3 TIPS for Crushing STIMULUS-BASED Multiple Choice (APUSH, AP World, AP Euro)

stimulus-based multiple choice questions you either love them or you hate them i'm kidding everybody hates them they're confusing they take too long and they are a source of endless ap exam season anxiety but they don't have to be in this video i'm going to help you understand how to approach these questions and if you follow my advice you will almost certainly improve so if you're ready to get them brain cows milked but then let's get to it oh and hey i'm steve heimler and i'm here to help you get an a in your class and a five on your exam in may but you can't get a five on that exam without doing fairly well on those multiple choice questions which make up about forty percent of your score so let's figure it out and everything i'm about to say applies to ap euro apus and ap world first let's talk about the timing you'll have 55 of these questions and you'll have 55 minutes to complete them which if you carry the 1 and multiply by the sine wave is one minute per question now i am going to make another video about these next week and how to get faster with them but for now all you need to understand is this the people who make these tests know how long you have for this section and that's important to remember because that means that they're not expecting you to spend hours pouring over these documents and coming to a deep understanding about them you've got to read them fairly quickly and just get the gist and if that's what you're doing and you feel like you're doing it wrong you're not like that's all you have time for second let's talk about order of operations which is to say what is the first second and third thing you should do with every question first you need to read the question i know you're going to be tempted to read the stimulus first but restrain thyself if you read the question first then you know what you need to look for in the stimulus and that will save you time second read the attribution this little line right here is not a throwaway text it's going to give you some really valuable information including the time period that you need to be thinking about and the people and the entities involved in the stimulus and third read the stimulus and when you do read it quickly mark up whatever you think might help you answer the question that you've already read now that you've read and interpreted the stimulus it's time to answer the question you'll have four possible answers to choose from and those answers will be one of three species you're gonna have two obviously wrong answers and the reason that they're wrong is because they're in a different time period than the question is asking about which is most common or they're giving you a different historical thinking skill than the question is asking about which is less common what i mean is if the question asks you about how events in the stimulus cause a change in something then the obviously wrong answer could indicate a continuity which is to say you know not a change so that's the first species of wrong answer the second species is called a distractor this is an answer that is usually factually correct but ultimately doesn't answer the question that they're asking and last of all you have the right answer so the first thing you need to do is eliminate the two obviously wrong answers and here's where i take a moment for a parenthetical remark like i know that it's easy for me to say eliminate the obviously wrong answers like i've been teaching these courses for a long time and the obviously wrong answers jump out to me immediately but unless you have just flat out mastered the content of this course what i say are the obviously wrong answers are not gonna be so obvious to you so the remedy for that is twofold and they both have to do with studying first let me emphasize yet again that there is no substitute for knowing the content of this course get those vocabulary words firmly stuffed in your brain folds and that will go a long way second you need to arrange those concepts in the time periods of the course if you know what vocabulary goes in what period then the obviously wrong answers will become more obvious because you'll know that they're trying to trick you with the wrong time period okay parenthesis ended now all that is strategy and now i'm going to give you a few tactical tips for the multiple choice section in general first answer all the questions blank circles get no credit but if you fill in a circle hey you know you got a 25 chance of getting it right second don't change your answer unless you are 100 sure that you put down the wrong answer i know that's scary but just trust me here go with your gut and that will serve you better than overthinking it plus you don't have time to overthink it so you know listen to your gut it's the transcontinental railroad well thanks god third if you're not convinced of what i just said then hear this you don't have to do as well on these questions as you think to score a five now the percentages change every year and of course there are three other sections of the exam to factor in but in general those students who score in the mid 70s on the multiple choice are on their way to a thigh and wider high school world 75 isn't something to shout from the rooftops but in ap exam world oh baby you just won now if you want to see me actually walk through multiple choice questions for ap world and a push then click right over here you can see all these tips in action and see how i think through them so i'll catch you over there heimler out

Channel: Heimler's History

Views: 130,741

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Id: Ej1zNg23CcI

Length: 4min 16sec (256 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 07 2022