Tips for how to write a DBQ

  1. Read and understand your prompt:

Using the following documents, analyze the causes and consequences of the Green Revolution in the period from 1945 to the present.

Use the documents to explain the causes and consequences of the Green Revolution. Please do not be nervous if you do not know anything about the topic. It is your ability to read, think, organize your thoughts, and write what you think that is being assessed.

  1. Read each document. Write notes on what they say, how they relate to the prompt, and how they relate to or contradict other documents. If a document seems odd, read the other ones and come back to it later. It should make more sense once you have read all of them
  2. Group your documents. If you have too many groups then find ways to combine them. If it seems like you have only two then try to split one into two groups.
  3. Write a thesis statement that states what you will write about. No stories or fluff. Just confidently write what you are going to talk about.

From 1945 to the present, the demand for food supply increased, leading to the Green Revolution (Doc 1, 2, and 3). The Green Revolution led to new technology (Doc 5, 7, and 9). It also had successful and failed attempts to improve soil conditions in farms (Doc 4, 6, 8, and 10) – Emily Vainstein

Notice that Emily goes straight to the point. She does not use vague words like “changes” or “causes” or “positive/negative.”There is no confusion about what she is going to write about and she answers the prompt: demand for food supply increased (cause), new technology (consequence), and attempts to improve soil conditions in farm (consequence). Now the reviewer is conditioned to take Emily seriously as a student who has read the documents, interpreted them, and has something clear to say about them related to the prompt.

Those societies that experienced the Green Revolution were also experiencing changes in their social structures. In Mexico, women were forced to work for free because the farmers couldn’t afford to pay wages to them and their husbands (Doc 7). The caste system in India was diminishing due to peasants rising to the middle and upper classes from increased in their food production (Doc 9). It would help to show how strong an effect this change had on Indian society if there was a newspaper article of an upper class Hindu man describing how offended he felt to have to accept people from the lower classes into his social class. Document 10 the Guatemalan National Coordinating Committee of Indigenous Peasants stated that the Green Revolution has made people lose respect for the indigenous seeds and has contaminated them. The members of the committee must also be concerned that the Green Revolution will lead Guatemalans to also lose respect of their cultural heritage. – Avery Hause

Restated the grouping and related it to the prompt? Changes in social structures (a consequence) Yep. Used evidence from documents? Yep. One of the documents used was a POV? Yep. Additional document that is related to the argument and the prompt? Yep.