MCQ — Primary Source Stimuli Sets

Primary sources are texts that were written near the time that the events they describe occurred. They are often written by people who observed the events or at least consulted sources that came from the original event described. The primary sources for the AP World History exam originate in many languages over the last thousand years. For this reason most of them are translated and use old words or expressions. The AP World History test developers and committee edit them for vocabulary, clarity, brevity, and assessment purposes. The original primary sources are often much longer, more wordy, and use peculiar vocabulary.

In this lesson and others across the course we provide four MCQ sets with primary source stimuli to introduce you to the kinds of stimulus texts, question types, skills, and set components (like source lines or lead-in instructions) you will see on the exam. A full practice exam that parallels the format, difficulty, and range of requirements you will find on the AP exam is also provided at the end of the course.

In addition to reading the stimuli and responding to the questions, read the notes [in brackets] throughout this section for additional training information to help you become more familiar with the requirements of the AP exam and improve your performance.

Remember:

As you go through each of these primary and image source MCQ sets, you have multiple goals:

• Understand the stimuli;

• Check whether you have learned the required historical knowledge and skills to correctly answer the questions;

• Familiarize yourself with the format and style of the MCQ section of the AP exam;

• Improve your ability to understand primary source and image stimuli;

• Practice skills and learn about common question types to improve your performance.

Take your time. Read the notes and rationales.