AP English Literature and Composition: free lessons and course outline

The exam runs three hours. Section I is one hour: 55 multiple-choice questions in five sets of 8 to 13 questions, each set built on a passage of prose fiction or poetry (at least two of each, from many periods, with more twentieth-century and contemporary texts than texts from before 1900), worth 45% of the score. By skill, the section weights character 16 to 20%, setting 3 to 6%, plot and structure 16 to 20%, the narrator or speaker 21 to 26%, word choice, imagery, and symbols 10 to 13%, comparison 10 to 13%, and literary argumentation 10 to 13%. By genre, short fiction (Units 1, 4, and 7) carries 42 to 49% of the multiple-choice section, poetry (Units 2, 5, and 8) 36 to 45%, and longer fiction or drama (Units 3, 6, and 9) 15 to 18%. Section II is two hours for three essays worth 55%, with about 40 minutes recommended for each: Q1 analyzes a poem of about 100 to 400 words, Q2 analyzes a prose fiction passage of about 600 to 800 words, and Q3 asks how a literary concept or idea contributes to an interpretation of a work of fiction as a whole, which you choose from your own reading or from a list of about 40 titles. All three essays are scored on the same six-point analytic rubric (Row A Thesis (1 point), Row B Evidence and Commentary (4 points), Row C Sophistication (1 point)), so the writing skill you build in one section pays off in the other two. The nine units below spiral through short fiction, poetry, and longer fiction or drama three times over, and each pass returns to the same six big ideas (Character (CHR), Setting (SET), Structure (STR), Narration (NAR), Figurative Language (FIG), and Literary Argumentation (LAN)) at a harder level. Every unit ends with a ten-question review on one or two shared passages, and the three essay sections at the bottom of the outline hold five prompts each with a timed writing space that scores against the official rubric.