What is on the
AP English Language exam?

The multiple-choice section, unit by unit

45 questions in 60 minutes.

The shape of it

Two halves that test different things. Twenty-four questions on reading passages for rhetoric, then twenty-one on revising someone else's draft.

What this covers, and what it does not

No AP exam is entirely multiple choice, and AP English Language is no exception. The multiple-choice section is 45% of your total score. The rest is three essays in 2 hours 15 minutes: synthesis, rhetorical analysis and argument.

Our practice exam is the multiple-choice section only. Three essays need a reader with judgment; forty-five questions about what a sentence is doing can be marked cleanly, and each wrong option comes back with the misreading it represents. We would rather say that plainly than sell you something described as a full AP English Language exam that is not one.

What actually moves the score

The writing half is the one students neglect and the easier one to move. It asks what a sentence is doing in a paragraph, not whether it is grammatical, and that is a habit rather than knowledge.

Two exams, calibrated against each other

There are two forms of this exam and they share no questions, and the passages differ, which is the point: rhetoric you can only spot in a passage you have already discussed is not a skill yet. Both unlock together for five credits. Every wrong option carries its own explanation saying what the student who picked it was probably thinking.