ABSTRACT
For students taking the advanced placement (AP) World History, AP US History, and AP European History exams administered by the College Board, learning to synthesize information from multiple documents is essential. The document-based question (DBQ) portion of these exams not only requires students to analyze and evaluate individual texts, but to understand the relationship between texts and how they work together to answer an historical question. Students preparing for these exams need to be able to compare texts to one another and understand how one text fills in gaps left by another text. They need to know how to integrate background knowledge with knowledge they have gleaned from a text and recognize the historical context in which a text is situated. Finally, students need to be able to formulate an argument, or thesis statement, in response to the DBQ and support their argument with evidence from each one of the texts.
