart

The Relationship between Causes and Effects of a specific Historical Event or Process

When looking at the relationship between causes and effects of a specific historical event or process, College Board wants you to go beyond simply identifying a cause and/or effect.  It wants you to be able to EXPLAIN the “why” behind the cause or effect.  

Simply put, it’s the next step in the causation process.  First you have to identify the cause and/or effect, and now College Board wants you to explain WHY something is a cause of the event/process, and/or WHY the given effect happened.

🎥Watch: WHAP - Introduction to Historical Reasoning

💭 PRACTICE :  Breaking curfew😳😨😱

So, it’s 11:30 on a Thursday night, and your curfew was at 11:00.  You knew you had to be home at 11:00, but you were hanging out at the coffee shop with your friends, and simply lost track of time.  When you walked in the door to your dwelling at 11:30, your parents were standing right there, and within 2 minutes they had taken your cell phone and grounded you for a week.

In this case, breaking curfew was the event.  The cause - losing track of time. The effects - losing your phone and being grounded for a week

Now that we have identified the cause and effects, we have to explain the “WHY” or the “HOW”

See how the causes and effects are related? And that you’ve done more than just identify the cause and effects - you’ve EXPLAINED the why behind both.

Ooooh, now we are getting into the nitty-gritty of the causation reasoning skill. So far, we have learned how to:

Identify a specific cause or effect

Explain why something was a cause or effect

Now, we need to dig a little deeper, and differentiate (recognize) the difference between primary and secondary causes, and recognize the difference between short-term and long-term effects.

Primary cause

The principal, the main cause of an event or process

🎥Watch: WHAP - Annotating Primary Source Documents

Secondary cause

A less important cause of an event or process

Short-term effect

An effect that happens a short-time after the event/process

Long-term effect

An effect that happens a significant amount of time after the process/event

💭 Practice:  Let’s take a look at World War I and see if we can identify both primary and secondary causes, and short-term vs. long-term effects

World War I

In the above example, the primary cause of World War I was the assassination of the Archduke. His murder caused Austria-Hungary to declare war on Serbia, and from there, the rest of Europe exploded into war

A secondary cause of World War I was the military build up in most European nations. Though this was not the MAIN cause of the war, the military build up led most European nations to believe that if they went to war, they had a strong enough military to be successful.

For the short-term effect, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire happened in 1922. World War I had weakened the empire to such an extent, that it simply couldn’t recover.  As well, the division of Ottoman territory among the victors ensured its collapse

The rise of Hitler and the Nazis was a long-term effect of World War I because it happened nearly a decade after the end of the war. And, it was the Treaty of Versailles, that came out of World War I, and the conditions placed upon Germany, that allowed a leader like Hitler to gain the support and backing of the German people. 

Does this make sense? Want to take a shot at applying this skill?  (Get it? Shot? Like the archduke got shot? 😂)

The Historical Significance of Different Causes and/or Effects

And here we are, the final step in the causation thinking skill process, at least for AP World History.

You will often hear, or be asked, about why certain events or people or causes/effects are historically significant.  Well, to be able to answer that, you have to know what historical significance means

Historical Significance , to College Board, means “why should we care” or why is this important, or noteworthy, in history.

For you, this means you will have to be able to explain, usually through discussions or essays, why the causes, or effects, of a specific historical event or process matter.  Why are they important to know? How will they impact future history?

Let’s take a look at the long-term effect from our example on World War I.  One long-term effect of World War I was the rise of Hitler and the Nazis in Germany.  So, I ask you: why is this important to know? Why was it significant in history? Why should we care?

Well, let’s answer that, in a variety of ways.  That is what’s so cool about historical significance - there usually isn’t just ONE simple answer

The rise of Hitler the Nazis led to the Holocaust - a mass genocide that led to the deaths of 11 million innocent people. As a result of the Holocaust, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was created by the United Nations, guaranteeing human rights to almost every human on the planet.  That’s significant

The rise of Hitler and the Nazis led to the destruction of a large part of Europe and Asia, leaving two main superpowers standing after the war:  the United States and the Soviet Union. Due to differing viewpoints on government and economic decisions, a 45 year Cold War impacted nearly every nation of the world between 1945-1990.  That’s significant

In the end, determining historical significance is the highest-level causation reasoning skill that you will have to do. It will require you to apply all the other causation reasoning skills in order to determine the importance of an event or process.

💭 PRACTICE:  Explain the historical significance long-term historical significance of the Korean War, 1950-1953

So that’s it for the Causation historical thinking skill in AP World History. Hopefully you have found this guide informative and it hasn’t “caused” you any anxiety (do you find that punny?!). Thank you for taking the time to read this, and good luck on the exam!

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, the complete guide to the ap world history exam.

Advanced Placement (AP)

Before you start studying for the AP World History exam, you should get the inside scoop on its format and content. The types of questions you'll see might differ from your expectations. It's especially smart to practice writing essay outlines based on past questions before you're faced with fresh prompts on test day.

In this article, we'll go through the structure, content, and question types on the AP World History exam and provide some helpful tips for acing it !

How Is the AP World History Exam Structured?

The AP World History exam is three hours and 15 minutes and consists of two sections, each of which contains a Part A and a Part B. Here's a basic overview of these sections before we get into the nitty-gritty below:

• Section 1, Part A: Multiple Choice
• Section 1, Part B: Short Answer
• Section 2, Part A: Document-Based Question (DBQ)
• Section 2, Part B: Long Essay

It should be noted that the AP World History exam has undergone some big changes for the 2019-20 school year . Instead of covering thousands of years of human history and development, now it will cover only the years 1200 to the present ; as a result, the exam has been renamed AP World History: Modern (an AP World History: Ancient course and exam are in the works).

Section 1 Format

Section 1 on the AP World History exam lasts a total of 95 minutes and consists of two parts:

• Part A: Multiple Choice
• Part B: Short Answer

This chart shows what you can expect for each part of Section 1 on the World History exam:

Part A lasts 55 minutes and counts for 40% of your total AP World History score. Each question on this part comes with four possible answer choices (labeled A-D). Since there are no penalties for wrong answers, it's in your best interest to fill in an answer for every question.

Most multiple-choice questions come in sets of three to four questions and require you to analyze primary and secondary sources as well as data in the form of graphs, charts, maps, etc.

Part B lasts 40 minutes and counts for 20% of your final AP score. For this section, you must write three short answers (you'll get four prompts in total, but you choose one of two prompts to write on for your third essay). You'll have different sources, or stimuli, for each short-answer prompt:

• Short Answer 1: Includes one secondary source
• Short Answer 2: Includes one primary source
• Short Answer 3/4 (choose one prompt): No stimulus for either option; prompt 3 focuses on the years 1200-1750, while prompt 4 focuses on the years 1750-2001

Section 2 Format

Section 2 on the AP World History test lasts 100 minutes and, like Section 1, consists of two parts:

• Part A: Document-Based Question (DBQ)
• Part B: Long Essay

Here's a brief overview of the format of Section 2 of the World History exam:

Part A in Section 2 lasts one hour and counts for 25% of your total score. For the Document-Based Question, or DBQ, you'll get seven documents offering different viewpoints on a certain historical development. You must write an essay with an argument supported by this historical evidence.

Part B, which is the Long Essay, lasts for just 40 minutes and counts for 15% of your AP score. This part of the test requires you to write a full-fledged essay in response to one of three prompts (you choose which one you want to write on). Unlike the DBQ, you're not given any direct historical evidence to use in your essay; you must come up with it yourself to support your argument.

Here are the three types of prompts you can choose from for the Long Essay:

• Prompt 1: Focuses on the years 1200-1750
• Prompt 2: Focuses on the years 1450-1900
• Prompt 3: Focuses on the years 1750-2001

What Kind of Content Is Covered in AP World History?

Content on the AP World History exam is divided into six overarching themes and nine distinct units . Knowing these categorizations can help you get a better sense of what kinds of historical trends you will be asked to examine (this is especially helpful when writing free-response essays!). The units are roughly divided up into overlapping periods of time.

Below, we introduce the current themes and units, as described in the 2019-20 AP World History: Modern Course and Exam Description .

The 6 Themes in AP World History

Let's start by looking closely at the six major themes covered on the AP World History exam.

Theme 1: Humans and the Environment

The environment shapes human societies, and as populations grow and change, these populations in turn shape their environments.

Key points:

• Demography and disease
• Patterns of settlement

Theme 2: Cultural Developments and Interactions

The development of ideas, beliefs, and religions illustrates how groups in society view themselves, and the interactions of societies and their beliefs often have political, social, and cultural implications.

• Religions and cultures
• Belief systems, philosophies, and ideologies
• Science and technology
• The arts and architecture

Theme 3: Governance

A variety of internal and external factors contribute to state formation, expansion, and decline. Governments maintain order through a variety of administrative institutions, policies, and procedures, and governments obtain, retain, and exercise power in different ways and for different purposes.

• Political structures and forms of governance
• Nations and nationalism
• Revolts and revolutions
• Regional, transregional, and global structures and organizations

Theme 4: Economic Systems

As societies develop, they affect and are affected by the ways that they produce, exchange, and consume goods and services.

• Agricultural and pastoral production
• Trade and commerce
• Labor systems
• Industrialization
• Capitalism and socialism

Theme 5: Social Interactions and Organization

The process by which societies group their members and the norms that govern the interactions between these groups and between individuals influence political, economic, and cultural institutions and organization.

• Gender roles and relations
• Family and kinship
• Racial and ethnic constructions
• Social and economic classes
• Slavery and abolition

Theme 6: Technology and Innovation

Human adaptation and innovation have resulted in increased efficiency, comfort, and security, and technological advances have shaped human development and interactions with both intended and unintended consequences.

• Intellectual innovation
• Transportation technologies and trade
• Modes of production and machinery
• Communication

The 9 Units in AP World History

Here, we'll go over the nine units of the AP World History course and exam. But before we describe each one in depth, here's a quick overview of how these units are tested:

Source: AP World History Course and Exam Description, 2019-20

Unit 1: The Global Tapestry (1200-1450)

• Developments in East Asia from c. 1200 to c. 1450
• Developments in Dar al-Islam from c. 1200 to c. 1450
• Developments in South and Southeast Asia from c. 1200 to c. 1450
• State Building in the Americas
• State Building in Africa
• Developments in Europe from c. 1200 to c. 1450
• Comparison in the period from c. 1200 to c. 1450

Unit 2: Networks of Exchange (1200-1450)

• The Silk Roads
• The Mongol Empire and the making of the modern world
• Exchange in the Indian Ocean
• Trans-Saharan trade routes
• Cultural consequences of connectivity
• Environmental consequences of connectivity
• Comparison of economic exchange

Unit 3: Land-Based Empires (1450-1750)

• Empires expand
• Empires: administration
• Empires: belief systems
• Comparison in land-based empires

Unit 4: Transoceanic Interconnections (1450-1750)

• Technological innovations from 1450 to 1750
• Exploration: causes and events from 1450 to 1750
• Columbian exchange
• Maritime empires established
• Maritime empires maintained and developed
• Internal and external challenges to state power from 1450 to 1750
• Changing social hierarchies from 1450 to 1750
• Continuity and change from 1450 to 1750

Unit 5: Revolutions (1750-1900)

• The Enlightenment
• Nationalism and revolutions in the period from 1750 to 1900
• Industrial Revolution begins
• Industrialization spreads in the period from 1750 to 1900
• Technology of the Industrial Age
• Industrialization: government's role from 1750 to 1900
• Economic developments and innovations in the Industrial Age
• Reactions to the industrial economy from 1750 to 1900
• Society and the Industrial Age
• Continuity and change in the Industrial Age

Unit 6: Consequences of Industrialization (1750-1900)

• Rationales for imperialism from 1750 to 1900
• State expansion from 1750 to 1900
• Indigenous responses to state expansion from 1750 to 1900
• Global economic development from 1750 to 1900
• Economic imperialism from 1750 to 1900
• Causes of migration in an interconnected world
• Effects of migration
• Causation in the Imperial Age

Unit 7: Global Conflict (1900-Present)

• Shifting power after 1900
• Causes of World War I
• Conducting World War I
• The economy in the interwar period
• Unresolved tensions after World War I
• Causes of World War II
• Conducting World War II
• Mass atrocities after 1900
• Causation in global conflict

Unit 8: Cold War and Decolonization (1900-Present)

• Setting the stage for the Cold War and decolonization
• The Cold War
• Effects of the Cold War
• Spread of communism after 1900
• Decolonization after 1900
• Newly independent states
• Global resistance to established order after 1900
• End of the Cold War
• Causation in the age of the Cold War and decolonization

Unit 9: Globalization (1900-Present)

• Advances in technology and exchange after 1900
• Technological advances and limitations after 1900: disease
• Technological advances: debates about the environment after 1900
• Economics in the Global Age
• Calls for reform and responses after 1900
• Globalized culture after 1900
• Resistance to globalization after 1900
• Institutions developing in a globalized world
• Continuity and change in a globalized world

Sample AP World History Test Questions

Let's go through examples of each of the four types of questions you'll see on the AP World History exam. All sample questions come from the 2019-20 World History Course and Exam Description .

Multiple-Choice Question Example

Most multiple-choice questions come in sets of three to four questions that ask you to respond to a particular source, or stimulus, such as a primary source, a secondary source, or data in the form of a map, chart, or table.

In this sample question, you're being asked to read and interpret two separate passages . You must have background knowledge of economic trends in the late 20th century to be able to select the correct answer here (which is answer choice C ).

Short-Answer Question Example

This short-answer question is accompanied by a secondary source. In each short-answer question on the test, each part (A-C) should only require a one- to two-sentence answer . You'll then get 1 point per correct response (so the max you can earn on one short-answer question is 3 points).

Here's how you could earn full credit for this question, per the official scoring guidelines .

(A) Sample Answers

• Hakuseki's argument was influenced by Confucianism.
• Hakuseki's argument that sovereign is Heaven to the subjects and the father is Heaven to the child was influenced by Confucian beliefs.
• Hakuseki's argument that only the emperor is supposed to serve the Lord of Heaven reflects the beliefs of Confucianism.

(B) Sample Answers

• One important difference is that most Christian missionaries and Muslim Sufis traveled across the world and spread their religion without being banned by other governments.
• One important difference between the circumstances of the religious encounter in eighteenth century Japan and other religious encounters in the period 1450–1750 is that religious interactions in this period more frequently led to the development of syncretic belief systems such as Vodou or Santería than the outright banning of the preaching of a religion.
• One important difference between the Tokugawa shogunate banning the preaching of Christianity and most other religious interactions in the period 1450–1750 is that some governments, such as the Mughal Empire under Akbar, encouraged religious tolerance and interaction.

(C) Sample Answers

• The Mughal emperors of India and the African kings of Kongo attempted to restrict European merchants to certain towns and trading posts.
• The Ming and Qing emperors of China confined the Portuguese merchants to Macao and placed legal restrictions on converting to Christianity.
• Although the Safavid Empire allowed European merchants to settle in some cities and even serve as advisors at court, preaching Christianity was strictly forbidden.

Document-Based Question Example

You'll get seven documents with your DBQ (not shown in the sample above), and you must use at least six of these as evidence in your response. The DBQ is worth up to 7 points .

Here's what you'd need to do to earn full credit for this sample DBQ, per the scoring guidelines .

Long Essay Question Example

For the Long Essay, you'll get three possible prompts to choose from. This question is an example of an Option 2 prompt with a focus on the years 1450-1900 —in this case, the 19th century. You can earn up to 6 points for your essay.

Here's what you'd need to do to earn full credit for this sample, per the official scoring guidelines :

How Is the AP World History Exam Scored?

Now that you've seen what questions look like on the AP World History test, let's quickly go over exactly how the exam is scored. Like all other AP tests, you will get a final scaled score for AP World History on a scale of 1-5 . This is a cumulative score that combines your raw scores from each of the four parts of the test (Multiple Choice, Short Answer, DBQ, and Long Essay).

Keep reading to see how each part of the AP World History test is scored.

Multiple Choice

Raw scoring for the multiple-choice section is simple: you earn 1 point for each multiple-choice question you answer correctly . Since there are 55 questions, the max number of points you can earn here is 55. Remember that this part counts for 40% of your total score .

No points are taken off for incorrect answers, so be sure to fill in every answer bubble!

Short Answer

Each short-answer question is worth 3 points—one for each task (labeled A-C) you must complete. Because there are three short-answer questions, this means you can earn a total of 9 raw points for all your responses. The short-answer portion counts for 20% of your final AP score .

Document-Based Question

The DBQ is worth 25% of your final score and is graded on a 7-point rubric , as shown below:

The Long Essay is worth just 15% of your overall score and is graded on a 6-point rubric :

The Best Way to Prep for the AP World History Exam: 3 Tips

Here are a few of the most important prep tips for AP World History. If you want more advice, take a look at our article on the best study strategies for this exam .

Tip 1: Make Connections to Themes (and Memorize Examples)

World History is a course that covers a ton of information, so much so that it can be hard to think of specific examples that relate to your arguments in essay questions. You should be able to elaborate on one or two concrete events from each period that relate to each theme of the course.

As long as you can preserve this bank of information in your mind, you'll be able to support your answers to any essay questions the test throws at you.

Tip 2: Use Outside Information Selectively

Providing specific historical examples in your essay lets you show your mastery of the material, but you need to be cautious. This test is less about how much you know and more about how well you understand the connections and underlying themes that connect historical facts.

Each fact you mention must have a specific purpose and should tie directly into what the question is asking and what you've stated in your argument.

Tip 3: Learn to Read Multiple-Choice Questions Carefully

You can get into some trouble if you don't understand exactly what the multiple-choice questions are asking on this exam. You'll only find the correct answer if you stick to the specifics of the question. Otherwise, you could get tripped up by choices that are accurate statements about history but inaccurate answers to the question being asked.

Practice your skills in selecting answers that directly pertain to the evidence presented in the question.

Summary: What to Know About the AP World History Exam

The AP World History exam is a three-hour and 15-minute test that consists of 55 multiple-choice questions, three short answers, one DBQ, and one essay.

Questions address six major historical themes and nine units, with periods stretching back to the year 1200 CE. While this is undoubtedly a lot of information to study, it's important to realize that long-term trends are more important than small details.

You can do extremely well on the World History test, as long as you master the major events of each period and understand their essential causes and effects .

What's Next?

Looking for some practice materials for the World History exam? Then check out this detailed guide to all the AP World History practice tests available online .

It's a smart idea to practice your writing skills on DBQs before any AP history test. Learn about the best places to find DBQ examples and how you can write an excellent response .

Which AP classes should you take in high school besides World History? Our expert guide will help you decide based on your goals, academic interests, and schedule.

Samantha is a blog content writer for PrepScholar. Her goal is to help students adopt a less stressful view of standardized testing and other academic challenges through her articles. Samantha is also passionate about art and graduated with honors from Dartmouth College as a Studio Art major in 2014. In high school, she earned a 2400 on the SAT, 5's on all seven of her AP tests, and was named a National Merit Scholar.

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AP® World History

The 5 most important historical thinking skills for the ap® world history test.

• The Albert Team
• Last Updated On: March 1, 2022

When you finally sit down and begin the AP® World History Exam, you will have invested a lot of time, effort, and energy in preparing for that moment. Having a plan of attack for each question is key to getting the maximum number of points for that question. One of your best bets is to make sure that you have developed solid historical thinking skills .

This AP® World History review will outline and discuss the nine historical thinking skills that are central to the study and practice of history. We will then discuss the five most important of those skills needed to excel on the exam. We will also arm you with the strategies needed for spotting these skills on the exam, how to use them to analyze a primary source critically, and how you can include them in your own writing.

Historical Thinking Skills and the AP® World History Exam

As an AP® student, you are expected to have mastered historical thinking skills because every question on the exam will require you to apply one or more of them. Even though every exam question assesses one or more of the skill-based proficiency expectations, historical thinking skills are best put into practice on the Short-Answer, Document-Based and Long Essay Questions (SAQs, DBQs, and LEQs).

These three sections make up 60% of the overall AP® World History total exam score. Do we have your attention? You can see clearly that the CollegeBoard wants you to use those historical thinking skills on the exam.

Historical Thinking Skills and AP® World History Writing Questions

Short-answer questions.

SAQs will address one or more of themes of the course. You will have to use your historical thinking skills to respond to primary and secondary sources, a historian’s argument, non-textual sources (maps or charts), or general suggestions about world history. Each question will ask you to identify and explore examples of historical evidence relevant to the source or question.

Document-Based Question

The DBQ measures your ability to analyze and integrate historical data and to assess verbal, quantitative, or visual evidence. Your responses will be judged on your ability to formulate a thesis and back it up with relevant evidence. The documents included in the DBQ can vary in length and format, and the question content can include charts, graphs, cartoons, and pictures, as well as written materials.

You are expected to be able to assess the value of different kinds of documents, and you’ll be required to relate the material to a historical period or theme, thus focusing on major periods and issues. Therefore, it is crucial to have knowledge beyond the particular focus of the question and to incorporate it into your essay to get the highest score.

Long Essay Question

You are given a chance to show what you know best on the LEQs by having a choice between two long essay options. The LEQs will measure how you use your historical thinking skills to explain and analyze significant issues in the world history themes from the course. Your essays must include a central issue or argument that you need to support by evaluating specific and relevant historical evidence using specific in-depth examples of large-scale events taken from the course, or classroom discussion.

What are the Nine Historical Thinking Skills?

The CollegeBoard, in its Rubrics for AP® Histories , tells you that the AP® history courses are designed to “apprentice” you in the practice of history, emphasizing the development of historical thinking skills as you learn about world history. To accomplish this, the CollegeBoard has come up with nine historical thinking skills that will be evaluated on the AP® World History exam.

So, how do you go about developing historical thinking skills? Students of history do this by investigating the past, particularly through exploring and interpreting primary sources and secondary texts. You further refine those skills through the regular development of historical argumentation in writing.

The nine historical thinking skills are grouped into four categories: Analyzing Historical Sources and Evidence, Making Historical Connections, Chronological Reasoning, and Creating and Supporting a Historical Argument.

Analyzing Historical Sources and Evidence

You can best develop your historical thinking skills by analyzing an assortment of primary and secondary sources. Being exposed to a variety of diverse views builds your ability to evaluate the effectiveness of different types of arguments.

Content and Sourcing of Primary Sources – This involves the ability to describe, select, and evaluate relevant evidence about the past from many different sources. When you analyze a source, you should not just think about the content of the source, but you should also look at the interaction between the content and the authorship, vantage point, purpose, audience, format, and historical context of the source. You can then evaluate the usefulness, reliability, and limitations of the source as historical evidence.

Interpreting Secondary Sources – This skill requires you to use secondary sources to describe, analyze, and evaluate the ways that the past is interpreted. This includes understanding the types of questions that are asked, as well as considering how the particular circumstances and contexts in which historians work and write shape their interpretations of past events and historical evidence.

Making Historical Connections

Comparison – This skill involves your ability to identify, compare, and evaluate multiple perspectives on a given historical event so you can make conclusions about that event. This skill also requires the ability to describe, compare, and assess several historical developments within one society, between different cultures, and in diverse chronological and geographical contexts. Comparisons can also be made across different time periods and geographical locations, and between contrasting historical events within the same time period or geographical area.

Contextualization – This skill relates your ability to connect historical events and processes to particular circumstances of time and place, including broader regional, national, or global activities. You will need to determine past events or developments within the wider context in which they occurred and then draw conclusions about their significance.

Synthesis – This skill may be the most challenging of all the thinking skills in the AP® World History course and can be mastered only after spending some time as a professional historian. There are ways that you, as an AP® student, can show your proficiency in the skill of synthesis.

For example, you can make meaningful and persuasive historical connections between one historical issue and other historical issue and similar developments in a different historical context, geographical area, or era, including the present. You can also connect different course themes or approaches to history (e.g., political, social, or cultural) for a given historical issue. Finally, you can use views from an entirely different discipline like economics, art history or anthropology, to better understand a particular historical point.

As an AP® World History student, your essays should include a combination of diverse and conflicting evidence with differing interpretations in an essay to show a well-thought out and convincing understanding of the past.

Chronological Reasoning

Causation – This skill relates to your ability to identify, analyze, and evaluate the relationships among historical causes and effects. You also must tell the difference between those that are long-term and proximate. You should also know the difference between causation and correlation to master this skill.

Patterns of Continuity and Change over Time – This is your ability to recognize, analyze, and assess the dynamics of continuity and change over periods of time of different lengths, as well as your ability to relate these patterns to a broader historical processes or themes.

Periodization – This is your ability to describe, analyze, and evaluate different ways that history is divided into periods. Various models of periodization are often debated among historians, and the choice of specific turning points or starting and ending dates might garner a higher value to one region or group than to another.

Creating and Supporting a Historical Argument

Argumentation – This involves your ability to create an argument and support it using relevant historical evidence. This includes identifying and framing a question about the past and then coming up with a claim or argument about that question, usually in the form of a thesis.

A good argument requires a defensible thesis, supported by thorough analysis of pertinent and varied historical evidence. The evidence used should be built around the application of one of the other historical thinking skills like comparison, causation, patterns of continuity and change over time, or periodization.

Finally, it involves your ability to look at a variety of evidence in concert with each other, identifying contradictions and other relationships among sources to develop and support your argument.

AP® World History Scoring Rubrics for LEQs and DBQs

If you want to get the maximum points for the essay portions of the exam, you will have to know and be able to use the historical thinking skills we have discussed in your essays. Here is a snapshot of the scoring rubrics from the  Rubrics for AP® Histories . This CollegeBoard resource also has a full explanation of the historical thinking skills we have covered in this AP® World History review.

Scoring Rubric for the DBQs (7 points)

Scoring rubric for the leqs (6 points), what are the 5 most important historical thinking skills and how do i spot them on the ap® world history test.

The CollegeBoard would not identify nine historical thinking skills if they were not all relevant to the AP® World History course and exam, but there are five historical thinking skills that we feel are more important because they can earn you the most points on the writing-based questions (SAQs, DBQs, and LEQs). Those critical historical thinking skills are:

• Contextualization
• Continuity and change over time
• Argumentation

So how can you spot these thinking skills on the AP® World History Exam?

How do I Spot Historical Thinking Skills on the AP® World History Exam?

There are several strategies for putting your knowledge to work when you take the exam. Here are a couple of examples of how you can spot historical thinking skills in an LEQ on the exam.

Continuity and Change Over Time

As we discussed, the historical thinking skill of Continuity and Change Over Time requires you to be able to determine what changed and what stayed the same between different time periods. To get max points, you will also need to explain the reasons for historical continuity AND change over time.

Here is an LEQ question from October 2014 AP® World History Sample Questions (Question 3). See if you can spot the targeted historical thinking skill in this question.

• Using specific examples, analyze continuities and changes in the relationship between labor systems and social hierarchies in the period circa 600 C.E. To circa 1750 C.E.

Remember, a strong essay will require you to support your thesis with specific examples that clearly and consistently show continuities and changes in the relationship between legal systems and social hierarchies between the stated time periods. You will need to also explain the changes and continuities and show the grader that you know and understand the events of the period.

To review, causation is the ability to identify, analyze, and evaluate causes and effects. You will need to describe the causes and effects of a historical event, development, or process. To get the maximum points, you will also need to explain the reasons for those causes and effects.

Here is an LEQ question from 2016  AP® World History Free Response Questions (Question 3). See if you can spot the targeted historical thinking skill in this question?

• American Revolution (1775 – 1781)
• French Revolution (1789-1799)
• Haitian Revolution (171-1803)

Remember, to get the maximum points you need to support your thesis with relevant historical evidence. You must also address all parts of the question making appropriate direct comparisons. Don’t forget to break down the relevant reasons for the similarities and differences.

Historical Thinking Skills and Primary Sources

How do primary sources relate to historical thinking skills? Primary sources help you develop knowledge, thinking skills, and analytical abilities. When you deal directly with primary sources, you will get engaged by asking questions, thinking historically, making smart inferences, and developing well-thought-out accounts and interpretations of events in the past and present.

Remember, primary sources are pieces of history, often incomplete, and usually come without context. Having historical thinking skills like contextualization will help you to be logical, to look at sources thoughtfully, and to find out what else you need to know to make inferences from the materials.

Now that we have walked through the nine historical thinking skills and highlighted which ones are most important for the exam, you can now practice using those skills in preparing to write your essays for the LEQ and DBQ portion of the AP® World History exam. Remember that these two parts of the exam are worth 40% and using these historical thinking skills will help you to achieve the maximum points for each question.

Make sure you go back and review the Rubrics for AP® Histories , so you know what you have to do in order to get that 7 on the DBQ and a 6 on the LEQ. Preparation is the key to getting a 5 on the exam. If you use the AP® World History tips in the article, you will be well on your way.

To really prepare for the AP® World History Exam, you need to practice writing LEQ and DBQ responses. To take it one step further, you should know exactly what the test-writers are looking for in a response that meets all of the requirements in the scoring rubrics.

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AP World History (McCormack) - Unit 6: Topic 6.8 - Causation in the Imperial Age

• Topic 6.1 - Rationales for Imperialism from 1750-1900
• Topic 6.2 - State Expansion from 1750-1900
• Topic 6.3 - Indigenous Response to State Expansion from 1750 to 1900
• Topic 6.4 - Global Economic Development from 1750 to 1900
• Topic 6.5 - Economic Imperialism from 1750 to 1900
• Topic 6.6 - Causes of Migration in an Interconnected World
• Topic 6.7 - Effects of Migration
• Topic 6.8 - Causation in the Imperial Age

Amsco Reading

• Amsco 6.8 - Causation in the Imperial Age

Writing Workshop

• InSPECT Examples
• Compare & Contrast Words

Other Reading

• PPT 6.8 - Unit 6 Review

Essential Vocabulary

Miscellaneous links, learning objectives / ced.

• Unit 6 Objectives / CED

Kahoot & Other Review Challenges

Video: Heimler

Crash course videos, miscellaneous videos.

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• Last Updated: Aug 3, 2020 4:33 PM
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