5 Steps to a 5TM AP European History

(^26) › STEP 3. Develop Strategies for Success

Introduction

Section I, Part A, of the AP European History Exam consists of 55 multiple-choice questions

to be completed within 55 minutes. The questions come in sets of two to five questions, which

are tied to a “visual stimulus.” The visual stimulus presents a primary or secondary source, a

historian’s argument, or a historical problem. We will look at an example in a minute, but first

let’s remind ourselves of what we already know about multiple-choice questions.

Passive Knowledge and the Process of Elimination

All multiple-choice exams test passive knowledge. The multiple-choice section of the AP

European History Exam will test your passive knowledge of European history from roughly

1450 to the present. That is, it will test your ability to recognize the best answer out of a group

of possible answers to a specific historical question. The word best is important. It means that

all multiple-choice questions are answered through a process of elimination; you begin by

eliminating the one that is most clearly not the “best” and continue until you have a “survivor.”

Putting Your Historical Thinking Skills to Use

Remember that the point of each section of the AP European History Exam is to test your

ability to use the thinking skills of the historian. Recall that the three main categories of

historical thinking skills are reasoning chronologically, putting information in context,

and arguing from evidence. Although you won’t create your own argument from evidence

in the multiple-choice section, you will be asked to identify which answer choice is sup-

ported by the evidence in the visual stimulus. That means that you will find the best

answers to the questions by using all three of these types of historical thinking skills. Let’s

look at another example.

Here is a set of multiple-choice questions similar to the ones you will encounter on the

AP European History Exam, followed by an explanation of how you would arrive at the

best answer.

Questions 1 and 2 relate to the following passage:

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason

and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge

which we can attain by them.... From these things it follows as a necessary consequence

that, since the Holy Ghost did not intend to teach us whether heaven moves or stands still,

whether its shape is spherical or like a discus or extended in a plane, nor whether the earth is

located at its center or off to one side.... I would say here something that was heard from an

ecclesiastic of the most eminent degree: “That the intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us

how one goes to heaven, not how heaven goes.”

Galileo Galilei, Letter to Christina, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, 1615

1. Galileo was participating in what intellectual and cultural development?
   A. The consolidation of political power in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
   B. The rise of natural philosophy and the Scientific Revolution
   C. The Great Voyages of Exploration and early colonization
   D. The Industrial Revolution

STRATEGY

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