AN IMPORTANT AP WORLD HISTORY EXAM STUDY TIP

      Hello everyone! Have you checked out the study section for AP World History exam study resources yet? If you haven't already, please visit it, it's chock-full of helpful resources to help you prepare for the exam. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Katey Z and I am a TA for Mr. Sallese's APWII class. I LOVE the course and the class and AP World History II is my favorite class and the best class I have taken in high school. 
      For many students, including myself when I took the course,  APWH can seem daunting at times but really it isn't all that bad! In this blog post, I will be sharing with you one major thing that I used to help me study for the APWH exam and get a 5! I firmly believe that anyone can be successful on this exam, with just the right amount of effort and determination :)

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      For me, when it came time to study for the exam, I didn't focus immediately on memorizing every little detail about every civilization ever. No, no, no! Instead, your primary focus should be on the OVERARCHING THEMES. I cannot stress this enough! If you don't understand key themes in history, you will have a mighty hard time doing well on this exam, regardless of you having a good memory or not. Study and know key themes by heart. Make sure you can identify them quickly and be able to link similarities between civilizations as well as point out differences.

      You may be asking: but Katelyn, how is this going to help me?

      Well, if you know the overarching themes and trends that occur over and over again in history, you will be able to more readily identify key aspects of ANY civilization. Let me explain it a little more: say you were discussing the ailing state of the Ottoman empire. You may get the question as to how the Ottoman empire got to this point. If you knew the trend followed China, the Ottoman empire, and Japan, you would know that when these regions closed themselves off from the rest of the world, they missed out on a lot of technological advances made by the European nations, resulting in them becoming technologically inferior. Now, we'll exclude Japan, since they ended up catching up. But China didn't and neither did the Ottoman empire, resulting in their nations becoming seriously weak and susceptible to Western imperialism. An example of this can be seen in China, where many Western powers such as Britain carved out spheres of influence and forced unequal treaties on the Chinese government. Bearing a parallel to China, the Ottoman empire was subjected to unfair agreements of extraterritoriality. 

      Now do you see how knowing a general trend (nations who closed off their borders to foreigners lost out on cultural diffusion and tech advances, resulting in them becoming technologically inferior over time, which eventually allowed for Western imperialism in those nations) can aid you in connecting many things that are actually very similar to each other in different regions? It has helped you form a little web of things connected to many other things and this way, memorizing won't be so hard! It is almost like a form of implicit memorization, where you naturally start memorizing things. This helped me IMMENSELY in doing well throughout the whole course, not just on the exam and I hope it will help you as well. For more information on overarching themes and key themes to know, please visit the "STUDY" section of this website and go into the AP World History study resources page. Good luck studying!