Excelling on the AP English
Language & Composition Exam
About This Book
This test-preparation guide has been written to help you learn how to do well on the Advanced Placement Examination in English Language & Composition. It will help you become familiar with the requirements of the examination and give you a chance to put your mastery of the AP exam to the test with a series of specially developed practice exams. The introductory sections of the book are devoted to explaining the test, reviewing and expanding your critical reading skills, and helping you learn how to approach writing essays and answering multiple-choice questions in the ways the AP examination will expect you to be able to do successfully.
This book provides three full-length practice exams with thorough explanations of every answer to help you pinpoint your problem areas. By taking these practice exams and devoting time to going through our targeted subject review, you’ll be well prepared to succeed on the AP English Language & Composition Exam. In addition, this book includes a glossary of key literary terms with 65 entries, all fully defined.
About the Exam
The Advanced Placement Examination in English Language & Composition is geared toward the student who has studied the mechanics of writing and rhetoric at an advanced level and wishes to pursue college credit.
Take care not to confuse the AP Examination in English Language & Composition with the AP Examination in Literature & Composition. The Literature exam focuses on literature and literary criticism, while the Language exam deals with writing as a craft. This book is designed to help you prepare for the AP Examination in English Language & Composition only.
The AP English Language & Composition Exam is divided into two sections:
• Section 1 – Multiple Choice (60 minutes—accounts for 45% of total score)
Five or six reading passages, with an average of 10 questions each.
• Section 2 – Free Response (up to 120 minutes—accounts for 55% of total score)
Three essay questions.
The first section consists of five or six reading passages and sixty multiple-choice
questions, which you will have one hour to complete. Each passage will be followed
by an average of ten questions, and thereafter the passage will not be referred to again.
Do not feel pressured to remember each reading; just digest them one at a time and
move on. After reading the passage, you will have approximately one minute to answer
each question.
The second section of the AP English Language & Composition Exam consists of
three essay questions and is divided such that you will have forty minutes to write each
essay. You will not be able to go back to an essay after the allotted time has elapsed.
Note that each essay has very specific instructions, and most have a passage that you
will read critically to answer the essay question. Your essays will be scored according
to the essay structure, the clarity of your writing, and the extent to which you have
answered the question.
Scoring the Exam
The multiple-choice section of the exam is scored by machine. Your score on this part of the exam is determined simply by adding the number of correct responses and subtracting one-quarter of a point for each wrong answer. Questions left blank do not count in any way—positive or negative—toward the score. The essay section of the examination is graded by well-trained human readers to ensure consistency. Each essay is read by more than one reader, and the scores of different readers are averaged together if they should disagree. Each essay is given a final grade from 0 to 9, and the total essay score is simply the total of these three essay scores. The maximum essay score is thus always 27, and each essay contributes equally to the essay score.
The multiple-choice section generally is weighted to account for about 45% of the total composite score, and the essay section is weighted to account for the remainder of the composite score. These weighted scores are then added together to get a composite score. These scores are broken down into ranges, and AP grades of 1 through 5 for the overall exam are assigned on the basis of the composite-score ranges. The exact composite-score ranges that correspond to each AP exam grade are adjusted slightly each year in accordance with statistical information that is gathered on the examination each year in order to keep year-to-year results as comparable as possible.
The following section explains how AP grades are calculated based on the multiple- choice section scores and the essay scores. You can use this section to help get a feel for how you might do on the exam. You can undoubtedly come up with various ways to see how your grade on the overall exam might be affected if you wrote two essays well but had real problems with the third one, for instance. You can also use the section to estimate what your exam score is likely to be based on how well you do on the practice exams given later in the book. Remember that this section simply gives you a general idea of what your exam score is likely to be. The actual scaling factors and composite-score ranges that the College Board uses to calculate the actual AP grades on each test annually will be somewhat different.
Multiple-Choice Scoring:
______________ – (1/4 × _____________ ) = _______________________
Number Number Raw score
correct incorrect (rounded to nearest
whole number)
Essay Scoring:
_____________ + __________ + __________ = __________
Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Essay score
(out of 9) (out of 9) (out of 9) (rounded to nearest
whole number)
As you can see, there is a deduction for guessing on the multiple-choice section, so you are discouraged from random guessing or filling in of answers. Depending on the number of multiple-choice questions, the Essay score is multiplied by approximately 3.3 to 3.8. This is called the Weighted Essay score. (If necessary, the Multiple Choice score is also weighted.)
Each section of the test is weighted according to time allotted to that section; that is, the Multiple Choice score counts approximately 60 points, and the Weighted Essay score counts approximately 90 points, to make a total of approximately 150 points.
The Multiple Choice score is added to the Weighted Essay scor...
