AP English Language and Composition: free lessons and course outline

The exam is 3 hours 15 minutes, taken digitally in Bluebook. Section I is 45 multiple-choice questions in 1 hour and is worth 45% of the score: 23–25 reading questions on nonfiction passages and 20–22 writing questions that ask you to revise a draft. Section II is three essays in 2 hours 15 minutes, including a 15-minute reading period, and is worth the other 55%: a synthesis essay that argues a position using at least three of six provided sources, a rhetorical analysis of one nonfiction passage, and an argument essay on a given idea. Section I is built from five sets of questions: two reading sets of 11 to 14 questions each, built on nonfiction passages, and three writing sets of 7 to 9, 7 to 9, and 4 to 6 questions, built on drafts to revise. All eight skill categories are tested, each carrying roughly 11 to 16 percent of the section: rhetorical situation, claims and evidence, reasoning and organization, and style, each as a reading skill and as a writing skill. In Section II the College Board recommends about 40 minutes per essay. The synthesis prompt gives six sources, two of them visual and at least one quantitative, with the text sources running about 500 words each; the rhetorical analysis passage runs about 600 to 800 words; the argument prompt offers a concept or a quotation to argue about. Unlike the history and science courses, the College Board does not publish exam weights for the nine units of AP English Language, because the units spiral rather than divide the content; the tag beside each unit below names the big ideas it develops: Rhetorical Situation (RHS), Claims and Evidence (CLE), Reasoning and Organization (REO), and Style (STL). Every unit ends with a ten-question review that mixes passage-based reading questions and exam-style revision questions, and the three essay sections at the bottom of the outline hold five prompts each with a writing space that scores against the official 6-point analytic rubric.