AP English Language and Composition Study Guide

If you are a parent reading this, PLEASE DO YOUR STUDENT A HUGE FAVOR! Send them this AP English Language and Composition exam prep resource ASAP.

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If you are a student reading this, we assume you are taking the AP English Language and Composition exam, and we want to help you prepare for your upcoming exam.

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We made this AP exam prep resource precisely for students who WANT:

• Knowledge of what is on the English Language and Composition exam
• Access to strategy notes
• AP Unit review videos
• Strategy review videos
• AP exam multiple choice practice problems with answers
• Access to full-length sample AP exams
• A 12-week study plan for the AP English Language and Composition exam

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This resource guide was made with the intention of organizing the BEST FREE RESOURCES the internet has to offer IN ONE PLACE for you. To avoid any sort of copyright infringement, we’re listing links to the pages where you can find all of these helpful resources and providing instructions on how to utilize these resources rather than including copies of them here.

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We’ve spent countless hours searching for quality AP exam prep materials over the last decade, so you don’t have to! If you would like to find more exam prep resources like this one for a different AP exam, head to https://www.simplifiedu.com/ap-exam-study-guides

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If you need better explanations of the concepts being tested or help from someone who has passed this exam…

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Give us a call at 310-584-7077 or email info@simplifiedu.com, and we’ll match you with an AP English Language and Composition tutor who can help you on your way to earning a 3, 4, or 5 on the exam.

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Now that we’ve explained what help this resource is supposed to provide you with and how we plan to do that let’s dive in!

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All your resources are on the pages that follow ⇩⬇⬇⇩

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Exam Structure and Weighting

Understanding the structure of the test, what’s covered, and how much each section is worth is essential to passing this exam and deciding how to spend your time prepping for this exam.

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Here’s a link to a downloadable poster with all this information:

AP English Language and Composition Exam Structure and Weighting Poster

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If you want to know more about each course skill covered on the exam and the percentage of questions on the test that utilize each skill covered on the exam, click the link below. Be sure to scroll down to the “Course Skills” section of the page to see these details.

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Here’s a link to the units covered on the test:

AP English Language and Composition Exam Skill Breakdowns

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Access AP Daily Videos

If you haven’t taken the time to check out the AP Daily videos that College Board provides to students when they enroll in their AP classes or sign up for the AP exam, then you are missing out on a huge resource.

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AP Daily videos are great for learning the concepts covered on the test. They are best used as a review resource to cover anything you need further explanation on from week to week when you are learning concepts covered on the test or learning a concept your teacher at school never bothered to cover in class.

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If you already feel pretty confident that you are at least familiar with every unit covered by the exam, you’re better off just watching the college board’s AP unit review videos posted to Youtube (see the next section for a link to unit review resources).

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Here’s a link to instructions on how to watch AP Daily Videos:

Get access To College Board AP Daily videos

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Access AP Review Sessions

The College Board has hired university professors and outstanding high school teachers to record unit review videos that will help you review weeks’ worth of exam concepts in a single sitting.

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Unfortunately, whoever manages the College Board’s Youtube content could not be bothered to put the unit review videos in sequential order from the first unit to the last. So, you’ll want to keep that in mind and start reviewing earlier units first if you want to review the content in order.

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Here is a link for students in the final stretch of their AP Exam review who want to watch College Board unit review videos with AP Teachers and Professors (you will need to navigate to the AP English Language and Composition review session playlist, but the content is very well organized, so it should be easy to find): College Board Unit Review Videos

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AP Exam Strategy Notes & Rhetorical Device Review

These resources call themselves study guides, but really they are just sets of written notes for reviewing useful strategies in both the multiple choice and free response sections as well as rhetorical devices you may encounter on the exam. The words to describe diction and tone resources provide a list of words with descriptions that you can use to articulate your ideas and analyze passages in the free response section of the test. Make sure you note the difference in how you would describe diction vs. tone. The scoring rubric for each essay type is also linked here. It will really help to review this so you can understand exactly what your graders are looking for!

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Here’s a link to downloadable AP calculus concept notes:

AP English Language and Composition Test-Taking Strategies

AP English Language and Composition Rhetorical Devices Review

AP English Language and Composition: Words to Describe Diction

AP English Language and Composition: Words to Describe Tone

AP English Language and Composition Scoring Rubrics

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AP Exam Multiple Choice Quizzes With Answers

I highly recommend using the resource below for taking bite-size practice quizzes that will test your knowledge of concepts covered on the exam and provide you question specific explanations of how to find the correct answers to the questions provided.

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The user interface for this resource is not slick or pretty, but it gets the job done. To avoid getting lost searching for any downloads available on this page, click the download you want and look for the heading that says “Link” or “Download,” and then follow the link provided. We would just stick to using the practice quizzes since the quality of the downloadable content is hit-or-miss on this site.

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Here’s the link to short multiple choice practice quizzes:

AP English Language and Composition Multiple Choice Quizzes

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AP Exam Multiple Choice Questions With Answers

The link below will take you to practice multiple-choice sections created to model the College Board’s AP English Language and Composition exams. The College Board has not released any official past exams, but these provide a really good idea of what the test format will look like and what types of questions you can expect to encounter on the exam.

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There are more practice problems here than you could ever need! The only catch is that they are laid out in a way that you are going to want to solve them on a separate sheet of paper and then check your answers at the back of the pdf later since there’s not much room to do your work on the test if you were going to print these questions.

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Multiple Choice Questions for Everyday Practice, 1

Multiple Choice Questions for Everyday Practice, 2

Multiple Choice Questions for Everyday Practice, 3

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REAL AP Exam Free Response Questions With Answers

The link below will take you to the College Board’s Free Response Questions test bank from past tests with answers and scoring guidelines to show you how student answers are scored.

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Real Free Response Questions And Answers

Hint: Try reading the samples, scoring them on your own, and then checking the score you gave with the score the College Board gave. This will help you focus your understanding of the rubric and the College Board’s expectations. You can also ask your AP teacher to grade one of your sample essays against the AP rubric for you to get an outside opinion on your writing.

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Practice AP English Language and Composition Full Exams

The best way to prepare for taking the AP English Language and composition exam is to practice answering questions that model an actual exam format. That’s why you should plan to use full-length exams designed like the actual AP exam as a part of your exam prep process.

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There are only a few full-length exam resources with answers and scoring keys released to the public, so please be sure to use these tests when you feel ready to test your knowledge of the concepts being tested on the exam. Below you can find these two full-length sample exams along with one additional MCQ-only practice. You can use this MCQ to practice only the timed MCQ section of the test if you desire, or you can pair it with one of the College Board released FRQs to replicate the situation of taking both sections back-to-back.

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DO NOT WASTE THE FULL-LENGTH PRACTICE TESTS!

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Plan to take at least one of the full-length practice tests timed in one sitting so that you know where you are with your ability to pass this exam.

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AP English Language and Composition Exam 1

AP English Language and Composition Exam 2

AP English Language and Composition Exam 3 (MCQ only)

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