Um, I already know how a bill becomes a law. Why am I taking this exam again?
Download 0.75 Mb.
|
- Navigate this page:
- Strategy
- DO know what the exam covers.
- DONT panic.
- DO know how this puppy breaks down.
- DO use process of elimination on multiple-choice.
| Q&A
Have You Read This?If yes, click here. Before we get into the meat of the exam, let's tackle a few of your questions right off the bat. Um, I already know how a bill becomes a law. Why am I taking this exam again? Because that's elementary school-level politics. This is the big leagues. What's being tested here is not theSchoolhouse Rock version of politics, but your understanding of how power in America actually works. How are we still living with the compromises written into the Constitution more than two hundred years ago? How do you tell a liberal from a conservative? Where do people get their political beliefs from, and how are those beliefs shaped by the media? How do states interact with the federal government? What is the real balance of power between the presidency, Congress, the courts, and the bureaucracy, and how do these institutions keep jockeying for influence? How do political parties form winning coalitions, and how do interest groups help shape elections? Where does all of the money in politics come from? What are the biggest issues in American politics right now? What exactly are your Constitutional rights, and how has the Supreme Court changed its understanding of those rights over time? This is all really complicated stuff. There are no right answers in politics; but being someone whose political opinion actually matters (as opposed to someone who regurgitates whatever they hear on the teevee) starts with understanding some fundamental facts, some foundational history, and some political reality. If you'll allow us to get on our soapbox here this country would be better off if more of us knew the things you're about to learn for this exam .
For the love of Walter Mondale, no. If you've already got some political opinions, great. But trust us: no one grading this exam deserves to be subjected to the political musings of anyone who may not be able to vote yet. ("Maybe the government should just, y'know, chill out, man.") Politics, as it's presented to us through the media, involves a lot of arguing, name-calling, persuading, and so on. This exam is not about that. This exam is about facts. For instance: "What is the difference between mandatory and discretionary spending?" Not: "Which party has a better health care plan?" Or: "Which Supreme Court decision legalized abortion?" Not: "Hey, what do you think about abortion?" Your opinions, and the opinions of the people writing the questions, simply do not enter into the exam you're about to take. None of the multiple-choice questions will be about value judgments—they'll be about black-and-white answers. And none of the free response questions will ask for your opinion—they'll be about identifying key events, trends, and changes in American politics, not volunteering your individual thoughts about them. If you're asked about the growth of the power of the presidency, you could talk about some of the key events in that process, or some of the ways that Congress and the courts have pushed back against it; but if you start opining on it, you're just wasting your (very limited) exam time.
Not really. It wouldn't hurt to read the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence, but the material you need to know is pretty much all contained within this test prep. Acing an AP test is about understanding the right level of detail for your studies: know enough so that nothing you see on the exam will surprise you (and you'll get a good idea of that from our practice exams), but don't go so far down the rabbit hole of any particular topic so that you waste your precious study time. For instance, it helps to know that entitlement spending takes up the biggest part of the federal budget—but you don't have to know exactly how much was budgeted for Medicare in Fiscal Year 2012. It helps to know the Constitutional amendments, and certainly the most important ones—but you don't have to know the order in which the states ratified them. It helps to know the key Supreme Court decisions you'll read about here—but you don't have to go and read the opinions word-for-word. It helps to know some key dates (Declaration of Independence, Constitutional Convention, ratification of Bill of Rights, Civil War, decades for important programs like the New Deal and Great Society)—but you don't need to get a detailed timeline of U.S. history tattooed on your forearm, Memento-style. Now that that's taken care of, let's move into some essential exam strategy. Think of it as the boot-camp sequence of your favorite war movie: Full Metal Shmoop. You can even read the next section in your best drill-sergeant voice, if that helps. (You miserable maggot. You wouldn't know an implied power from a reserved power if it whupped you in the kiester. Now drop and give me 20 multiple-choice questions.)
DO know what this thing looks like.You know that dream where you show up to your exam naked? The AP equivalent of that is showing up without knowing your exam format. The first rule of exam prep is: do not talk about exam prep...wait, no....we mean, you should not be surprised by anything you see on exam day. The AP U.S. Government exam is pretty simple. It lasts two hours and 25 minutes. And there are only two sections to worry about: A 45-minute multiple-choice section with 60 questions. A 100-minute (one hour and 40 minutes) free-response section with four questions. The multiple-choice section and the free-response section each count toward half of your score. Within each section, each question is weighted equally. You'll be scored against the people who take the exam in the same year as you, so we can't tell you the magic number of correct questions that will translate into a 5; but Shmoop's practice multiple-choice sections can give you a pretty good estimate of how you'll do and what score you'll probably earn. DO know what the exam covers.The exam-writers have kindly broken your material down into six sections (and we at Shmoop have done the same for this exam prep). Knowing these areas helps you organize your studying and also helps you know where to allocate your firepower when it comes to preparation. Here they are: Constitutional Foundations: the political theories that influenced the American founders; basic history from the colonial period to the writing of the Constitution; the structure of government created by the Constitution; separation of powers; federalism. Political Beliefs and Behaviors: ideology; liberal and conservative beliefs; how we get our political opinions; the demographic breakdown of the electorate (race, gender, age, etc.); public opinion and how it's measured; voting behavior. Political Parties, Interest Groups, and Mass Media: what political parties do; the history of the two-party system; the history and coalitions of the current Democratic and Republican parties; how presidential elections work; what interest groups do; how interest groups are different from and similar to parties; campaign finance; how the mass media influences politics. Institutions of National Government: the legislative, executive, and judicial branches; the federal bureaucracy; important details about each branch (e.g., what is the Senate Majority Leader? what is the president's Office of Management and Budget? what are the different levels of federal courts?); how the branches interact; how their power has changed over time. Public Policy: the process of making policy; taxes; the budget; fiscal and monetary policy; other domestic policy areas (civil rights, education, health care); theories of foreign policy; the government's foreign policy tools; a quick historical outline of foreign policy history in key regions (like Latin America). Civil Rights and Liberties: the rights protected by the Constitutional amendments, especially the 1st, 3rd-6th, 8th, and 14th; how the Supreme Court's thinking on these rights has changed over time; how the 14th Amendment changed the Court's thinking on rights through the doctrine of "incorporation"; important Supreme Court cases. DON'T panic.Okay, we admit that that was a lot of material right there. But look at it this way—that's basically the whole exam! And we summarized it in 273 words! You won't be expected to get it all overnight. But if there's an area covered on the test, it's certainly among those listed above. And it might also help you relax if you knew how the exam is broken down among those topics, so you'll know where to train your fire. DO know how this puppy breaks down.In their infinite kindness, our test-planners have once again deigned to tell us where you'll be focusing most of your attention. Here is what your 60 multiple-choice questions will look like: Constitutional Underpinnings: 5-15% (3-9 Qs) Political Beliefs and Behaviors: 10-20% (6-12 Qs) Political Parties: 10-20% (6-12 Qs) Institutions of National Government: 35-45% (21-27 Qs) Public Policy: 5-15% (3-9 Qs) Civil Rights and Liberties: 5-15% (3-9 Qs) Ideally, that's also how you should spend your study time—since the exam gives a third to almost a half of its attention to the section on institutions, you should, too. (Of course, you'll also want to focus on what you find most difficult; maybe institutions are a breeze for you, but you keep forgetting Supreme Court cases.) As for the free-response, there are no guarantees. Again, it's good to spread out your studying, because you shouldn't expect more than one of the questions to be concentrated in any one area: for free-response, the exam-writers like to spread the love around. They also like to mix it up. Each free-response question has three or four parts, and you'll have to address them all. One part might draw on Constitutional Underpinnings (what did the founding fathers think of political parties?). One part might draw on the Political Parties area itself (which groups make up each party's coalition?). And yet another part might have to do with your knowledge of the Supreme Court (discuss a ruling that affected political parties' spending on campaigns). So, while the question as a whole is grouped around a common theme, you can't afford to be ignorant of any of the areas above. DO use process of elimination on multiple-choice.Okay, if you've taken an AP exam before, you could probably guess that this piece of advice would be here. But it bears repeating: most multiple-choice questions will have at least one or two forehead-slappingly wrong answers that can be easily crossed out. And hey, you can afford to go nuts with your pencil on your test booklet: it's the AP's gift to you. One other multiple-choice tip. You'll probably see a fair number of questions that include a word like EXCEPT, asking you to pick the only incorrect option. In those cases, if you see a pair that must be opposites, your answer is most likely one of that pair, because they both can't be true. For instance, if the question is "President Andrew Jackson was all of the following, EXCEPT," and your first two options are "(A) a man; (B) a woman," your answer will have to be one of the two, since he can't have been both. (Unless he was hiding something.) Directory: uploads uploads -> 587 Return function, r i(X) r i(0) r i(1) r i(2) r i(3) 1 0 2 4 6 Thermal Station, I 2 0 1 5 6 3 0 3 5 6 10 uploads -> Department of science and humanities department of mathematics part-a questions and answers uploads -> The Case Against the nypd’s Quota-Driven ‘Broken Windows’ Policing What Is It? uploads -> For want of a nail uploads -> Ownership Models There are two different types of ownership models uploads -> Police Militarization uploads -> City of rising star regular meting thursday, july 14, 2016 uploads -> Township of winfield uploads -> Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act of 2014 uploads -> The Black Panther Party’s Ten-Point Program What We Want Now! Download 0.75 Mb. Share with your friends:
|