Question Types on the AP English Language and Composition Exam

The AP English Language and Composition Exam

Throughout your study of AP English Language and Composition, you have learned about some of the major components of the exam itself. There are three essays: the rhetorical analysis essay, the argumentative essay, and the synthesis essay. Before you compose these three timed essays, however, you have a multiple-choice section of the exam.

The Multiple Choice Section of the Exam consists of 45 Multiple Choice Questions. There are NO penalties for incorrect answers. The questions are broken down into 5 sets of reading and writing questions:

23–25 Reading questions that ask you to read and analyze nonfiction texts
20–22 Writing questions that ask you to “read like a writer” and consider revisions to stimulus texts

Please note, you will have 1 hour to complete this section of the exam.

Types of Questions

Here are the types of questions you can expect from the exam:

Comprehension of the passage
Inference [The author implies___/suggests___]
Relationship between content
Identification of rhetorical strategies
Analysis of rhetorical strategies
Function of lines/paragraphs
Effect of syntax

Practice Activity

In the activity below, see if you can determine how to spot these types of questions.

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