Putting Nine Units to Work: the LEQ and DBQ

What each point on the rubric is actually testing

• Thesis — one or two sentences that take a defensible position and say what the essay will argue. A list of categories is not a thesis.
• Contextualisation — specific developments before or around the topic, connected to the prompt.
• Evidence — for the LEQ, specific examples you supply; for the DBQ, use of most documents plus at least one piece of outside evidence.
• Analysis — for the DBQ, sourcing at least two documents with HIPP explained in terms of the argument.
• Complexity — the one point most candidates skip. It is earned by doing something with tension in the evidence, not by writing longer.

Four reliable routes to complexity

• Qualify. The claim holds in one region or class and not another, and you say why.
• Counterevidence. Present the strongest case against your thesis, then explain why your reading still stands.
• Change and continuity together. Show that something transformed while something underneath it persisted.
• Documents that disagree. Explain the disagreement by the position of each author rather than deciding one is simply wrong.

Managing the clock

The DBQ has a reading period, and the reading period is where the essay is won: read the prompt, group the documents into two or three categories that will become your paragraphs, mark which two you will source, and write the thesis before writing anything else. For the LEQ, spend the first minutes listing evidence for both sides of the question, then decide the position — choosing a thesis before checking your evidence is how essays run out of material in the third paragraph.

Know your period boundaries. A prompt bounded 1450 to 1750 is not asking about the Industrial Revolution, and evidence from outside the window earns nothing however accurate it is.