KATIE PROFITT – MEI STEPHENS – EMMA WANG

The PURPOSE of this tutorial is to provide a resource to reinforce and review the techniques for writing a Document Based Question (DBQ) Essay. You may skip around to various topics you would like to review. Anytime you click on the symbol, you will return to the table of contents screen.

What are you having trouble with or need to review? Tips on How to Stay FOCUSED Strategies for Pre-Writing First Two Sentences Intro Formula Conclusion Formula Selecting Document Evidence How to Analyze Documents How to create a THESIS Incorporating Outside Information Common Mistakes Conventions

Tips on how to stay focused It’s important to stay focused on your essay for many reasons. Some tips on how to stay focused are… Write the essay as if the reader has no knowledge of the topic. Always remember and look back at your topic sentence. Make sure your information relates to your topic Make sure you stay focused on the documents Always re-read your paragraphs so that you can stay on task

Strategies for prewriting Stay organized (make sure you sort documents and write neatly on the pre-writing) Make sure to sort the documents into different categories (based on your body paragraphs) Have topic sentences – this will help you later when you start your body paragraphs Make sure to have both your intro and conclusion formula written. Decide how many paragraphs you are going to have – this will help you sort your documents, stay organized, and write your body paragraphs accordingly.  Topic Sentence Intro formula Documents Outside information Concluding formula

Intro Formula Motivator (1 sent.)+Context (1-2 sent.)+Thesis (1 sent.) Motivator: gets the reader interested in what your writing about (i.e. The president works to bring social, political, and economic change to America.) Context: states the time period that the event took place, what’s happening during the event, and sometimes the people/groups that were involved; the motivator and context must go together (i.e. This was the case when Teddy Roosevelt was president. He brought social, political, and economic change to America.) Thesis: states the main idea of the whole essay (i.e. Teddy Roosevelt helped America during the Progressive Era.)

Common Mistakes While writing a DBQ people tend to make simple mistakes, and often points are lost. Some of these mistakes are… Using personal pronouns (I, you, us, we etc.) Not citing documents Going off topic Un-organized (bad planning, switching topics in one paragraph) Capitalization (people, places, names)

How to create a thesis What is a thesis? A thesis is the main idea of your essay. It is the last sentence of your introductory paragraph and the first sentence of your conclusion. Let’s say you’re writing about the African American discrimination in the Reconstruction Era. Your thesis would be a sentence that tells the reader that the main idea of you’re essay African American discrimination during the reconstruction era. Make sure you don’t use sentences like “I’m going to write about…”, or “this essay is about…”. A good topic sentence would be “During the Reconstruction era the African-Americans were given new rights and freedoms.

Conventions A convention is how you use the English language in your DBQ. Conventions are graded and include sentence structure, punctuation, grammar, and spelling. A good example is… Hi! My name is Michelle, and I like purple shoes. A bad example is… hi my name is michelle I like puurple shoos. The example on the top is correct because it uses proper grammar, capitalization and usage of commas. Where as the example on the bottom lacks capitalization, spelling and usage of commas.

Closing Sentence (1 sent.) Conclusion Formula Restate Thesis (1 sent.) Body sum-ups (2 sent.) Closing Sentence (1 sent.) Thesis – main idea of essay Body sum-ups – main idea of what both of your body paragraphs were about Closing Sentence – Sums up whole essay (main idea) Conclusion should be 3-4 sentences

First Two Sentences 1st sentence is introducing the topic of the body paragraph (topic sentence) – you make a topic sentence by rewording the bullet(s) given to you in the packet. Without a topic sentence you would not have a clear idea of what your body paragraph is about. 2nd sentence is a transition into body paragraph. It is important to have this in your paragraph because without the 1st sentence wouldn’t transition properly into the rest of the body paragraphs.

Selecting Document Evidence Evidence is information found in the document(s). Remember to always cite your document evidence. Make sure your evidence relates to the topic sentence. It’s also important to make sure your evidence is clear and has facts to back it up (from the document). ex: The 14th Amendment gave equal rights and said that these rights could not be taken away (Doc 4). In the example above you can see that there was a clear idea of what was being stated. After the evidence is stated analysis should almost always follow.

How to Analyze Documents Analysis is explaining the evidence. Analysis also explains why the evidence relates to the topic sentence. Analysis can never be in the document, so make sure that this information is not in the stated before. Also when you analyze a document you have to make sure that the evidence is separate from analysis. The analysis has to relate to the evidence. Analysis cannot usually be proven because the analysis is meant to support the evidence.

Incorporating Outside Information When incorporating Outside Information you have to make sure you do the following things… Stay on task (even though it’s outside information it still has to relate to your paragraph and your topic sentence.) Only us information that has not already been mentioned in the documents (this is important because if it’s in the documents then it doesn’t count as outside information and it may not relate into the topic.) Do not cite outside information (this is important because you can loose points.) Outside information needs to be transitioned into the paragraphs with evidence and some analysis.