HONORS

HOW TO APPROACH MR. PETERS' HONORS ESSAYS

*** 7 EASY STEPS TO FOR SUCCESS ***

STEP 1: Analyze the question - Be sure you know what question is really being asked

A. All Honors essays demand judgments about the historical evidence. You can NEVER satisfactorily answer an Honors essay in Mr. Peters' Class by simply regurgitating information; if you think a question does not call for you to make some evaluation of the historical evidence that results in your taking a position on the question presented, then you have not understood the question.

B. So, your first task is to figure out what kind of judgment is necessary to answer the question: exactly what intellectual task are you supposed to perform (exactly what are you supposed to do)? For example, are you being asked to assess the validity of a statement? Or, are you being asked to analyze the extent to which a movement accomplished its goals? Or, are you being asked to explain why something happened? Or, are you being asked to compare and contrast events, eras, ideas, or policies? Or are you being asked to perform some other intellectual task? Whatever task is set for you by the question, you have got to be sure you know what it is before going any further.

C. After identifying the sort of judgment a question calls for, identify the time period of the question. Sometimes this will be stated directly, other times it will only be alluded to through reference to an era or movement or certain events. Whatever the formulation of the question, always be sure you know what time period is covered.

D. Next, identify the content areas the question asks you to cover. Circle or underline all words indicating specific parts or aspects of the content you must address.

STEP 2: Organize your information - DON'T START WRITING BEFORE THINKING THROUGH WHAT YOU KNOW.

A. After figuring out what question is asked, brainstorm. Get out on paper the information in your head that relates to the question. Generally speaking, when attacking a DBQ (Document Based Question) you should not look at the documents until you have completed your initial brainstorming. After completing you initial brainstorming, if the question is a DBQ then turn to the documents to see what evidence they give you or spark you to recall. (More later on how to analyze documents.)

B. After getting your information out on paper, you need to organize it. Sometimes the question itself will suggest organizational categories for your information. For example, a question may ask you to evaluate the political, social, and economic impacts of the American Revolution; that question suggests three neat organizational categories for your information. Other questions will require you to supply the organizational scheme. For example, a question may ask you to analyze the causes of the American Industrial Revolution. In such a case, look at the information you've jotted down and come up with topical categories that help you to organize it, such as (for example) Human ingenuity, Resources, Government Policy. Think of this as like organizing your garage after you've pulled everything out and piled it up on your driveway: you might want to group all the tools together, and group all of the sports equipment together, and group all of the lawn and garden machines together - maybe even leave space for your cars!

C. Organizing you information before you start writing serves at least two critical purposes. To begin with, it gives you the organizational (or, paragraph) structure for your essay; you now know what the focus of your main body paragraphs will be! More important, though, it helps you to construct a supportable thesis; having the historical evidence topically organized in front of you will help you see what position you should take on the question asked.

STEP 3: Develop a thesis - A strong, well-developed thesis is ESSENTIAL. Your thesis must be more than a restatement of the question or a description of information; your thesis MUST reflect judgment and interpretation of the evidence. A well-developed thesis must take a position on the question - and not just any ol' position, but the position you think is best supported by the evidence - and provide organizing or controlling ideas for the essay. Further, a well-developed thesis must account for the complexity of the past. The past is generally not black or white. For example, evaluating the past often requires us to deal with conflicting evidence. As a historian, you cannot simply choose to ignore evidence that conflicts with the position you "want" to take; you must account for the conflicting evidence by taking a more qualified position. Additional complexity comes from multiple layers of causation, or multiple layers of motivation, or movements that succeeded in some ways and failed in others. Don't ignore that complexity; embrace it. Your goal is to write the thesis that best accounts for all of the evidence and its complexity while providing organizing and controlling ideas for your essay. So how do you do that? I'm glad you asked!

A. First, for each of the topical organizational categories you established in STEP 2, write a topic sentence that relates the information in the category to the question asked. For example, if I were trying to respond to the question about the causes of the American Industrial Revolution, I might write the following for my category "Governmental Policies": "Despite the widely accepted idea that the government should not interfere with the economy, a variety of governmental policies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries contributed to industrialization by subsidizing, protecting, and supporting growing American businesses."

B. Next, after writing a topic sentence for each of your topical categories, decide the relative importance of your various categories. That is, decide which of them is most important and should be discussed first, which is next most important, and so on. Why? Because this is part of recognizing the complexity of the past, recognizing that some causes were more important than others, or that some impacts were more significant than others.

C. Now you are ready to craft your thesis by pulling together your topical categories in a statement that directly answers the question and establishes the organizational structure for the essay. For example, my thesis for the "Causes of the American Industrial Revolution" essay might ("might," mind you, "might") look something like this: "While the causes of the American Industrial Revolution were complex and many layered, three stand out: government policies, human ingenuity, and resources. Among these, government policies supporting and protecting American businesses were most significant, for they established the atmosphere that allowed creative individuals to develop and implement new ways of organizing businesses and producing goods, and they promoted the profitable exploitation of America's vast wealth of natural and human resources." Bingo! It's like putting together the pieces of a puzzle: once you have your topical categories, your topic sentences for those categories, and your rank ordering of the importance of the categories, you just massage your topic sentences lightly to tie the categories together in a single statement that directly answers the question, reflects the complexity of the issue, and provides an organizational structure for the essay. OK, stop looking nervous. Piece of cake! Trust me!

STEP 4: Write your introductory paragraph - Now, and only now, are you ready to actually start writing your response to the essay. It is crucial that your introductory paragraph is clear and strong. An effective introductory paragraph usually has the following simple elements:

A. Relevant background information that helps you frame the issue and your response. For example, in my opening paragraph for the Industrial Revolution essay, I might want to point out that in the 1860s we were still primarily an agricultural country but that by 1900 we were the number 1 industrial power in the world. Then I might want to ask why that happened, or how we can account for that transformation.

B. A clear, concise thesis directly answering the question, recognizing the complexity of the evidence, and establishing the organizational structure for the essay.

C. Sometimes, depending on the question, you may need to define terms that are central to the question and your thesis. For example, if you are asked to analyze the extent to which Jeffersonian Republicans were "strict constructionists," you ought to clarify the meaning of that term before articulating your thesis. (You might even want to clarify who "Jeffersonian Republicans" were!) Or, if you are asked to evaluate how "revolutionary" the post-Civil War rebuilding of the South was, you should recognize that there are different ways of understanding the word "revolutionary" and that conclusions about the revolutionary nature of Reconstruction are at least partly dependent on the meaning we ascribe to "revolutionary." Wrestling with the ambiguity of terms is part of the process of addressing the complexity of the historical issue presented by the question.

STEP 5: Write the body (or supporting) paragraphs -

A. Once you have brainstormed, organized your information into topical categories, written topic sentences for each topical category, drafted your thesis and written your introductory paragraph, the rest of your essay practically writes itself. All you have to do is "unpack" the information you put together to write your thesis. Huh? Let me tell you what I mean. You started with a bunch of brainstormed, random information. You swept that information up into topically related piles and wrote topic sentences that related those piles to the question. You knitted those topically related piles together to form your thesis. Now you reverse the process. Your thesis gives you your organizational structure; it tells you the order in which you will address your topical categories. Devote a body paragraph to each topical category. Open each paragraph with the topic sentence you've already created for the category at hand. And then use the specific factual information within each category to support your topic sentence! Close each paragraph with a clincher sentence tying the paragraph directly back to the thesis.

B. To summarize, here's the format your body paragraphs should follow:

** Body Paragraph 1: Cover most important topical category and open with your topical sentence stated in a manner that defends your thesis and directly answers the question at hand.

-- Most important specific factual information (SFI) supporting your claim. Do not merely list or describe information, but use it to prove your claim. Explain how and why the specific information supports your view.-- Next most importnat SFL, treated as above.
-- Next most important SFI, treated as above
-- Next most important SFI, treated as above
-- Repeat as needed to clearly support your claim
-- Clincher sentence tying the paragraph directly back to the thesis

** Body Paragraph 2: Cover next most important topical category and open with your topical sentence stated in a manner that defends your thesis and directly answers the question at hand.

-- Most important specific factual information (SFI) supporting your claim. Do not merely list or describe information, but use it to prove your claim. Explain how or why the specific information supports your view.
-- Next most important SFI, treated as above
-- Next most important SFI, treated as above
-- Next most important SFI, treated as above
-- Repeat as needed to clearly support your claim
-- Clincher sentence tying the paragraph directly back to the thesis

** Body Paragraph 3 through end: Repeat above format as many times as needed to cover all topical categories and effectively answer the question.

C. Long essays are not always good essays, but short essays are almost never good essays! Don't be locked into artificial notions about the "right" length of an essay, or about the number of paragraphs an essay "should" have. The number and length of the body paragraphs will vary depending upon the thesis, the main points to be supported, and the amount of historical evidence available. Many students fail to achieve the full potential of an essay because they are content to use a few historical references and to assume that the power of their logical arguments will carry the thesis. The amount of historical evidence used in support of your thesis is a key factor in how Mr. Peters will grade you. This does not mean that you should provide a laundry list of information or detailed "stories." But it does mean that you must provide substantial relevant historical information and explain how or why it supports your thesis.

D. When responding to a DBQ, you must weave the evidence from "a substantial number" of the documents into your essay. (What qualifies as a "substantial number" is not clear; but at the least it means more than half, and it probably means a good deal more than half!) Don't merely explain what is in the documents; analyze them for the light they shed on the question and integrate their evidence into your essay in support of your thesis. And don't quote large portions of the documents; the graders are familiar with their content and see long quotes as "filler." You can quote short passages if necessary to make your point, but don't waste time reciting documents!

STEP 6: Write your conclusion - Your conclusion MUST focus on thesis. Restate your thesis in a new, powerful manner. Recap the arguments and evidence, but do not introduce new evidence. Avoid sweeping generalizations going beyond the scope of the question (and beyond the evidence and analysis you have presented in your essay).

STEP 7: Evaluate your essay (before Mr. Peters has a chance to)- If you have time, evaluate your essay using the following quide

A. Intro paragraph - How effectively does the intro paragraph prepare the reader for the balance of the essay? How could it be improved?

B. Thesis - Does the thesis address the question? How well does it deal with all parts of the question? Does it acknowledge the complexity of the issue? How could it be improved?

C. Analysis - Does the body provide effective analysis of the question, or does it primarily describe? Does the essay deal with the full complexity of the question? Does it acknowledge opposing points of view? In the case of the DBQ, have you integrated a substantial number of the documents into your analysis? How could the analysis be improved?

D. Evidence - Is the thesis supported with substantial, relevant information? What significant additional information could be used for support?

E. Presentation - How well organized and well written is the essay? How could it be improved?

SOME FINAL TIPS:

A. Keep your essays focused on answering the questions at hand.

B. Penmanship, spelling, and grammar make a difference because they affect the ability of the reader, namely me, to make sense of your essay. Write all essays in the past tense and in the third person.

C. Remain objective; avoid rhetoric.

D. Don't use slang, peps.

E. After reading your essay, I will ask myself one important question: How sophisticated was your knowledge of history as demonstrated in your essay? Please help me answer that question favorably. Show me that you understand the complexity - and where relevant, the conflicting nature - of the evidence. Bring as much depth and breadth into your essays as possible. GOOD LUCK!