Basic test taking strategies

Introduction

Before we get into the strategies you’ll use to prepare for the exam, it helps to know what the AP English Literature and Composition exam is designed to measure. The exam assesses your ability to read, analyze, and write about fiction, poetry, and drama. You’ll study how writers use language, structure, and literary devices to create meaning, and you’ll write analytical and argumentative essays that interpret literary works. The College Board organizes much of this work around what it calls the “Big Ideas and Enduring Understandings.”

The big ideas are cross-cutting concepts that build conceptual understanding and spiral throughout the units of the course. The enduring understandings are the long-term takeaways related to the big ideas.

- The College Board

The six Big Ideas are as follows: character, setting, structure, narration, figurative language, and literary augmentation. These are the elements to focus on as you analyze passages and as you plan your free-response essays. Below are their associated Enduring Understandings, as stated by The College Board.

Enduring understandings

Character

Characters in literature allow readers to study and explore a range of values, beliefs, assumptions, biases, and cultural norms represented by those characters.

Setting

Setting and the details associated with it not only depict a time and place, but also convey values associated with that setting.

Structure

The arrangement of the parts and sections of a text, the relationship of the parts to each other, and the sequence in which the text reveals information are all structural choices made by a writer that contribute to the reader’s interpretation of a text.

Narration

A narrator’s or speaker’s perspective controls the details and emphases that affect how readers experience and interpret a text.

Figurative language

Comparisons, representations, and associations shift meaning from the literal to the figurative and invite readers to interpret a text.

Literary augmentation

Readers establish and communicate their interpretations of literature through arguments supported by textual evidence.

The more familiar you are with the Big Ideas now, the more purposefully you can read and write during test prep. Start by noticing how these ideas show up in the texts you’re already reading in class.

You’re expected to read a variety of works by poets and authors from roughly the 16th century to the present. Section 1.5 provides a sample list of authors you can use to broaden your reading. Your class will cover many notable works, but it’s still useful to read beyond the course curriculum.

Now, let’s go over some basic strategies for taking this exam.

Basic strategies

You’ll see these strategies come up again as you practice for each part of the exam. For now, here are a few reliable habits to use throughout the course.

Time management

A strong starting point is knowing how much time you should spend on each part of each section.

For example, in the Free Response section, you have a total of two hours to write three essays. That works out to about 40 minutes per essay, with some flexibility if one prompt feels more challenging.

The Multiple Choice section can feel trickier because you’re balancing two things at once:

• Your pace per passage
• Your pace per question (so you don’t lose too much time on any single item)

Use the clock function at the top of your exam to check your pacing after every 1-2 passages.

Process of elimination

Process of elimination is one of the most useful multiple-choice strategies, but it’s also one students often stop using when they feel rushed.

The core move is simple: eliminate answers you know are wrong. That shifts your mindset from “find the right answer immediately” to “identify wrong answers efficiently.” If you end up guessing, you’ll be guessing from fewer options, which improves your odds.

Even when you feel confident about the correct answer, quickly checking the other choices can help you avoid careless mistakes and spot subtle traps.

To use this strategy quickly, you’ll need both:

• Consistent practice with multiple-choice questions
• A solid grasp of the Big Ideas (so you can recognize what a question is really testing)

Guessing at the end

If you’re running out of time in the Multiple Choice section and still have unanswered questions, don’t assign random letters to each one. That approach usually spreads your guesses too thin.

Instead, choose one letter to use for any remaining unanswered questions on that test (for example, mark all remaining questions as B). This gives you a better chance of picking up a few points.

Pick a passage/prompt

You don’t have to complete the multiple-choice passages or free-response prompts in order. It can be useful to start with the easiest passage or prompt and save the hardest for later.

Before you begin each section, take a moment to decide:

• Which passage or prompt you’ll start with
• Which one you’ll leave for last

Note: while it is recommended to do the passages in an order that suits you, please do the questions themselves in order!

Active reading and annotation

How you read a passage affects how well you can answer questions about it. Active reading and annotation help you track what the text is doing (not just what it says).

In the Free Response section, you’ll use the same approach for:

• The provided excerpt (when there is one)
• The prompt itself (so you’re clear on what the question is asking you to argue)

Later sections will break down active reading and annotation in more detail.