AP World Historical Thinking Skills Review

This skill asks you to identify and explain historical developments, meaning you name what happened and then explain how or why it unfolded. It is the foundation for every other skill because you cannot analyze a source, draw a comparison, or build an argument without first accurately describing the historical development at the center of the question.

• Development: A specific historical event, change, or trend that can be identified and described with evidence, such as the spread of Islam along Indian Ocean trade routes.
• Process: A series of related changes that unfold over time, such as the gradual intensification of the Atlantic slave trade from the 1500s through the 1800s.
• Explanation: Going beyond naming a development to describing how it happened or why, using specific historical evidence rather than vague generalizations.

This skill requires you to read a source and identify its central argument, then find the specific evidence the source uses to support that argument. On the DBQ, you earn the evidence point by accurately describing or quoting a document and connecting it to your argument. On MCQs, questions often ask which claim a source supports or how two sources differ in their evidence.

• Claim: The main argument or position a source is making, distinct from background information or descriptive detail.
• Evidence from a source: Specific content from a document, image, or data set that supports or complicates the source's claim.
• Corroboration: Using two or more sources together to strengthen or complicate an argument, a move that also contributes to the complexity point in Argumentation.

Sourcing asks you to analyze a source by considering four factors: the creator's point of view, their purpose in creating the source, the historical situation at the time of creation, and the intended audience. On the DBQ, you earn the sourcing point by explaining how one of these factors affects the reliability, usefulness, or meaning of the document. Simply identifying the factor is not enough.

• Point of view: How the creator's identity, experiences, or position shapes what they include, omit, or emphasize in the source.
• Purpose: Why the source was created, such as to persuade, inform, justify, or commemorate, and how that goal shapes the content.
• Historical situation: The broader context at the time the source was created that helps explain why it says what it says.
• Audience: Who the source was made for, and how that intended readership or viewership shapes the message.

Contextualization means describing the broader historical circumstances that existed before or during the development you are analyzing, and then explaining how those circumstances help account for it. On the DBQ and LEQ, contextualization is worth one point and must appear before or alongside your thesis. It cannot simply be a restatement of the prompt or a list of facts.

• Contextualization: Describing a broader historical situation and explaining how it connects to and helps explain the specific development in the prompt.
• Zoom out: A useful mental move: before writing about the specific topic, describe what was happening in the world or region in the decades or centuries before the prompt's time frame.
• Explain, not just describe: Contextualization requires a 'therefore' or 'because of this' connection, not just a list of background facts.

Skill 5 bundles three reasoning types that structure most AP World essay prompts. Causation explains why something happened and what it caused. Comparison identifies meaningful similarities and differences and explains their significance. CCOT explains what changed, what stayed the same, and why those patterns mattered across a defined time period. Knowing which reasoning type a prompt is calling for helps you organize your argument.

• Causation: Explaining the reasons a development occurred and the effects it produced, distinguishing between short-term triggers and long-term structural causes.
• Comparison: Identifying a meaningful similarity or difference between two developments, regions, or time periods and explaining why that similarity or difference matters.
• Continuity and change over time (CCOT): Explaining what shifted and what persisted across a defined time period, and accounting for why those patterns occurred.
• Significance: Explaining why a cause, comparison, or pattern of change or continuity mattered historically, not just that it existed.

Argumentation is the skill of constructing a complete historical argument in writing. It requires a defensible thesis that makes a historically defensible claim and establishes a line of reasoning, specific evidence that supports that reasoning, a reasoning skill (causation, comparison, or CCOT) that structures the argument, and complexity that goes beyond the basic argument through corroboration, qualification, modification, or connecting to a different time period or scale.

• Defensible thesis: A claim that takes a position on the prompt and establishes a line of reasoning, not just a restatement of the prompt or a list of facts.
• Line of reasoning: The logical structure that connects your thesis to your evidence, typically organized by categories such as political, economic, and social causes.
• Complexity: A sophisticated move that goes beyond the basic argument, such as explaining a contradiction, qualifying the thesis with a counterexample, or connecting the argument to a different time period or geographic scale.
• Corroboration: Using multiple documents together to build a stronger or more nuanced argument, one of the ways to demonstrate complexity on the DBQ.