hello are you looking for some practice and how to answer the argument essay on the AP comparative government and politics exam well you're in the right place my name is Suzanne Bailey and I teach this course at Virgil Grissom High School in Huntsville Alabama and I've been an AP comparative reader for over 20 years and so I've had a lot of experience um in in grading these free responses and I would like to share with you some of the strategies that I use with my own students on how to answer t
he question so if you're ready to get started so am I so let's go so when you look at free response an argumentative essay you'll notice that it's free response number four so that just means it's the fourth essay in your exam booklet that you'll get after you finish the multiple choice the suggested time to do this though is 40 minutes but I need you to understand that the 40 minutes you're not expected to write for 40 minutes you're supposed to you'd be using some of this time for some pre-wri
ting and that's going to be critical because this is just a little bit more difficult to do if you look the first glance at these for at this free response you'll notice there's no ABCD to guide you but you do have some task prompts that are going to be highlighted with this Arrow here um and so my Approach as we go through this is to make sure that you that you're answering each of these prompts because you want to earn the Five Points that this free response is worth right you want to get a to
p score so that you can do well on the exam so my Approach in this video is to go through each of these rubric points in each of these prompts and explain some strategies about how to answer them and what I can say about this first one is it's the most important um if you don't get your thesis point you can't earn a reasoning point or an alternate perspective point right the maximum you could get on this essay would be two points for evidence so it's really important to spend some time on your t
hesis so um and so the read as a reader right the first thing I'm going to look for to see is there a thesis so that what does that mean is there a defensible claim um and a line of reasoning so I'm looking for two things and what am I looking in that well first of all I'm looking that you've answered the question so what concepts am I looking for well in the argument I'm looking for a direct reference to direct elections Authority and stability right I'm looking for references those are all um
important Concepts that you should have discussed in class but in addition to that I'm looking for as well I'm sorry non-democratic regimes but I'm also looking for my line of reasoning one of these three words competition legitimacy or political participation and some people worry about like how do I make the connection between the prompt words and these extra words realize though I actually see these three extra words as a blessing they are there because they're to help you develop your line o
f reasoning so by requiring you to put it in your answer we're actually helping you frame your essay response the important thing to do that I recommend to my students and my import most important thing here is you have to spend the time and think about the argument it wouldn't be an art there there has to be at least two sides to this argument or otherwise it wouldn't be a question and so I think it behooves you to take the time to actually flesh out the claim right for um in this case direct e
lections strengthen the authority and stability of non-democratic regimes and direct elections weaken the authority and stability of non-democratic regimes these are the two options and what you need to do is you need to evaluate which one you have more evidence for at the time because one of these is going to be your thesis your claim and the other is going to be our alternate perspective so it does make sense to spend some time on this t-chart like thinking about what the two sides of the argu
ment are now the important thing about the line of reasoning is you only have to use one of the terms so what I tried to do though so that's I need you to remember that I try to give you examples here of more than one of the terms but you only have to use one the other caveat to this that I want to just emphasize is notice that I have the this the claim right that they strengthen and I've added the word because or that they weakened and I've added the word because and that's um to to help you ge
t to some reasoning you don't have to use the word because but it's a formula right it's just something that's easy to remember and it forces you to think about like why is it why would direct election strengthen well perhaps people participate in direct elections by voting right participation would be one of those words that I could use the appearance of competition could convince voters to accept the legitimate authority of the government which maintains stability so that would be helping um w
ith those words on the alternative people could participate in direct elections by voting the lack of competition would discourage these voters and they may seek to overthrow the government um as a view as lacking Authority and legitimacy so there's different ways to include the terms what's important is to make one sentence right that's going to give you that claim and line of reasoning so I thought it would just be helpful for us to practice the decision that I have to make as a reader about w
hether or not um these thesis these claims and lines of reasoning would get a point so I have four of them here for you and so my suggestion is to pause the video and take a minute and determine right which of these would earn a thesis point I'm going to continue and show you that it's B and D so why didn't a get the point well a is the classic mistake of someone who took a position but didn't give a line of reason right there's no because here and so my to me adding that word because might help
them to finish out their line of reasoning the third one is not addressing the prompt right competition is not required in direct elections well that's that's probably that's a true statement but it's not answering the prompt right so if you want this point you have to answer the prompt with a claim and give a line of reasoning notice that in this case I have references to mass participation I have references to legitimacy and stability right so those are would get is what I'm looking for to ge
t that point in the line of reasoning the next part is also the most sometimes the most difficult part because I think that first part is fairly formulated right it's pretty easy to make sure you have two point parts of that thesis here thinking to yourself what do I know about these course countries um that would be specific and relevant so notice the prompts I tend to combine these prompts I recommend my students give a specific and relevant piece of evidence but also then explain how that evi
dence ties to their thesis so I'm looking for them to give two pieces of evidence and two reasoning statements now the two pieces of evidence can earn you two points you can only get one point for reasoning so by structuring this way I think you're giving yourself some bonus right I think it's just good writing to list evidence and tie it to your thesis um and so you're kind of protecting yourself in case one of your responses isn't as strong as the other so how do you pick which countries to ta
lk about here well in this case um we're looking for non-democratic countries so I have three choices right Iran China and Russia um and so what I need to make sure is that the evidence I use is specific and relevant right and then I explain how that supports my thesis so what we're looking at here is I've provided you with the first bullet would be for the evidence point and the second bullet would be for reasoning so again pause the video and think about would you give them specific evidence p
oint and would you give the reasoning point well this first one um it is true right that's specific and relevant China does allow direct elections for local Village governments so that's the the concept I'm tying here is direct elections and I'm giving something that's very specific the challenge is I wouldn't give the point for the reasoning um having direct election strengthens the authority of instability of the regime because right a reasoning statement you need some analysis so this would g
et one point for the a part but not the reasoning part this one here would get both right it has a specific about the Chinese elect direct election system it doesn't have them add the national but allows them at the local and you'll notice that you have here um tying it to the theme of participation right these elections give an outlet so they don't turn to other means of participation such as protest which could undermine stability and Authority so that would get the reasoning point let's try a
nother pair so this one is about Iran so pause the video I make a decision about what would get points in this case the only points would be coming from this first response like 2000 the 2009 reference to the green movement is very specific it's great evidence but the reasoning is also important right protests are harshly suppressed leading to instability right that could threaten the legitimacy of the non-democratic regimes there's a direct reference to my line of reasoning the problem with B i
s that you don't directly elect the guardian Council right we talked about the the appointed half is appointed by the Supreme Leader other half by the Chief Justice and so this is not correct finally the last one let's look at Russia so these are examples right the first bullet would be evidence the second bullet would be reasoning so pause for a minute see what if you would give these um credit in this case again it's B that would get both points the problem with a is that elections are somewha
t competitive in Russia is not specific enough elections for what presidency um the Duma right you need to have a little bit more specific information there so and specifically notice like in this case opposition leader like navalny Banning running from the 2018 presidential elections that's the specificity I'm looking for um and then in this case right voices are heard in terms of participation legitimacy um would get you the reasoning point the last part sometimes can be seen as the most diffi
cult my suggestion when you do this respond to an opposing and alter perspective is you go back to your t-chart if you had said throughout your paper that having direct election strengthens Authority and stability because now you have to explain why it weakens right you have to take the opposite side of the argument of the prompt so let's look at a sample of that in this case I'm looking for when I'm grading it I'm looking for two points I'm looking for the alternative perspective explained and
I'm looking for a concession rebuttal or refutation I prefer robot I mean my students prefer rebuttals with the idea that you've got to just explain to me why that alternate perspective is wrong so let's look at this one this would be a good response it has two separate parts this first part the alternative perspective is here right to having direct elections promotes legitimacy because it allows the people's voice to be heard and this strengthens the authority and stability of the non-democrati
c regimes but then you have to rebut it so you have to give a full explanation of the alternative perspective but then you need to tell me why it's wrong right so in this case the things that you've mentioned earlier that these elections could involve corruption is not going to increase legitimacy they're going to lead to protests which might actually undermine the stability of the regime make sure in order to earn this last point that you fully explain the alternative perspective and respond to
it you need to do both you need to talk specifically and give a strong reason why the alternative perspective is valid and then respond to it my students typically do a rebuttal which is explain why your argument's stronger thank you for joining me today hopefully this gave you some insight in how to answer the argument frq best of luck on the exam
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