welcome to this epic ap language and composition exam review!! in this i will cover the types of multiple choice and free response questions in an easy-to-understand way to make mine and your studying easier! woo! i tend to add in some curse words and unhinged references, so keep your eyes peeled for those. i put elements of essay-writing into different analogies such as riding a hoverboard or being a pimp and having bitches (yes, i really did say that. it’s in the synthesis section.)

multiple choice

• the goal here is to get at least 50%.

• the multiple choice questions account for 45% of your final score and there are 45 questions, making each question worth one point. 50% of 45 is about 23.

• you get 12-15 minutes per passage, approximately. try to spend 30 seconds on each question.

• general strategies

  • answer every single question. if you guess, you have a 25% chance of getting it correct. if you don’t you have 0%. now we might not be all math geniuses because this is an English exam but i think we can all understand what one is greater.

  • don’t spend too much time on one question. either skip it and come back to it later, or guess.

  • utilize the process of elimination to eliminate answer choices.

  • look closely at the nuance of word choices

    • nuance - a subtle distinction or variation.

  • make sure the answer you picked answers the question asked. often, one answer will still be true and relevant to the text, but will not be the best answer for the question provided.

  • answer the question in your head before looking at the answer choices.

  • thoroughly read each question and gain a good understanding of the point they are trying to convey. then, this will cut down on the time it takes you to answer each question.

  • do not second guess yourself!

  • make sure you read through all of the answer choices before selecting one.

  • look for the wrong answers instead of the right ones.

• reading questions

  • these questions have you read a passage and answer questions about your comprehension of the text. these can be speeches, letters, articles, basically anything. they can also come from any time period.

  • these questions can ask for

    • tone

    • purpose

    • fiction

    • word choice

    • … and many others

  • determine what the passage is about as you read it.

  • if you’re running out of time, prioritize the questions that pertain to certain lines and do them first because they take less time to complete.

  • in a question regarding a line, read the sentence before and the sentence after.

  • pay attention to contextual information that could be included in the introduction. don’t be afraid to bring your cultural understanding into the test if it is something that is relevant.

  • don’t be afraid to mark up the text. underline things, circle things, write little notes.

    • personally, i enjoy writing a few-word summary next to each chapter.

  • read the question, and then think about it for a second before looking at the answer choices. what do you think the answer is?

• writing questions

  • these questions have you read a draft of a written work and answer questions on how to edit the text.

  • understand how to use basic transition words such as however, therefore, and furthermore and more complicated ones such as subsequently and moreover.

  • when asked if a writer should keep or delete a passage consider if the sentence

    • relevant to the purpose of the text

    • clarifies or declares new information

    • adds unnecessary information that distracts from the purpose.

rhetoric

• in this essay you’re going to have to read a letter/speech/other piece of writing and analyze the choices the writer made to convey their point and how they were effective. for your theme, it depends on the subject matter at hand, but usually it is the effect the choices had on the audience and the impact it leaves.

• remember SPACECAT (i will cover the cat later)

  • speaker - who is speaking? was it an individual? a business? a government? try and think of anything you can pull together about the speaker before reading the text. for political leaders, are they a democrat or republican? do they have a certain persona that is expected of them? (this could also contribute to ethos)

  • purpose - why did the author create this? what are they trying to achieve? are they trying to educate, entertain, persuade, inform, incite, motivate, inspire, or something else? how does the medium or channel they are communicating in help accomplish the purpose? this will be your thesis for your essay, usually.

  • audience - who is the intended audience of this excerpt? is it towards the general public or a specific group of individuals? was it towards the loved one of the author or someone they didn’t know at all? who did the message reach beyond the intended audience? perhaps in a political speech, it could reach leaders of enemy nations. what expectations or assumptions does the author place on the audience? what impact did the audience’s culture, background, mood, or experience have on the message and effectiveness of the rhetorical choices.

  • context: when and where was this excerpt delivered? was it a letter? was it written for the newspaper? was it spoken on the radio? was it on television? was it live in front of an audience? how was it intended to be displayed? think about what you know about that time period. would the message have been interpreted differently if it were delivered in a different time or place?

  • exigence - why does this message matter, especially in the moment or creation, for the speaker or audience? what pushed the author to create the text? were they inspired? angered? frustrated? some secret fourth thing? does the message have a lasting impact?

• while reading the text, you should be looking for

  • pronoun choice (i? me? we? you? he? she? they?)

  • patterns (repeated words, phrases, sentences, sounds)

  • imagery

  • changes in sentence structure or patterns in sentence structure

  • figures of speech (metaphors, similes, hyperbole, etc)

  • allusions/quotes/historical references

• personally, i like to think about the choices i have made in personal work to convey my point to my audience. but not everyone has that level of understanding and that is okay!

• college board does not have a list of every rhetorical choice an author uses, so feel free to use a strange or unique thing you notice if you think that you can build a good argument for it. you can relate the first and last sentences of a text, for example.

• for the bulk of your essay, your body paragraphs, you should take SPACE into consideration but focus primarily on the CAT part.

  • choices - what specific communication did the author use to convey the message? why did they make those choices? what impact does diction, sentence structure, organization, layout, color, figures of speech, etc. have on the message? basically, all the things i told you to look for in that indented bullet point list above me.

  • appeals - how did the creator intend to appeal to their audience? think ethos, pathos, and logos. did they rely on emotions, their existing credentials, or logical reasoning? did they bring up any certain ideas to try to appeal to the audience and convey their point.

  • tone - what is the tone of the text? happy? serious? energized? how do you know? what do you learn about the speaker’s attitude from the tone? does the tone shift for certain parts of the writing? why do you think it does that?

• in the essay, the majority of it should be focused on the why and not the what. anyone can identify the author’s use of metaphor or repeated words. what college board is looking for is your ability to put them all together with a big ribbon.

• pick the two or three rhetorical choices you can argue the best and make those into your body paragraphs. use the basic outline says, does, because to format your paragraphs.

  • says: statements summarizing the content of text. this is where you will pull a direct quote from the thing you just read.

  • does: what choice is this? make as little reference to the content as possible.

  • because: what is the author’s purpose in using the technique?

• your choices don’t have to be correct or accurate to what the writer originally wanted as long as they make sense. in my own personal work, i use rhetoric without even realizing. at the end of the day, it does not matter. as long as you can argue your points well, you’re golden.

• ignore words like “uses” or “utilizes” and instead use rhetorically accurate verbs!

• do not just say they use “ethos” “pathos” or “logos.” those are the effects of the rhetorical choices they make. instead of saying they “use pathos” say “the author creates a sense of guilt by…”

argument

• these essays focus on proving your point through whatever you can come up with.

• of course, there’s a chance that you’ll get a prompt you won’t care about at all. if in that situation (or, hell, even with a prompt you do like) imagine a debate in your head against the person you hate the most. like, james corden or that girl that bullied you in the first grade. whoever it is, use that pent up anger you have towards them to good use on this essay.

• make sure you really read your prompt. highlight it. draw circles around it. make sure you fully understand what it is they are asking of you.

• you can either

  • agree with a claim (yes this is true!),

  • disagree with a claim (no this is not true!)

  • qualify an essay (well, x is true, but y is not.) qualified essays are more complicated because they involve agreeing with most of the prompt and disagreeing with part, or disagreeing with most of the prompt but agreeing with some.

• similar to rhetorical analysis, it doesn’t matter what you say as long as you say it well. if the college board member reading your essay was going to mark down your points because they did not personally agree with you, well, they shouldn’t be working there because that’s bias.

• your thesis statement doesn’t have to list off what your evidence is, it just has to sum up what you are arguing in your essay. plan out your thesis and evidence before you begin writing an essay, that way you can put them in a nice order.

  • for example, “most people regard the internet to be a positive addition to society. while the internet can be a positive addition to some people’s lives, it has forced children to grow up too quickly, been detrimental to mental health in teenagers, and causes all people to have an addiction to viewing content. the internet is overrated.

• it sums up what the argument is and the smaller sub-claims used in the essay. you can get into all of the books and historical evidence and everything else in the gut of the essay.

• for an argument essay, you can back up your claim with anything. college board is looking for a broad range in support through various topics so remember this acronym: CHORES

  • current events

  • history

  • own experience (be careful with this one)

  • reading

  • entertainment

  • subject

• don’t get all of your evidence from movies or history, branch out into different topics.

  • think of it like a burrito. have you ever had a bite of a burrito and all you tasted was just rice? you don’t want your essay to be filled with just rice. you want your essay to be a delectable bite of beans, cheese, salsa, beef.

• do not use direct quotes or statistics because there’s no way you can remember those off the top of your head while typing this exam! they’re going to assume you made it up.

• you can use whatever you want, no matter how niche. even if you are the only person that has ever read a book, you can use it as a source (looking at you seeking jake ryan by m.f. lorson and jessica bucher). as long as you prove your point, you’re golden.

• in fact, you should use topics that are less-known as long as you can back them up. try to avoid using commonly discussed people such as bill gates or walt disney.

• if you’re using fiction as a piece of evidence, you have to acknowledge that it is fiction. You can say “Even in the fictional world, this concept holds true,” or “Art imitates life in the case of.”

• do not get lost in over explaining your evidence. your body paragraphs should be a mix of your evidence and commentary.

  • think of it like this, you are riding one of those hoverboard things that everyone and their mother had back in 2016. if you put all your weight on your left foot (evidence), you’re going to go nowhere and go in circles. if you put all of your weight on your right foot (commentary) you are also going to spin around in circles and go nowhere. you need to use both.

  • of course, you can’t do both literally at the same time in the essay. you have to swap between them effectively and make sure they are equal.

• you can include a point that your opponent could make in their argument, and refute it as a big middle finger to tie up your essay. a lot of students like to include this at the end of their essay.

  • using the example i gave for my thesis before, i could use “the internet brings people together” as my counter-claim and then refute it by highlighting that meeting people online can often have negative consequences such as cat-fishing and grooming.

synthesis

• i am going to start off by downright saying that these are my worst essays.

• a synthesis essay is like an argument essay in the way that you have to agree, disagree, or qualify a claim. but instead of allowing you to use your head to come up with your evidence they provide it for you. you are given about 6-7 sources about the same topic.

• before you read the sources, come up with your own judgement. this way the sources won’t sway you and you can better build up your argument with them. you can use these pieces of evidence to back up your claim or counter them.

• take fifteen minutes and thoroughly read all of the sources. highlight them. take notes on them. whatever you want. you want to use at least FOUR of these sources in your essay. these could be articles, pictures, studies, interviews, data, or other things.

• sometimes, you genuinely will not give a single fuck about the prompt they give you. windmills? who cares about windmills? try to choose a point that has the most evidence lined up for it, even if you do not personally agree with it.

  • remember, you guide your evidence, your evidence doesn’t guide you.

• coming up with a thesis for this is the same as with argument.

• in your body paragraphs, you want to make the sources “talk” essentially, you want to have your sources build off of each other like that bite of that burrito, except instead of different topics it is just different sources they have already given you.

  • it’s like mambo number five. a little bit of source a in my life, a little bit of source c by my side, a little bit of source e’s all i need, a little bit of source b’s what i see. you are a pimp and your bitches are the sources.

• you can use one of those handy sentences that ties up multiple of the sources together nicely. you want more support than evidence. you should group your evidence together by how they fit on your sub claims, just how you would with an argument essay.

  • although source x says this and source y says this, they both fail to acknowledge that…

  • (my argument) is reinforced by source x, which is then further clarified by source e, which states…

  • while source x and source y both make valid points about the thing, source d expresses a dissimilar view that helps prove that other thing.

  • because x says [blank], and y argues [blank], they both succeed in acknowledging that [blank]

  • separately, x and y shed very dissimilar views on the issue, but taken together, both sources suggest that [blank].

  • as both x and y acknowledge, (my central argument) is crucial because [blank.]

general essay tips

• in rhetorical analysis and synthesis, properly quote your evidence. use [brackets] if you have to change a word to have it fit better with the flow of your sentence. make sure quotes are only a few words in length. i like to drop single word quotes when highlighting word choice.

• with the exception of argument, ignore using personal pronouns. in argument, this is only acceptable if you are using personal experience as evidence to back up your claim.

• when referring to someone, use their full name at first and then refer to them only by their last name. if they’re a president, you can use “President (Last Name)”

• have strong transitions. ignore weak one-word transitions like “to begin with” or “next” or “after that” these are babyish and weak. instead, smoothly flow from one topic to another. this is why it is important to plan before you write (i guess in the digital age copy and paste exists, so it’s not as important as paper essays) so you can put your essays into the best order that will transition the smoothest. they should build off of each other.

• remember to use rhetorically accurate verbs!

• make sure you thoroughly read the prompt and have a full understanding of what you are being asked. skimming the introductory paragraphs is not a corner to cut!

• if you finish early, reread what you wrote and edit that bad boy! it’s all typed up so you can add and delete things at your own pleasure. no white-out needed.

• you can’t just say someone uses “diction” or “syntax.” this is the same thing as saying they use words or sentences. well,,, yeah duh. instead throw in an adjective before it and then it’ll make sense. if you’re gonna use your big boy words use them correctly.