Section II of the AP English Literature and Composition Exam is the Free-Response, or essay, section. While the College Board officially refers to this section of the exam as “Free Response,” in this book we will often be referring to it as the “essay” section, and your responses as “essays,” for the sake of brevity. The format of this section has been consistent for years. Here’s what to expect.
You will be asked to write a response, in essay form, to each of the following subjects:
1. A passage of prose
2. A passage of poetry or a comparison of two thematically related poems
3. An open essay: an essay on a given topic, supported by your own reading
You’ll be given all the paper you need (including scratch paper), and you’ll be instructed to write in pen (blue or black ink only).
You’ll have two hours to complete this section, which works out to be 40 minutes per essay.
When ETS considers the mix of literary periods and styles on the test, they include the essay section in that mix. If you see two passages on eighteenth-century poetry in the multiple-choice section, you won’t see any eighteenth-century poetry in the essay section. ETS also tries to give male and female authors (roughly) equal representation and aims to include at least one author who identifies as African American, Native American, Latino, or Asian.
On each individual essay, you can take as much or as little time as you like as long as you don’t go over the two-hour limit for all three essays. Each essay is worth the same number of points, so it’s a good idea to pace yourself and allot 40 minutes for each, give or take a few minutes. If you spend an hour and a half on your first essay, you’re not going to finish the other two. Remember to bring a watch so that you don’t lose track of time.
The essay section of the AP English Literature and Composition Exam counts for 55 percent of your total score. It is only slightly more important than the multiple-choice section of the test. It’s obvious, but let’s say it anyway: Both sections are important to your score.
Which section feels more important is another issue. For most students, the essay section feels like the whole test. The multiple-choice section seems like a bunch of hoops you have to jump through before getting to the part that matters. Students tend to look at the essay section with quite a bit of anxiety. However, we’re going to take the anxiety out of this process and replace it with knowledge and confidence.
Here’s the interesting part: While it is true that the multiple-choice and essay sections are nearly equal in respect to determining your score, there is a world of difference between the two sections when it comes to score improvement.
If you’re the kind of student who gets A’s in class and then bombs on standardized tests, using our multiple-choice techniques will make a huge difference. If you are already a natural test-taker, that’s great—our techniques will help you take your skills to the next level. You probably fall somewhere in between (the vast majority of students do) and so using our techniques for the multiple-choice section squeezes out a half-dozen or so extra points to ensure that you get your best possible score. Why settle for anything less? But when you work on improving your score (and your skills), the essays are different.
Essay points add up fast. If we can show you a way to improve your essays by just one point—bam—then that means three extra essay points just like that, one for each essay. And there are only 27 total essay points available. One more point on each essay works out to better than a 10 percent improvement on your essay score. If you can improve your essays just two notches, from, say, a 5 to a 7, you’re in a whole new scoring bracket. Study this section and you will improve at least one point, and probably more.
Think about this: unlike the old, familiar multiple-choice questions, the essays are completely new. You’ve never done anything like them before, so you may as well learn to do them in a way that will get you the most points. “What!?” you’re thinking, “It’s the multiple-choice that’s weird; I write essays all the time in school.”
Sorry, but you’re mistaken. You write essays, true—but not AP essays.
You usually write essays for teachers who know you and (we hope) care about you. They know what your writing looked like at the beginning of the semester, they know whether you do your homework, they know whether you spend most of class daydreaming, they know you occasionally make brilliant comments in class, and they know your real passion is for track or violin or painting or science or maybe even writing.
When your teachers see your name at the top of the page they already know a thousand things about you, and all of it goes into their reading of what you write. The AP Reader, on the other hand, doesn’t know you at all.
Second, and just as important, you don’t know anything about the Reader of your AP essays. Who is she or he? In school, you know your teachers. You probably know what they want to hear. You may know that they detest misspellings, or that they love it when you use humor, or that they give extra credit for artistic originality. The AP essays are written to someone who is completely anonymous. When was the last time you wrote an essay to a total stranger for a grade?
AP essays are written under intense time restraints. You’ve probably never seen the excerpt or the prompt, but that’s ok. You have the reading and writing strategies to tackle anything at this point. Your teachers have probably told you that good writing is rewriting; however, you don’t have time to write and revise on the AP Exam. In a test setting, your draft is your final submission, and that means you have to be extra attentive to structural and content quality of your writing. The type of writing you’ll complete for the AP Exam is kind of the opposite of how you should approach a writing task. In short, the “ready, set, write” approach of the AP Exam feels a little unnatural, but you can do it.
Your AP teacher should be drilling you with this style of essay for the duration of the course because it is the closest thing to writing for the AP Exam that you’ll experience before test day. Most in-class tests are administered over materials you’ve studied and know well, but AP Exam prompts are most likely unfamiliar to you and the rest of the test takers. We call this a cold reading and writing—that just means this is a passage you’re seeing and writing on for the first time. You will be graded on quality of writing and content, but remember that comprehension and originality are also important. Address the prompts directly; don’t talk around the questions, and be sure to stay on top of CSE (Conventions of Standard English). If you write clearly and on topic, you should be just fine.
It may be a little nerve wracking to write this way, but remember that everyone else is in the same boat. This chapter is designed to give you the tools you need to understand how the essays are scored so that you can tailor your writing to fit the rubrics. We aren’t necessarily teaching you how to write well: we’re trying to teach you how to write a high-scoring AP essay. AP essays are different beasts, but they can be tackled!
Each of your essays will be graded according to a 9-point scale. Zero is the worst score you can get and 9 is the best. Students’ scores are not spread out evenly over that range; the number of 9’s does not equal the number of 5’s. In fact, the numbers aren’t even close. (On the open essay, the curve is a little flatter and the average score a little lower, for reasons we’ll discuss later.)
About 65 percent of all essays are scored in the middle range: 4, 5, and 6. The extreme scores taper away quickly. ETS doesn’t tell its essay Readers to bunch up the scores this way, and they don’t fudge the scores around later in order to produce this tidy bell curve. It works out this way because of the nature of student writing and the nature of essay scoring in general.
The essays are scored “holistically.” What this means is that the Reader goes through your essay and gets an overall impression. That impression is translated into a single number, 0 to 9, which is your essay’s score. There is no checklist of points such as two points for style, two points for grammar, one point for vocabulary, and one point for writing about, say, the metaphor in paragraph one. Nothing like that. The rubric, such as it is, is a vague one.
Instead, about a week before the actual grading session, ETS goes through several essays to get a feel for the students’ writing. Next, the ETS staff combs through the students’ writing looking for the perfect representative 9 essay, the perfect 5, the perfect 3, and so on. These representative essays are the “sample essays.” The Readers are given the samples and are trained for a day, during which they read student essays, compare them with the samples, and discuss the grades they would assign. The next day, the Readers start giving out the real grades. An ETS consultant checks graded essays at random to make sure the scoring is consistent. ETS tries hard to keep things standard and fair—for example, each Reader only grades one type of essay. But there’s no way around the facts: The Readers are individual people making subjective judgments.
Readers are dedicated high school and university instructors who take a week out of their year to come to one site and grade essays. Of course, they are compensated for their time, but at times the grading can become monotonous. You need to make sure that your essay stands out from the hundreds of essays that each Reader scores.
Your job is to write an essay that’s obviously better than average. You have to let the Reader feel confident about giving you at least a seven. Usually, the essays are generic and have no distinctive style to them. Often the essays are plot summaries that barely address the question. In many cases, the question is rewritten and the essay does not explore the topic adequately or with skill.. Slogging through these mediocre essays, the Reader gives a score and turns to the next essay hoping for that outstanding paper. Readers want to reward the writers for what they do well, but the topic must be addressed. If an essay starts out dull and poorly written but makes one completely original point right at the very end, the writer can be rewarded. Sometimes, however, there are too many grammar and spelling errors that distract the Reader and the one important statement that the writer makes is lost among the myriad errors on the paper. If you merely summarize the plot of the passage or do not adequately address the question, the Reader may have to decide on a score of 4 or 5. You want to make it as easy as possible for the scorer to think your essay is good. Before we get to the basic tips for making it easy for the Reader to give you a high score, let’s look at a scoring guide AP Readers use.
Every Reader gets a scoring guide for the essay he or she is grading. The scoring guides for AP essays are always very similar. We’ve taken a few scoring guides and combined them, taking out the details that are particular to a passage or a poem such as the author’s name and the names of characters and places in the story or poem. Notice as you look over the scoring guide how little specific guidance ETS actually provides; the Readers are given a lot of leeway.
These are well-organized and well-written essays that clearly analyze the work and how the author dramatizes the situation. These essays use apt, specific references to the passage in order to discuss the author’s use of elements such as diction, imagery, pace, and point of view. While not flawless, these papers demonstrate an understanding of the text and of the techniques of composition. These writers express their ideas skillfully and clearly.
The content of these papers resembles that of higher scoring essays, but is less precise and less aptly supported. These essays deal with literary elements such as diction, imagery, and pace, but are less effective than the upper-range essays. Essays scored at 7 will generally exhibit fewer mechanical errors and draw from the passage more incisively than those scored at 6.
These essays are superficial. Although not seriously in error about the content or literary technique of the passage, they miss the complexity of the piece and offer only a perfunctory analysis of how the subject has been dramatized. The treatment of elements such as diction and imagery is overly generalized or mechanical. The writing adequately conveys the writer’s thoughts but the essays themselves are commonplace, poorly conceived, poorly organized, and simplistic.
These essays reflect an incomplete understanding of the passage and do not completely respond to the question. The discussion is unclear or simply misses the point. The treatment of literary elements is scanty or unconvincing, with little support drawn from the passage. Typically, these essays reveal a marked weakness in a writer’s ability to handle the mechanics of written English.
These essays contain the errors found in essays receiving a score of 3 or 4, but to an even more pronounced degree. One- to two-point scoring essays either completely misunderstand the passage or fail to address the question. Typically, these essays are incoherent, too short, or both. The writing demonstrates little or no control of written English, either grammatically or organizationally.
This is a response that fails to address the question. There may only be a reference to the task.
This indicates that the response is completely off topic or that a response has not been made.
Look carefully over this guide. What do you see? There are two major points we want stamped into your mind.
First, the high-scoring essays are clear. They aren’t perfect, they aren’t moving and profound— they’re just clear. Practically every point made in the “8 to 9” description is just another way of saying clear. Well-organized means clearly organized. Apt examples drawn from the passages is another way of saying the writer has used clear examples. Clarity is the goal.
Second, notice the jump that happens at the 5 score. Notice how the whole tone of the guide changes. Suddenly the guide isn’t talking about the fine points of answering the question; it’s talking about the life-choking drabness of it all. You can imagine the Reader perusing such an essay and thinking, “Another one that’s just like the last twenty essays.” Five-point essays are just a trap—a trap that is easy to fall into if you aren’t ready for the AP essays. Many 5-point essays are written by good students, many of them A-students, and half of those students think they wrote a pretty good essay. But they didn’t; they just wrote a generic essay. These are the kinds of adjectives that show up in the 5 category of AP scoring guides: mechanical, perfunctory, pedestrian, commonplace, adequate. In other words, the same dull essay most students write (or try to write until they get totally lost, leading to an even lower score). After grading her fifty-fifth essay, the Reader writes down the score and turns to the next essay, praying, “Please, not another boring one.”
If you understand what you read and can write in grammatical English, a 5 is your absolute low-end score. You will almost certainly do better than that with our help.
Almost every adequate essay is written by a student who doesn’t know how to craft a real essay idea based on the question and thinks that the “essay formula” can somehow save him. Here’s the thought process that invariably leads to a middle score: “Let’s see…they want me to write about the language…well, what else would I write about? The whole thing is language. This is crazy. And ‘how the author dramatized the story’—well, with language of course—great, that’s about one sentence worth of essay. What am I going to say? I don’t know what they want! Oh God. I can’t sit here forever; I’ve got to write something. I know! I’ll restate the question as a statement and then come up with three examples: one for diction, one for imagery, and one for point of view. Then I’ll summarize it all for a conclusion. That’s the essay formula, right? Okay, here goes.”
This student is perfectly intelligent. The “formula” isn’t crazy; in fact, it’s taught all over the place. Restate the question as a statement. Support the statement with three examples from the passage. Summarize it for a conclusion.
It sounds good, but when a student tries to use it, he’ll realize he still doesn’t have one interesting thing to say. From beginning to end he’ll feel lost, and writing the essay will feel like one big, meaningless exercise. He’ll struggle and pick out bits of the passage that catch his eye and try to discuss them. He won’t be exactly sure why they catch his eye, but he’ll make up something. The discussion will be vague, overly generalized, and mechanical. (That’s the description of adequate essays in the AP scoring guide, remember.) The adequate essay has to be vague, because if it were precise the student would reveal that he has no precise understanding of what he’s supposed to be writing about. The formula results in a weak, boring essay.
The formula, however, is actually a heroic effort on the student’s part, because you’re not used to writing this way. When you’re writing this way, a 5 is a success.
The most important part of your essay is the content. Your goal is to write meaty, content-filled essays that just blow the Reader away. But the Reader has to get to that content. There are a few vital things you must do to let your excellence come shining through with full impact. These basics have to do with the surface of your writing. That might seem cheap, but it’s not. If the surface of your essay is clean and clear, the Reader can see through to the depths.
Studies have shown that neatly written essays earn higher scores on holistically graded tests. It’s not fair, but it’s a fact of life. Do everything in your power to make your essays readable. Write slowly. Write large. Write dark. Your writing doesn’t have to be pretty, but it must be legible.
Take pains to be as neat as you possibly can. When a neatly written essay shows up, the wave of relief, of love, flooding the Reader is difficult to describe. A clearly written essay makes the Reader think, “Ah, now I can do my job!” A messy essay, however, will probably annoy Readers; they generally will try not to let poor handwriting affect the score, but if your essay is messy and difficult to read, they’ll likely lose patience quickly.
If your penmanship isn’t great and you’ve been writing essays on a computer for years, seriously consider printing or writing in italics, which is a sort of hybrid of cursive and printing. Trust us here. You may think this advice is ridiculous and that your handwriting shouldn’t matter. The fact is, it does. As persecuted as you feel writing these essays, the Reader feels twice as persecuted reading them. Script is harder to read than print. If it weren’t, this book would be written in a nice cursive typeface. If your normal handwriting looks like that on a wedding invitation or you’re president of the Calligraphy Club at school, then you can use cursive. Otherwise, you should probably print (neatly!).
Your Reader’s first impressions are crucial. Think about that character at the job interview with gum in his hair. If his battle isn’t already lost, it’s definitely an uphill fight the rest of the way. The overall look of your essay is a first impression. It’s the smile on your face as you walk in the door. Your essay should look neat, organized, and clear. Make your paragraphs obvious. Indent twice as far as you normally would. When in doubt, make a paragraph. Ever look at a book, flip it open, and see nothing but one long paragraph? Your next thought is usually, “Oh please, don’t make me have to read this!” That’s exactly what the Reader thinks when she sees an essay without paragraphs. Make sure the Reader can see the paragraphs right away. Neat presentation, clear handwriting, paragraphs just screaming out, “I’m so organized, it’s scary!” will have the Reader thinking, “Now here’s a high-scoring student” before even reading a word.
Your “second first impression” (in case you were wondering, that’s an oxymoron—see the glossary) is the first paragraph of the essay. Take extra care with your first paragraph. If you’re unsure about the spelling of a word, don’t use it. If you’re unsure how to punctuate the sentence, rewrite it in a way that makes you feel confident. Don’t make any mistakes in the first paragraph. Don’t fret as much about the rest of the essay; the Readers expect mistakes. But the first paragraph needs to be strong because it sets the tone. If you try to write the whole essay perfectly you’ll write so slowly, or fill up your brain with so much worry, that you’ll probably run out of time.
All you need is a few sentences to convince the Reader that you can write a good sentence when you want to. The glow of a good beginning carries over the whole essay. Mistakes later on look like minor errors not even worth bothering with. After all, the Reader’s already seen that you can write. Mistakes at the very beginning do just the opposite—they look like telling signs of inability and a weak grasp of fundamental English mechanics. Take extra care at the beginning of your essay, then relax and just write (neatly).
Readers do not give great grades to students who merely parrot the prompt. A good way to show that you understand what the question is asking is by paraphrasing the prompt in your response. If the prompt asks about diction, knowing that diction means “word choice” is great. Articulating how the author uses a particular form of diction is even better. Be sure that you know the meaning of key literary terms that frequently appear on the exam (remember that glossary on this page), and have some good synonyms at hand so you can display varied word choice. For poetry, the big five are diction, imagery, metaphor, rhyme, and form. For prose, substitute point of view and characterization for rhyme and form. Using the word “speaker” to refer to the poetry narrator and “narrator” when dealing with prose are conventions worth employing because they will show that you are comfortable with the modes of writing that Readers will recognize from teaching students about literature.
Spice up your writing. Try to write with some pizzazz. Don’t let the test environment, the tension, or the anxiety caused by writing for a stranger take over your brain. Take risks: You may fall flat every so often, but the Reader will appreciate your effort and reward it. When you’ve gotten our essay techniques down, you’ll understand that 90 percent of dull student writing on AP essays comes from confusion about what to write, which leads to inhibition. Don’t be inhibited. Jazz it up a little. Show some stylistic flair.
Obviously, it’s possible to go overboard here and if the Reader gets the impression you’re just being silly, it won’t help your score. It is important write about the task at hand, not just your musings on life. But a dash of glitter is much better than none at all. By the way, big, important-sounding phrases are not your ticket to a high score. They’re an obvious sign that you’re full of it. So please don’t try to write this kind of gibberish: “When Judy initially perceived Roger’s rapid ambulatory movement along the pedestrian walkway bordering the automotive thoroughfare, she experienced tachy-cardia.”
Each passage will be preceded by instructions to “Read the passage below carefully and then write a well-organized essay about….” These instructions may also contain some additional material orienting you to the passage, telling you things like who wrote it, the novel it was drawn from, and any other special information the test writers feel you need to know in order to understand the passage. Be sure to give the instructions a complete look in case there’s any useful information there.
If you write like someone who enjoys writing, the Readers will be impressed. For example, a student might write, “When Judy first sees Roger going down the street, she thinks he seems interesting.” That’s probably true, but what a bore! There are a thousand ways to liven up that sentence. It all depends on your personality and what is really happening in the story. How about, “When Judy first glimpses Roger dashing through the shadows of Sullivan Street, her heart flutters; she’s already in love, she just doesn’t know it yet.” Or, “When Judy spots Roger flying down the sidewalk with the Sullivan Street gang nipping at his heels, she’s dumbstruck by the wild vitality of his whirling limbs and blazing eyes.” Cheesy? Over the top? Who cares? Nobody expects you to write like Marcel Proust. Actually, the Readers expect you to write like someone who’s suffering through a tedious, nerve-wracking exercise, because that’s exactly how most of the essays are written.
We aren’t saying you have to write tangled, complex sentences either; in fact, you should try to avoid them. Great, long, looping sentences usually just wander off into error and confusion. All you need to do is pay attention to your word choice. When you find yourself using a generic verb like look, see, says, walk, go, take, or give, or a generic noun like street, house, car, or man, ask yourself whether there isn’t a more precise, more colorful word you can use. Why write house when you’re referring to a mansion, or car when you’re really writing about a jalopy? Just a little bit of this goes a long way. It shows you’re not scared and it might even look like you’re having fun, which is very good.
If you write a great essay that the Reader doesn’t think addresses the question, you’ll get a lousy score. All three essays, even the open essay, will be directed, and the questions will tell you exactly what the test writers want—that’s the theory, anyway. In reality, the questions can be infuriatingly vague but at the same time, not answering the question is the ultimate sin. Understanding and answering the question are crucial to writing a high-scoring essay.
Just like the passages in the multiple-choice section, the essay prompts should be answered in the order that works best for you. The one that appears easiest should be your first feat. Get your writing juices flowing, and soak up some of your confidence as you write. You want to write all three essays; therefore, you have to keep a handle on your time. Completing the easiest essay topic (for you) first will help you to save time for the harder responses. You’re handed an essay booklet and given 120 minutes (2 hours) to complete all three essays. Ideally, you’ll use only 40 minutes for each essay; however, how you choose to delegate your time between essays may mean more time for one writing task and less for another. Again, keep a watch close and set it to 12:00. It’s easy to see how much time has progressed and how much is left if you keep up with your time in this manner.
1. What is the meaning?
2. How do I know it?
When you sit down to write an essay, you really can’t write word one until you’ve deciphered what the prompt is asking you to do. Find the actual command and underline it, highlight it or put a star by it. Remind yourself as you write exactly what you’re working to accomplish with your essay.
There are three essays: one essay on a prose passage, one essay on one or two poetry passages, and one essay on a work that you select (the open essay).
You have two hours to complete all three essays. Time yourself. Spend 40 minutes on each essay.
The essays are a great place to improve your score.
Each essay is scored by a Reader who grades only that particular type of essay.
Each essay is given a score from 0 to 9.
The essays are scored “holistically.” There is no checklist of available points or conventional rubric.
The Reader wants to read an essay that’s easy to score.
When in doubt, the Reader will push your score toward the middle range of scores.
High-scoring essays are interesting, clear essays. Middle-scoring essays are generic and boring. Low-scoring essays are plain old bad.
Do everything in your power to make your essays readable.
Write carefully in large, dark handwriting. Your writing doesn’t have to be pretty, but it must be clear.
Make your paragraph indentations easy to spot.
When in doubt, create a new paragraph.
Your first paragraph should be grammatically perfect. Your Reader will make a very quick judgment about your ability to write. Once the Reader has decided you can write a sentence, you’ll get some slack later on (as long as you write neatly).
Have a solid literary vocabulary. You’ll express yourself with greater clarity.
Try to use interesting, snappy verbs and nouns. It will impress the Reader and make her or him think you’re comfortable, confident, and smart. Don’t stress too much about overdoing the jazzy language, but don’t go bananas.
Don’t confuse interesting, snappy verbs and nouns with ten-dollar vocabulary words. Use the best, most precise word you can think of, not the one with the most syllables.
Understand the question. (Don’t worry, there’s much more on this subject in the next section.)
If you write a great essay that doesn’t address the question, you won’t get a great score.
Order the section. Do the essay you like best first, and save the worst one for last.
Manage your time—try to complete each essay in about 40 minutes.