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For Dummies is a registered trademark of Wiley Publishing, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Used here by license.It started in kindergarten, right? Someone pushed a pencil into your chubby little hand and said, “This is a test.” All of a sudden you weren’t allowed to talk to your friends, ask a handy grownup for help, or play with that interesting new purple crayon. You left the land where learning was fun and entered Test Land. And you’re still in it! But now the stakes feel higher, especially for the AP, which comes with its own shrink-wrap, barcode labels, student packs, and color-coded sections. The only thing that remains the same is that you still aren’t allowed to talk, ask for most types of help, or play with a cool new crayon.
Regardless of your situation, while you’re in AP English Exam Land you need a map. And you’re in luck because in this article, I give you just that. I tell you what to expect — what the test looks like, how long it takes, how to sign up, what it covers, and all sorts of un-fun but useful things.
Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition Exam
The Content and Structure of the ExamWhen you walk into the test room on a lovely day in May, what kind of questions will you face? Briefly, the College Board hits you with two sections, one for multiple-choice and one for essays. Check out this chart for more details:
Section Time Number of Details about the Questions
Allowed Questions
Multiple- 1 hour About 55, give Five potential answers to each
Choice or take a couple question; you interpret five or six
pieces of literature that are
printed on the exam; selections include poems, maybe a dramatic scene or a slice of memoir, and one or two excerpts from novels
Essays 2 hours 3 Two essay questions are based
on a piece of literature (a poem, a passage from a play or novel, and so on) that’s provided
on the exam; the third is an open-ended essay based on a work of literary quality that you choose
What to expect if you take an AP English class
Every teacher of AP English has a certain degree of freedom in the design of the course. This is a very good idea, too. In my experience, getting English teachers to agree on something is a little harder than herding cats. Though AP English Literature classes vary, some things remain the same:
An AP English Literature course must, according to College Board rules, throw college-level work at you. In other words, the course material has to be difficult.
The College Board doesn’t mandate a particular reading list, but it does ask that students read a wide variety of literature in the AP class. By the time you finish your course, the College Board wants you to have read something from every genre and every time period from the 16th century through the present day. Both British and American writers must be on the reading list as well as some translated works. (You don’t have to read everything in your AP year; you just have to read it sometime.)
All the material is supposed to be of good literary quality, which means writing that rewards close reading. If you read a work once and you get it all, it isn’t AP material. However, if you find something new to think about every time you read a particular work, you’ve witnessed literary quality.
Expect the amount of reading to equal or surpass the amount you read in an honors English class. Ten or 12 full-length works and a good fistful of poetry is what you should expect.
Some AP English teachers start you off with homework for the summer. You may have to read a couple of books or write something to hand in on the first day of school. Oh, joy!
Expect to write a lot. In fact, expect to write everything from informal journal entries to polished essays.
The grading may be tougher in an AP class than in a regular, non–AP English section. Evaluation of your work in an AP course is more stringent because teachers apply college-level standards.
Literary selections on the exam may include anything from Tudor times (16th century) onwards. The selections will most likely be American or British, though works from other English-speaking countries may pop up as well. Literature translated into English from another language is also fair game. One-third to slightly less than half of the literature is usually poetry.
In addition to the time it takes for you to complete the exam, tack on 45 minutes to an hour for getting settled, listening to directions, taking a break, and having your paper collected at the end. Expect to be at the test center for about four hours. (I recommend that you get there 30 to 45 minutes early just to make sure you’re registered on time and aren’t flustered as the test begins.) When all is said and done, add about two weeks for screaming, “It’s over!”
Taking a Closer Look at Typical AP Exam Questions
Hamlet asks, “To be or not to be?” That’s probably the most famous question ever asked, but you won’t find it on the AP English Literature and Composition exam. After all, who could possibly know the right answer? But you will find questions — lots of them! — when you sit down on AP exam day. This section gathers the usual suspects, the question types that appear year after year, so you can make their acquaintance and ace the test.
The multiple-choice questions, at their easiest, are standard reading comprehension queries. At their most difficult, however, these questions are downright torturous. The exam writers ask you to shoehorn your interpretation of the literary work into one of five choices, none of which may be worded exactly the way you perceive the poem or passage. Somewhere in the middle (in terms of difficulty) are questions that address how the piece is written or the way in which the writing technique and meaning work together. The following sections go over the most common types of multiple-choice questions.
The AP English selections are tough, and many times they come with tough vocabulary. Or they may come with common vocabulary that has an obscure meaning. For example, you may see a question like this one:
In the context of line 34, “fall” means
(A) autumn
(B) slip
(C) hit the deck
(D) attachment of fake hair
(E) loss of respect or approval
The tricky part here is deciding which meaning appears in line 34, because all of the answers may be definitions of “fall.” Yes, even choice (D). Look it up if you don’t believe me!
To see whether you can decode complex writing, the exam writers ask you what happened on the simplest, literal level. However, because the exam is supposed to be difficult (and because great writers often employ complex sentences), you may have to untangle complicated syntax, the literary term for how the sentence is put together in order to unearth a simple fact. Here’s a type of question you may come across from this category:
The actions of the shopkeeper include all of the following EXCEPT
(A) faking celebrity autographs
(B) inserting spinach leaves between chapters 28 and 29 of his rival’s autobiography
(C) charging a “shipping and handling” fee to customers in the store
(D) playing annoyingly soft versions of hard-rock classics
(E) hiring an indie band to promote his store
All you have to do to answer this sort of question is figure out what’s being asked (in this case, the answer that does not appear), and then you simply have to go back to the passage and check the facts. However, decoding the passage may turn your hair gray.
Wow, do the exam writers love tone! I don’t know why they’re so stuck on this topic, but they are. You have to determine whether the passage sounds sad, argumentative, sarcastic, or ironic. Tone often depends partly on diction, or word choice (formal, colloquial, and so on). Check out this example:
The tone of the passage may best be characterized as
(A) nostalgic
(B) ironic
(C) descriptive
(D) speculative
(E) respectful
As you’re reading a passage, hear it in your head and think about the author’s language to get a head start on tone. Put those factors together with meaning, and you’ve got a winner.
Inference questions ask you to extend beyond what’s stated in the selection. They force you to take the next logical step. You also may be asked to figure out the attitude of the author or of a character or speaker toward a certain topic or issue, based on the clues in the selection. Here’s what an inference question might look like:
The shopkeeper is never arrested most likely because
A) the cop is involved in the spinach incident
(B) the cop has a deep-seated fear of spinach
(C) the shopkeeper’s humble assistant has super powers
(D) everyone in the village loves spinach leaves
(E) the shopkeeper becomes a superhero, stops time, and removes the evidence
Okay, I played around a little here, but I know you get the point. You have to leap beyond the passage into the territory of probability, using the content of the passage as your guide.
Things aren’t always what they seem in literary works. After all, just to make things interesting and to add meaning, authors often employ figurative language. For instance, symbols, metaphors, and similes show up all over the place (including on the AP English exam). Check out this sample question:
The spinach leaves in line 12 may symbolize
(A) the shopkeeper’s love of nature
(B) the rival’s lack of muscle tone
(C) an unhealthy attachment to vegetables
(D) death
(E) the gap between appearance and reality
I threw in choices (D) and (E) because those themes appear nearly everywhere in literature. However, when you answer this sort of question, be sure to focus on the element of figurative language (the symbol, metaphor, or simile, for example) that they’re asking about — not just on the piece in general.
Don’t expect a ton of multiple-choice questions filled with literary terms describing form, structure, and style. Even though literary terms still appear here and there on the exam, they seem to be falling out of favor in recent years. However, you’ll definitely see questions that address how the piece is written. Even though you may not see a question about literary terms, it never hurts to be prepared. Take a look at this example:
The style of the fourth paragraph differs from that of the first three paragraphs in that it is
(A) descriptive, not metaphorical
(B) argumentative, not descriptive
(C) symbolic, not literal
(D) analytical, not metaphorical
(E) expository, not analytical
Even without the fancy literary vocabulary, these kinds of questions can be tough because you have only a couple of minutes to examine a paragraph or two and figure out which terms apply. To answer this type of question, look at the section of text that the question focuses on and try out the most likely candidates for Answer of the Year. See what fits the text.
On the essay portion of the AP English exam, the College Board tests your skills, not your ability to recall information. The questions are designed to determine whether you know how to analyze a literary work and write about it, not to see whether you can name four Romantic poets. Nor do you have to memorize dates or know the names and characteristics of literary movements. In fact, you aren’t expected to have any factual stuff stored in your memory except some literary terms. And even then, you don’t need to know many of them. You do, however, need to prove that you can do the following:
Relate the way a piece is written to its meaning and its effect on the audience. Even though they aren’t as common in the multiple-choice section of the exam, form, structure, and style questions are frequent fliers on the essay portion. For instance, you may see questions that ask you to comment on the poetic devices that the author employs or to discuss the way in which one element of fiction (setting or characterization, perhaps) contributes to the effect of the piece as a whole.
Provide evidence for your assertions. Support for your claims is a key element of the essay. When you write the first two essays, you’re expected to quote directly from the literary selections provided. You can’t easily quote when you write the open-ended essay (unless you have a very good memory), but you do need to use details from the work that you’re discussing.
The essay questions have what are called prompts. These prompts provide a central idea that your essay must address in the context of the literary selection provided or the literary work you’ve chosen for the open-ended question. You’ve probably seen prompts in every English class you’ve ever taken. Here are a few examples: “Discuss the role of friendship in . . .”;
“Discuss loyalty to family or country conflicts with personal morality in . . .”; “Discuss the role of figurative language in . . .”; We English teachers manufacture prompts even when we’re sleeping. (Kinda creepy, huh?)
The open-ended essay has a prompt and then a list of suggested works. You can choose one of those works to write about, or you can substitute something of similar quality. Just remember that on the AP English exam, “quality” is not your call. The College Board graders decide. Your best bet is to play it safe and choose a work that you studied in school. You can write a winning Pulitzer Prize essay on your favorite Spiderman comic some other time.
One weird breed of AP English essay is the paired selection. Not every exam has one of these paired essay questions, but many do. The pairs may be two poems, two prose pieces, or one of each genre. They address the same subject or consider the same themes. The prompt asks you to compare and contrast the works. Nervous? Don’t be.
All Things Score-Related
When you finish the AP English exam, your job is over, but the scoring gnomes of the College Board are just getting started. The multiple-choice sheets are bundled up and sent through a scanner, and the essays are sent to hotels where they drink margaritas and eat macadamia nuts from the minibar. Okay, I’m kidding about the margaritas and the macadamia nuts, but not about the hotels. Here’s how it works: The College Board hires platoons of high school and college English teachers and sends them, as well as the essays, to hotels. For one funfilled week, the teachers read and grade all those essays while ingesting vast amounts of caffeine. You knew you wanted to be an English teacher, didn’t you?
During multiple-choice scoring, all those darkened ovals made with No. 2 pencil lead flash through a scanning machine, and then out pops a number, which is determined this way:
The multiple-choice counts as 45 percent of your final score.
Each correct multiple-choice answer receives one point. Questions left blank receive no points.
Every wrong multiple-choice answer deducts 1⁄4 point. Therefore, it’s best to guess only if you can eliminate a couple of choices.
The raw multiple-choice score is converted with a complicated formula that varies slightly from test to test. The College Board has platoons of statisticians who create this formula based on the average number of students who chose the correct answer.
Most students panic a little the first time they try their hand at an AP multiple-choice section. Even excellent readers who can crack a poem at first glance find the multiple-choice questions difficult. Not to worry: Simply practice with this article and you won’t have that initial panic on exam day.
Also, calm your nerves with this information: You can get quite a few multiple-choice questions wrong (10 or even a few more) and still score a five overall, which is the highest score you can get on the exam. Furthermore, the College Board expects that most students will leave some questions blank. After all, the exams have approximately 55 multiple-choice questions, to be answered in 60 minutes. Plus you have to read the selections. Not surprisingly, time is an issue. But remember that it’s an issue for everyone taking the test, and the scoring allows for that fact.
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For Dummies is a registered trademark of Wiley Publishing, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Used here by license.