Score Higher on AP Literature 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 analyze meaning and stylistic choices made in 5 passages. Questions for each passage occur in groups of 8-13. There will be at least 2 prose and 2 poetry passages.
• 45% of Exam Score
• 55 questions
• 60 min, or 1 min 5 sec per question

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💭 General Advice

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

• Read the source first, then skim the questions so you know what to look for in the documents, before finally reading the passages.
  • Jot down notes and annotations as you skim the questions! It helps to know what you’re looking for when reading the actual passage.
• When looking at the poems, decide what type of poem it may be such as an English Sonnet or Petrarchan Sonnet. The different types of poems have common themes that may help you determine the overall message.
• Do practice problems before the exam, and do lots of them! There’s a system to how they formulate these questions, and you can see what certain answers are wrong and why others are right. It helps with learning to manage your time, too.
• Remember it’s okay to answer the easy questions and to come back to trickier ones later. You don’t want to waste too much time staring at a question you don’t understand!
  • Each question is worth the same point value! It makes more sense to answer all of the easy ones rather than wasting time on the tough ones.
• If the passage just doesn’t make sense at all, there’s a very good chance it’s satire. If you’re stuck, try rereading with that lens!
• Sometimes MCQs will try to trick you with confusing vocabulary. Stick to what you understand, and remember to employ the process of elimination!
• It sounds silly but get angry at the MCQ! Do not let it intimidate you! After taking the course you are well read and knowledgeable about the nitty gritty details of literature. Treat the MCQ as a mere prequel to the writing. You are above the MCQ! This will help with time management and overthinking.
• Remember that if there is a question asking about multiple things (character traits, a character’s POV, etc) both of the things have to make sense (ex. strong and cocky). An answer that is partially wrong is completely wrong!

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🫧 Before You Bubble

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

• Honestly, breathe. The multiple choice can seem like a lot. Take a step back, collect yourself, and then focus on the task at hand.
• Focus on the passage! Take a breather to help you devote 100% of your attention into understanding and digesting the passage. Skimming through the questions and marking specific passages that correlate to questions helps a lot. Try to jot down little notes and in the margin and relate your notes back to the question.
• Get invested in the passages, like you’re reading them for fun—it will help you pick up on small details!
• Think of an answer you have in mind for suspected questions and as you go about answering them see if your ideas align with those of the multiple choice answers. If you came up with an answer independently and it’s one of the options, there’s a good chance it’s correct!

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📑 Understanding the Sources

• Focus on what you can pick out to help you piece the greater ideas together. Identify who the text is about, the basic idea of what’s going on, and anything interesting happening. My teacher had us do a lot of SOAPSTONE- identifying subject, occasion, audience, purpose, subject, and tone. While you shouldn’t write it out for each text (you do NOT have time for that), you should keep those concepts in mind. Annotate as much or as little too, whatever helps you!!
• It’s okay to make assumptions! Sometimes you might read a passage and take away a key theme only to realize the questions are focusing on a different idea. That’s okay, it means you understood the passage in your own way, and will still start you off on solid footing for the questions!
• Think about cultural/time period context. If a prose passage takes place in the late 1800s, language and common culture will be different, which may affect the meaning of the passage.

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❓Choosing the Best Answer

• Step one to answering correctly is understanding what you’re even being asked. Read the question carefully, and compare each answer option to that question. Refer back to the text as necessary. They often try to trick you and make only one part of the answer wrong. What helped me was crossing out why an answer choice was wrong, helping me get to the correct answer. That can be a good strategy if the correct answer isn’t obvious.
• Use context clues! If three of the four answer choices are about personal relationships, they probably want you to be thinking in that context, even if it may not seem obvious from the passage. It is always okay to change your interpretation after you see the way the questions are leading.
• If you are really stuck and unsure of what the question is asking, look for the two answers that look very similar to each other! Typically, one of the two is usually correct, as one is the “lead distractor,” which is meant to confuse you from the real answer. From the two that you narrowed it down from, it may be easier to be able to see the right answer by comparing the two using the passage as well.
• It’s very helpful to actually cross out answers you know are incorrect, as it will visually narrow down your options!
• If you find that you have a minute or even less time on the clock and you still have some questions left unanswered, bubble the same answer for each one. It sucks having to guess, but there’s no penalty for wrong answers, so guessing is better than leaving blanks on your test! Plus, bubbling the same letter for each question will increase your odds of getting some of them correct.