How To: The CONCEPT APPLICATION Question [AP Gov FRQ Tips]

hey there and welcome back to heimlich's history now in this video i'm going to teach you how to get a perfect score on one of your ap government free response questions namely the concept application question so if you're ready to get them brain cows milked then let's get to it okay when you finish your multiple choice section you're going to turn the page and the first question staring back at you is going to be the concept application question if you've taken an ap history course the format is going to look pretty familiar to you which is to say it's going to look just like the saqs that you did in those courses so in the concept application question they are basically trying to get you to apply the concepts that you've learned in the course to a scenario that you do not know and let me repeat that so you don't freak out when you see it when you start reading the stimulus which always describes a real event that actually occurred you should not come to the exam knowing that scenario so if you start reading it and your guts pucker up tighter than a snare drum because here's something that you missed in your studies just tell yourself no you didn't you're not supposed to know this scenario so calm down what they want you to do is to apply what you do know to a scenario you don't know that's it it's not as hard as it sounds but you do need some practice with it and by the way if you need some more practice on these then you can grab my ultimate review packet and there are a bunch of these in there with scoring guidelines to help you anyway after the stimulus you'll see three parts to the question labeled a b and c for each of those problems you need to write your answers in complete sentences don't just throw a single word in there writing bullet points subject verb object sentence now if the prompt begins with the word identify then you really only need to write one sentence naming the thing that they're asking for however if you see a prompt beginning with any other word like explain or describe or draw a conclusion you're gonna need to write a little bit more and the general rule of thumb is two to three content-rich sentences and remember two things number one be specific with your evidence and the number two relate it back to your problem so many students lose points on these because they are either too vague or they don't relate their answer back to the prompt so be specific and relate the answer back to your prompt and i'll show you what i mean when we look at an example so let's just do that now and everything you're about to see comes from the 2019 ap government exam including the answers i show you so here's the concept application question from that year the first thing i want to mention is that you need to begin by reading the first and last sentence of the stimulus this will give you almost everything you need to know about what's going on in the scenario provided and here it says since 2008 the alliance defending freedom a conservative christian interest group has promoted an annual event known as pulpit freedom sunday on pulpit freedom sunday as an act of civil disobedience pastors and religious leaders preach openly about the moral qualifications of candidates seeking office now once you've done that do read the whole thing and fill in the details but that will give you a good sense of what the whole thing is about so the first thing that should occur to you after reading that is that this scenario has something to do with religious freedom or freedom of speech and the potential for this piece of legislation called the johnson amendment to restrict those freedoms okay so now let's look at part a describe an action congress could take to address the concerns of the interest group in the scenario okay so the interest group in the scenario is not happy about the johnson amendment so what action can congress perform to address that remember this has to be an action of congress not the president not the supreme court so what does congress do well congress passes laws so in this case a suitable answer would be as follows congress can pass a provision of the johnson amendment the provision can allow religious leaders to speak for or against certain candidates therefore the johnson amendment can only restrict contributions of money so notice there are three sentences here and this student earned the point because he or she acknowledged that congress can make a law allowing religious leaders to speak freely on political candidates and also notice how the student related the answer back to the prompt the answer wasn't merely you know congress can pass a law that would not have earned the point no less than two times the student ties the answer back to the johnson amendment and that is it it's a simple answer and yet it earns the point okay now let's move on to part b in the context of the scenario explain how partisan divisions could prevent the action described in part a okay so let's get this straight in our heads in part a congress is passing a law or provision that allows religious leaders to speak freely about political candidates so how bipartisan divisions prevent that action all right here's a potential answer and also notice that the prompt is only asking about partisan divisions so you're no longer restricted to talking about congress given the increasing partisan division in the united states this provision of the johnson amendment could fail if the government is divided if congress holds a majority of republican representatives and the president is a democrat then the president could veto the law and prevent the provision from passing okay that gets the point so now let's look at part c explain why the alliance defending freedom might argue that their constitutional rights are threatened by the johnson amendment and the student answer which earns the point reads thusly the alliance defending freedom can argue that their first amendment rights are being threatened by the johnson amendment this is because religious leaders or organizations cannot publicly support a candidate therefore it limits their free speech okay so the prompt asked about constitutional rights and the student was specific this group could argue that their first amendment rights are being infringed and then the student goes on to explain why that's the case by relating it back to the prompt by showing how the johnson amendment could be interpreted as violating freedom of speech okay that's how you answer a concept application question for ap government click right over here to grab my ultimate review packet which is going to help you get an a in your course and a five on your exam in maine if you were helped by this video and you want me to keep making them then subscribe and i shall oblige heimler out

Channel: Heimler's History

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Length: 5min 2sec (302 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 03 2021