How to use an AP English Language practice test

What this exam actually asks of you

The AP English Language multiple-choice section is 45 questions in 60 minutes and carries 45% of your final grade. The rest is three essays in 2 hours 15 minutes: synthesis, rhetorical analysis and argument, which a computer cannot mark. A practice sitting covers the half that can be marked exactly.

The mistake that ruins the result

Reading more literature. This exam is nonfiction argument, and a student who has read a great deal of fiction and no argument is well-read and unprepared.

How to sit it

All 45 questions in one 60-minute block, no pauses. The real exam hands you the whole clock and lets you spend it, so a practice run broken into units removes the only decision the section actually asks you to make.

What to do the day after

Score the two halves separately. The revision questions are the half students neglect and the easier half to move, and a combined score hides which is which.

What a practice test owes you

An AP grade is a 1 to 5 cut from a composite whose boundaries move every year, so a practice percentage on AP English Language converts to nothing. What converts is knowing which questions you got wrong and why.

Our AP bank holds 544 questions and 1,632 wrong answers, and every one of those wrong answers carries its own sentence saying what a student who picked it was probably thinking. Not one is left bare, and a build of our site fails if that stops being true. For AP English Language that matters because the wrong options are written to be the answer a student gives when they have half the idea, which is not something a score can tell you.

We also measure whether the paper can be beaten without being read. On our AP exams the best any length-based strategy scores is 38%, against the 25% that pure guessing gives. A practice test where picking the longest option beats guessing is measuring the person who wrote it, not your child.

The essays vary with the prompt and the reader; the multiple choice arrives in the same shape every year, which makes it the half where practice reliably converts into points.

Where to sit one

We publish two AP English Language forms with no questions shared between them, so a second sitting measures what you learned rather than what you remembered. A free sample is on the samples page, and it needs no account.

More on this exam: the full AP English Language guide, what is on it, pacing the section.

Common questions

How long should a AP English Language practice test take?

45 questions in 60 minutes for the multiple-choice section, which is 45% of the grade. The free-response half is separate and needs a human reader.

Should a AP English Language practice test be timed?

Yes, the full 60 minutes in one block. The real exam hands you the whole clock and lets you decide how to spend it, and that decision is most of the difficulty.

Is the score the useful part of a AP English Language practice test?

No, the reasons are. Every one of the 1,632 wrong answers in our AP bank carries a sentence saying what a student who picked it was probably thinking, and for AP English Language that is what turns a list of misses into a plan.

How often should we sit a AP English Language practice test?

Twice: once early enough that there is time to fix what it shows, and once close enough to May to check that you did.