Practice to Mastery

Most students who earn a 3 or a 4 on the AP® U.S. History Exam already know enough history to score higher. What they are missing is a clear picture of how readers award each point on the free-response section, and enough practice writing to that picture under time pressure. Practice to Mastery: Decoding AP® United States History Free Response Questions supplies both.

Written for the redesigned exam, this book covers every free-response question type: three required short-answer questions (one on historians' interpretations, one on a primary text source, and one on a non-text source such as an image, map, or chart), the seven-document document-based question (DBQ), and the single, broad long essay question (LEQ). Every rubric line is explained in plain language, and every lost point is traced to one of twelve error codes, from misreading the task verb to using evidence from outside the time window to sourcing that merely restates a document.

Each question chapter follows the same three steps. Learn: fully decoded examples, each with original full-credit, partial-credit, and low-credit student responses and a sentence-by-sentence breakdown of which sentence earns which point and why. Practice: the heart of the book, where students answer timed questions on their own before looking at anything else. Check: for every practice question, a rubric, several acceptable answers, the most common ways students lose each point, and a Score Yourself checklist. Every full DBQ and LEQ also comes with a model full-credit essay and a decoded mid-range essay, so students can compare their own writing with both.

Inside, students will find:

- 41 short-answer practice questions, with answer lines and complete scoring

- 16 point-by-point DBQ exercises, one rubric line at a time

- 7 complete practice DBQs and 9 complete practice LEQs, each with a model essay and a decoded mid-range essay

- 3 complete, timed free-response sections with a 22-point self-scoring sheet

- A toolkit of 31 look-alike pairs, period-by-period guardrails for evidence, a sentence ladder that turns a name-drop into an explanation, and connection maps for the complexity point

- A quick-reference appendix of periods, task verbs, error codes, and rubrics

More than half of the book is practice and its answers. All historian passages, sample student responses, questions, charts, and maps are original; historical documents are quoted from public-domain sources and cited with author, title, and date. No College Board exam questions, scoring guidelines, or student responses are reproduced.

The book works on its own and is also the free-response companion to Practice to Mastery: AP® United States History Workbook and Practice to Mastery: AP® United States History Practice Exams. Study a period in the Workbook, practice its free-response skills here, and take a full exam from the Practice Exams book every few weeks.

AP® and Advanced Placement® are registered trademarks of the College Board, which was not involved in the production of, and does not endorse, this product.