Score Higher on AP Language 2024: MCQ Tips from Students

Multiple Choice Questions

This guide organizes advice from past students who got 4s and 5s on their exams. We hope it gives you some new ideas and tools for your study sessions. But remember, everyone's different—what works for one student might not work for you. If you've got a study method that's doing the trick, stick with it. Think of this as extra help, not a must-do overhaul.

📌 Overview

• Students are asked to read and analyze a variety of nonfiction tests and select the best possible revisions. There is about an even split of reading comprehension and grammar/style questions
• 45% of Exam Score
• 45 questions in 60 minutes
  • 1 minute and 20 seconds per question

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💭 General Advice

Tips on mindset, strategy, structure, time management, and any other high-level things to know

• As my AP English Lang teacher always preached, your first instinct on a multiple question is correct the majority of the time. Don’t doubt yourself unless you find a true mistake in your original understanding of the question or if you have an answer-related epiphany!
  • Don’t overthink and talk yourself out of your first answer unless you have a clear reason grounded in the text.
• Read the question very carefully because a single word could make all the difference between two answers!
• Make sure that you don’t take too much time on one question! If you are stuck and you take too long, you can always go back to it later and answer the questions you are most confident in answering right away! This will help with time management throughout the test :)
• Don’t read the question and then jump to reading the answers right away. Read the question and think to yourself what the right answer is and then look at the options. This will help prevent feeling overwhelmed when you look at all the options.

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🫧 Before You Bubble

What should a student do in the first few minutes, before they start answering?

• This may be an unpopular technique, but read the question before reading the source. This can help you focus on what information you should focus on finding in the source.
• Look at the line numbers and quotes that are asked about so that you know which sections to focus on the most as you are reading the text.
• Find key words and phrases in the question that you understand and dissect the question into your own words. This is to create a better understanding of what the question is asking.
• If you find that you tend to get overwhelmed easily, decide which questions are the easiest and plan to do those first. All questions are worth the same number of points! It’s better to answer lots of easy questions than a few hard ones, even if you get them all right.

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ℹ️ Understanding the Sources

• Make sure to always read the source, author information, and title. Although it seems obvious, sometimes people forget and miss out on helpful info!
• If you’re taking the test on paper, ANNOTATE, ANNOTATE, ANNOTATE!! It may seem that at this point, annotation may be engrained permanently into your skull, but underlining and circling can help you single out information that could be important to answer the question.
• Look at the author, who their targeted audience is, rhetorical devices, and try to underline main topics that summarize the source and what is trying to be said.
• Always find specific details and group them together to create a better understanding of the source. Also find their purpose, their “why include this source?” and “how does this relate to the prompt?”. Always always annotate as well!!
• Rewrite the key points from every source again in YOUR OWN WORDS. This will help ensure that you’ve understood really important points.

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❓Choosing the Best Answer

• If you have no clue where to start for the answers, try to use the process of elimination to remove answers that obviously seem wrong. Using this technique can increase your odds of guessing correctly from 25% to 33% or even 50%!
• If the question is pointing at a specific quote and asking for its purpose in the text, look at the surrounding sentences because sometimes you have to look at it in context with the surrounding text to find the answer
• Process of elimination increases your chances of having the best answer.
• It may help to read (or in this case, whisper) the question and answers out loud (but not really loud) to make better sense of what it’s asking you.
• If an answer is partially right and partially wrong, then it is ENTIRELY WRONG. Eliminate it and move on!

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📑 Most Commonly Tested Topics

• They usually ask you how certain quotes relate to the work as a whole or how the author uses it to highlight the topic or main idea of the work.
• Rhetorical devices and their purpose/effect.
• MOWAAW (Meaning of the Work As A Whole)
• Audience and Purpose

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🔤 Grammar Rules to Know

• Who vs whom: Use “who” if the subject can be replaced by “she” or “he”, but use “whom” if it can be replaced by “him” or “her”; Example: Who hid the cookies? (she hid the cookies) VS The cookies belong to whom? (the cookies belong to him).
• Semicolons can be used in place of conjunctions to reduce repetition in word choice. (Ex: “She already walked her dog, yet he was still barking.” can become “She already walked her dog; he was still barking.”)

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📚 How to Read Quickly and Retain Info

• You may want to read quickly to save time, and then go back and reread sections that were initially confusing. That way you save time on the straightforward parts and lower your reading time overall.
• Apart from annotating, it may be helpful to read once very carefully to create a sense of the reading (imagine as if you are reading a book or test for fun) and read it again for the second time. The second time should have the purpose for connecting the information you know with the question. Observe very carefully in each and every detail. Remember most writing is intentional!
• After every blurb or paragraph you read, write the main idea in the margin of that section in your own words. This will help make sure that you are actively reading.