Short Answer Questions

This guide organizes advice from past students who got 4s and 5s on their exams. We hope it gives you some new ideas and tools for your study sessions. But remember, everyone's different—what works for one student might not work for you. If you've got a study method that's doing the trick, stick with it. Think of this as extra help, not a must-do overhaul.

📌 Overview

• Students answer 2 required questions and pick between Question 3 and 4. All questions involve analysis of historical developments, making connections between processes, and contextualization
• 20% of Exam Score
• Spend about 40 min
• 3 questions scored on a 3 point rubric for a total of 9 points
  • For stimulus-based question, plan to spend 12-15 minutes
  • For non-stimulus based question, plan to spend 9-12 minutes
• Students may have a stimulus-based (picture, graph, etc.) or a non-stimulus based prompt

💭 General Advice

Tips on mindset, strategy, structure, time management, and any other high level things to know

• Be specific and to the point as humanly possible and keep your answers short and to the point.
• Don’t try to write a big fancy answer! 2-3 sentences that restate the prompt and 1-2 sentences that give an explanation to your answer will be enough to answer the question fully.
• Focus on 1) answering the prompt 2) connecting your response back to the prompt, 3) citing evidence, and 4) explaining why that evidence supports your answer.
• Never direct quote from source materials.
• Practice speed writing before the test to make sure that you can complete 3 set of questions in 40 minutes.
• Answer the prompt that you think is easier first. You are not required to answer the prompt in order but don’t forget to label your answers correctly.
  • Example: C) response for C goes here A) response for A goes here B) response for B goes here
• Complete your SAQs before your MCQs. Not only does it help you manage time, you’ll know what to keep your eye on as you complete the MCQ. If you don’t know an SAQ, you can read the MCQ and see if any content gives you clues about what to answer.
• Remember to review each possible task verb prior to the exam. That way you don’t waste time doing more than you need to during the exam.

🕐 Before you Write

What should a student do in the first few minutes, before they start writing?

• Read the prompt first and identify the time period of the SAQs. Ask yourself: what time period is it referring to?
• Understand what the prompt is trying to convey, and identify how the source/stimulus aides the prompt and fits into the context for stimulus-based questions.
• Make a list of possible answers for your questions— don’t make it super detailed though.
• Outline your paragraphs and briefly write the topic that you will cover, as well as how it answers the prompt.
• Reading the caption that is below the given stimulus aide is very important.
  • Example: Last year, during the 2023 World History SAQS, one of the captions included that the speaker was a Korean Confucian Scholar. This was critical to the answering of the questions, because this would strongly influence his views and beliefs.
• Pay attention to the task verbs. If it says Identify, there is no need and explain and if it says Explain you want to make sure that you explain in detail and don’t just identify.

🏛️ How to Structure your Response

Here are some acronyms you can use to answer SAQs:

• Remember the IDE structure: Identify, Describe, and Explain.
  • Identify a specific example to answer the question; restate the key words from the prompt and answer the question. This should be in 1 sentence.
  • Typically the sentence structure should go like this for the identify part of the structure: (Restate Question) → (Answer Question) → (Mention/Identify 1 or 2 Evidence/Facts, You do not need to describe or go in depth on the evidence).
  • Describe the specific evidence (think proper nouns, vocab, etc.) that connects to your assertion.
  • Explain how your specific evidence is connected to the prompt/stimulus. Think of it as an identity question but explain the answer. Explain HOW or WHY. For example, if the question was explaining one way in which Mongol rule affected two khanate regions similarly. You must explain HOW they were similar.
    • The first sentence should include words like “both” or “similar” that signify that they are similar.
    • You should start the analysis part with “In both cases” or “This shows how” or “This shows why” (if it is a how or why question).
• Try the TEA structure: Topic Sentence, Evidence, and Analysis.
  • Especially when you are answering an “explain” question, be sure to have a topic sentence. Then support your claim with evidence, and then expand on how the evidence ties to the reasoning of the prompt. Your “explain” and “describe” parts of the question should be a few sentences long, just enough to explain the evidence and the analysis behind it.
  • You should write one topic sentence, and have two sentences for the evidence part to fully explain the significance what you’ve quoted. For the analysis part, you should write two or three sentences and connect your answer to the part with your citations.
• Use the ACE: Answer (restate question and write your answer), Cite (give one piece of evidence that proves your answer correct), Expand (expand on the impact and significance for the evidence you gave and its effect, tying it back to the prompt and question).
  • Something you can use is the statement “This shows/proves/etc…” If you remember to write statements like this after each evidence you introduce you can easily tie it back to the prompt. This writing isn’t meant to be fancy, it's for you to get your ideas across in a concise and direct way that answers the prompt.

Other structure advice:

• Make a mini thesis to start if it’s helpful.
• 1st sentence should restate the question and add your answer.
• 2nd sentence: explain your answer and possible effects or other things the question asks
• 3rd sentence: if you need to explain anything extra, now’s your chance to do it
• Be as specific and to the point as you can. There is no point trying to dance around the question or write unnecessary fluff. It won’t give you any credit.
• If your answer isn’t clear or doesn’t hit the point, give a quick example that demonstrates that concept. Don’t forget to explain how the example relates to the prompt.
• Make sure each part of the SAQ (A, B, and C) has a different answer! If you reuse the same answer for 2 parts of one SAQ then it will be considered wrong.

❓ What to do if you don’t know

• If you do not understand what the prompt is asking, don’t freak out! Take deep breaths and break the prompt down into ways you can understand, and connect it to the information you can remember in a way that answers the prompt.
• If you don’t know what to write, take your scratch paper and write down any information you can think of that is related to the SAQ prompt. Literally anything that seems relevant. Again, don’t panic! After brainstorming, you should have some ideas to use in your response. If you aren’t sure about some of the information, that’s ok. You don’t want to get too hung up on the details. You can “bs” the questions if you need to, as long as you support your answer somehow. Don’t be afraid to “fake it till you make it.” Worst case scenario, focus on just getting something on paper—you could at least get some points if you write something relevant to the prompt, which is better than zero.
• If you’re still not sure, go with the best educated guess you can. Use keywords that would be relevant to the question, and try to answer any parts that you are at least a bit confident on.
• If you have no idea, check the time period to see if you know anything that happened around then. This serves as a memory cue to remind you about the topic and expand on your answer.
• Try to save the questions you don’t know till the end. If you can write two good SAQs then the 3rd one won’t matter as much.

✏️ Choosing Question 3 or 4

• Select the question you feel most confident about! In other words, choose the question where you have the best understanding and can provide the most thorough explanation.
• See if you’re able to use information from previous questions to get a little bit of detail on the 3rd or 4th question (if they are related). If you go this route, don’t restate the evidence/reasoning from the other question.
• Read what time periods for the two questions. I would chose the question that is in the time period that you understand the best.