avoiding common errors on the aphg exam - Google Slides

Summary

In this detailed discussion, Ms. Cecil highlights some common mistakes students make in the AP Human Geography exam and provides practical tips to avoid them. She emphasizes the importance of fully understanding the questions, adhering to the command verbs, and ensuring responses directly answer what is asked. The need for specificity, context awareness, understanding course vocabulary, and addressing all sides of a concept are also stressed. Ms. Cecil's advice, drawn from years of experience and chief reader reports, aims to help students refine their test-taking strategies and improve their performance.

Highlights

• Always read and interpret exam questions carefully to avoid missteps! 👓
• Command verbs guide your response - compare, define, describe, explain, identify! 🔖
• Provide detailed explanations to tie ideas back to the question! 🔗
• Ensure your responses are specific and contextually appropriate! 🎯
• Master the vocabulary of the course to adeptly navigate the exam! 📚

Key Takeaways

• Understanding the question is crucial to providing a correct response! 🧐
• Command verbs are key: know whether to compare, describe, or explain! 💡
• Specificity and context awareness enhance the quality of your answers! 🌍
• Cater to the correct scale of analysis: global, regional, or local! 🔍
• Each concept has multiple sides; understand all perspectives! 🔄

Overview

In her engaging video, Ms. Cecil dives into the common pitfalls students encounter during the AP Human Geography exam. Drawing from numerous chief reader reports and her personal experiences, she underscores the critical importance of deeply understanding exam questions before crafting responses. This foundational step, she insists, is paramount to ensuring that every sentence contributes to addressing the question posed.

Further, Ms. Cecil elaborates on the necessity of familiarity with command verbs and how misinterpreting them can lead to loss of points. She encourages students to be detailed in their comparisons and explanations, avoiding vague statements and ensuring every claim is substantiated with evidence. Ms. Cecil colorfully illustrates these points with numerous examples, emphasizing parallel comparisons and the completion of thought processes in explanations.

Lastly, Ms. Cecil discusses the various aspects essential for exam success, such as context accuracy and vocabulary proficiency. She stresses the importance of answering within the correct scale of analysis and addressing both strengths and weaknesses of discussed concepts. Through these strategies, Ms. Cecil aims to arm students with the tools they need to avoid common mistakes and excel in their exam.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Introduction and Objective The speaker, Miss Cecil, introduces a session focused on avoiding common errors made by students in the AP Human Geography exam. The aim is to learn from past mistakes to improve responses to the free response questions. The information shared is based on Miss Cecil's personal experience as a longtime reader of the exam.
• 01:30 - 03:00: Common Mistakes Overview The chapter discusses the role of the chief reader in leading the reading and scoring process of an exam. It highlights the purpose of the chief reader reports, which are compiled each year to evaluate student performance, identifying areas where students excelled and where they faced challenges. Despite the yearly variation in specific content and skills assessed, there are often observable trends in student responses.
• 03:00 - 05:30: Understanding the Question The chapter titled 'Understanding the Question' emphasizes the common mistakes students make by not fully comprehending what a question is asking. It stresses the importance of taking time to read, interpret, and break down the question to ensure a correct response.
• 05:30 - 07:00: Comparing and Contrasting The chapter 'Comparing and Contrasting' discusses the importance of understanding command verbs in academic tasks. It highlights that one should know whether they are being asked to compare, define, describe, explain, or identify in their tasks. The chapter emphasizes focusing particularly on comparing, describing, and explaining. When asked to compare, it is crucial to determine whether the task is asking for differences, similarities, or both, to address the requirements accurately.
• 07:00 - 10:00: Providing Clear Descriptions and Explanations Chapter Title: Providing Clear Descriptions and Explanations In this chapter, the focus is on the importance of making parallel comparisons when discussing differences. An example provided is the comparison between subsistence and commercial agriculture. It's highlighted that while separate statements about each are accurate, effective descriptions require clear and parallel comparisons. For instance, rather than describing commercial agriculture as crop cultivation for profit, while noting subsistence agriculture involves manual labor, it's more effective to contrast the central aspect of both simultaneously for greater clarity.
• 10:00 - 14:00: Importance of Context and Specificity The chapter 'Importance of Context and Specificity' discusses the necessity of making parallel comparisons when analyzing different subjects. It highlights that in order to compare two entities effectively, one needs to ensure they are directly comparable in terms of relevant factors. For instance, commercial agriculture's reliance on machinery contrasts with subsistence agriculture's manual labor. When addressing comparative questions, particularly those focusing on differences, it's crucial to clearly delineate these contextual distinctions.
• 14:00 - 17:00: Understanding Course Concepts The chapter 'Understanding Course Concepts' focuses on the distinctions between various concepts, specifically using commercial and subsistence agriculture as examples. Students are encouraged to think beyond just stating whether something fits one category or not, and instead, explore what alternatives exist. The chapter prompts learners to delve deeper into understanding the 'what' and 'why' behind categorizations, using agriculture to illustrate the differences between profit-driven and self-sustaining farming methods.
• 17:00 - 18:30: Conclusion and Final Advice This chapter provides a conclusion and final advice, focusing on the distinction between subsistence agriculture and other types of agriculture. It explains that subsistence farming emphasizes the consumption of products within the family rather than selling them for profit. The chapter highlights the need to compare and understand these differences clearly and effectively.

avoiding common errors on the aphg exam - Google Slides Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 hi everyone it's miss Cecil and today what I want to do is focus on avoiding common errors that students make on the AP human geography exam while I normally like to focus on the positive if we see what mistakes students often make in the past hopefully we can avoid those as we respond to the free response questions this year so this information is based not only on my own personal experience is a longtime reader of the exam and
• 00:30 - 01:00 someone who's been involved in the leadership of the reading but also the chief reader reports so the chief reader reports is a report that the person who's the chief reader they're in charge of the overall scoring process of the exam puts together each year to say here's what students did well with and here's where they struggled and although the questions in terms of their specific content and skills vary year to year we oftentimes see trends in terms of
• 01:00 - 01:30 students making the same sorts of mistakes that's what I want to talk about today and what I want to help you avoid so the first one's pretty basic you have to know what the question is asking if you don't know what the question is asking how can you possibly have a correct response to that question you can't and so it's important that you take the time to read the question interpret the question break down what am I being asked to do here and part of
• 01:30 - 02:00 that is knowing the command verbs so am I being asked to compare am I being asked to define describe explain identify and I especially want to focus on compare describe and explain so with compare you might be asked to look at differences and our similarities so pay attention to which of those are both that they want you to talk about the
• 02:00 - 02:30 other thing with compare is in terms of differences you need to have parallel comparisons what that means is that if you're dealing with for instance the differences between subsistence agriculture in commercial agriculture instead of seeing commercial agriculture is where the crop is grown for a profit whereas subsistence agriculture does a lot of the work by hand those two statements separately are correct but
• 02:30 - 03:00 they're not comparing exactly the same thing so instead you want to deal with let's say that commercial agriculture uses a lot of machinery whereas typically subsistence agriculture does a lot of the work by hand or with simple tools and is less mechanized that's what I mean by parallel comparisons so be sure that you do that if you're given a compare question that focuses on differences the other big thing with
• 03:00 - 03:30 differences is sometimes students will want to say well this particular thing does this and then for the other side they'll say and this one does not okay so what does it do instead so like for instance with the commercial and subsistence agriculture example instead of saying commercial agriculture is focused on growing agricultural products for a profit whereas subsistence agriculture is not I would change that
• 03:30 - 04:00 is not - whereas subsistence agriculture is focused on the consumption of those agricultural products within the family as opposed to making money on them as the primary goal so that's what I mean by the compare parallel differences defined we do pretty well with that's pretty self-explanatory but described so describes another one where you can't just write a word or two
• 04:00 - 04:30 or just a short phrase so if I say I'm going to describe myself teacher that really does not provide a clear description so instead it's supposed to be relevant characteristics of the topic so you're gonna make a claim like what are the relevant characteristics of whatever I'm being asked to describe and then you're going to support that with evidence so it should be multiple
• 04:30 - 05:00 sentences similarly with explain you know that my favorite word when we're asked to explain is because you should have some sort of because statement so this particular thing is happening here's why it is happening and how here's the cause and effect of this and I encourage you when you think that you've inish --tx planing to go one sentence deeper and again this should be multiple sentences and then identify we do pretty well with
• 05:00 - 05:30 and just indicate or provide the information that's specified you're not going to provide elaboration or explanation there the problem is is what if I'm asked to explain then I define well then I'm not going to get that point because I'm not going to touch upon the content that's required so know what I'm being asked to do this is a direct quote from the chief readers
• 05:30 - 06:00 report last year students need to learn to close the loop in their writing many students introduce good ideas but failed to tie their ideas back to the question are fully explaining the connection to what the question was asking so in other words you might have great content but if you're not asked answering the question that was asked that doesn't matter and sometimes you think you are but you have to make that connection you have to tie it in for the reader you have to do that work you have to do the heavy lifting
• 06:00 - 06:30 not the reader so if the readers having to connect things for you that's a problem and that's going to resolve it's in points not being awarded that with a little bit more detail explanation that closing the loop you could you could do that just fine the other thing in this a lot of these go back to understand what the question is asking is you need to identify the scale of analysis and the question is it global is it regional is it national is
• 06:30 - 07:00 it local because that's going to impact the manner in which I talk about things so if it's a question about a local process and I start talking about general global processes that's a problem I'm not answering the question that's asked and again that's going to negatively impact me acquiring points for my response now when you're looking at the scale of analysis Global's on here but it's probably not going to
• 07:00 - 07:30 truly be global so even if you're shown like a map of the world you're not really though looking at the whole world in terms of how the data is broken down you're typically working looking at a world regional context or maybe the national context of this country versus that country so how is the data displayed on that map if there's a map or a chart or something like that that's displayed and make sure you're talking then about that right scale of analysis
• 07:30 - 08:00 the other thing and again this also ties back to just breaking down what is the question answering or asking is to identify the context of the question so are we in an urban context or an agricultural context are we talking about more economically developed countries or less economically developed countries I need to make sure that I'm talking about things in the correct frame or it's going to totally change my response and of course change the
• 08:00 - 08:30 potential points that I can earn for the response so make sure that you get that context and that's why you should always do some pre-planning and brainstorming and ask yourself these things ahead of time as opposed to just immediately starting to write your response the only thing is to be specific so there's two kind of ways to be specific if you're asked you know what sort of pattern is occurring and you're
• 08:30 - 09:00 like well birth rates are high here low here that's too vague especially if you're given map that shows the actual data breakdown you need to you need to make sure that you are using as much specificity as you can when you're asked to describe things the other thing is and we saw this happen and several questions over the years but students will talk about there are different cultural groups okay so you should know some of the different aspects that distinguish cultures from each other
• 09:00 - 09:30 such as language potentially religion how how are they different right so this is where oftentimes students don't give us as readers enough information so tell me more you're not going to be penalized for being too specific similarly avoid vague pronouns if you're talking about it and they and I don't know who it and they are referring to that's a problem and that can make your
• 09:30 - 10:00 answer incorrect the other thing is is to understand all sides of the course content make sure that you understand the advantages and disadvantages for all the major concepts in the course so like the Green Revolution it definitely had a lot of advantages but it also had some significant disadvantages make sure that you understand both sides when we're looking at models what are the strengths of the models what are the weaknesses so
• 10:00 - 10:30 the world is complex you should understand that these global and local processes that you've learned about are complex and that there's not just a one side at sort of response so you should be prepared to address all sides of any of the concepts in the course the other thing is is that you should be able to differentiate between political social environmental and economic factors so if I'm asked for an environmental factor
• 10:30 - 11:00 for something an environmental impact and I say something about it I mean the economy that makes no sense and doesn't again answer the question that's asked and so I'll repeat myself most of this goes back to understanding what the question is asking of you and then making sure that you stick to that we are being scored on a standardized rubric like you are on the AP exam there's not that forgiveness for
• 11:00 - 11:30 changing the question that some of you are really good at doing in individual teachers classrooms so some of you will take an essay question and you'll really change the question to a totally different question and you'll write so well on it with so much accuracy in detail that perhaps you'll be awarded points on the AP exam since it's on a standardized rubric it really has to address the specific question that's asked not the question that you wish was
• 11:30 - 12:00 asked so you're actually better off doing in you know okay job answering the question that's asked versus doing an amazing job answering a question that wasn't asked stay focused on the question that is asked and oftentimes it's not consciously changing the question that you're doing instead it's just that you failed to spend the time thinking about the question processing it for a minute because you were too anxious to start writing so take a
• 12:00 - 12:30 moment breathe you'll have time you don't have time to stare at the walls or anything but you have time to think and process take advantage of that time and then know the vocabulary for the course but reciting a definition that's a start but that's not enough you have to know how to apply those terms in a geographic context this was also something that
• 12:30 - 13:00 came up in every single chief reader report since the exam began is that students were not familiar enough with the terms in the course so make sure that you've gone through make sure that you know those terms but make sure that you can do more than just recite a definition also be careful with reciting definition make sure that it's in that geographic context and make sure that you have translated into words that you understand an example that you might
• 13:00 - 13:30 remember that I used in class earlier in the year is that since my children are adopted from Russia is that I memorized some phrases some Russian phrases before I traveled to Russia for the first time and so I was able to communicate with people by using those phrases the problem is is that I didn't understand the language so I would communicate with these phrases I had memorized but the people will respond and they usually
• 13:30 - 14:00 didn't respond with one of the few phrases that I knew so I had no idea what they were talking about sometimes that happens to students in human geography too they've memorized a list of vocab they don't really understand it they can't apply it and so it's the same as speaking in a link at different language that's not understood you have to learn the language of geography so make sure that you're solidifying your understanding of these terms and concepts over these next few weeks and
• 14:00 - 14:30 that is it those are the most common ones again most of it goes back to one issue not breaking down the question and understanding what the question is asking enough so hope that that helps you avoid some of these common mistakes and I will talk to you soon