<p>How did you practice for the essay questions? Are there sample essays or a book filled with tips on writing essays?</p>
<p>Use previous years’ essays from collegeboard.com. If you’re not already doing it in class, write at least one a week starting as early as you need to. If you want, find an interesting quotation and write a persuasive essay arguing for or against it. Or take an editorial from the paper and write a rhetorical analysis. I took Lang during the 2008 presidential race and we had to write a compare/contrast rhetorical analysis after one of the Obama-McCain debates.</p>
<p>My English teacher had us do weekly “timed writings”, where she’d give us a previous prompt and give us anywhere from 45-60 minutes to write an essay. She was an AP grader too, so her grading was indicative of what we would score on an actual test. She would also read us examples of 8 and 9 essays to give us a feel for the quality of writing required to score that high. After a few months of this, I began consistently scoring 8s and 9s on my essays.</p>
<p>Essentially, practice writing essays to AP prompts, and try to have someone qualified give you feedback. If you have an AP grader in your school’s faculty, I’d suggest going to him.</p>
<p>Are there any foums, or other online communities where I can get my essay critiqued?</p>
<p>My teacher gave us a lot of practice essays from past tests. We practiced brainstorming and then writing the essays in real time.
I also had the Cliffsnotes AP Lang book, and it had some great example essay prompts. There were also some sample answers, which, while they’re way better than what an average student can write for a timed essay, are really helpful in showing how to organize your thoughts.</p>
<p>I scored a 5 this year on the Language exam, and I give another vote for the CliffsAP English Language book. The prompts and sample essays give an excellent idea of what you should aim for. </p>
<p>They’re nothing like the essays I’m used to writing in English class, so I’m grateful that I had the book to show me what to do - I know I wouldn’t have done so well otherwise.</p>
<p>Cliff’s MC is absolutely awful though. I consistently got 50%, when on the CB official practice test I got over 90%. Also PR is better for essays (not really MC), because they explain much better how to prepare.</p>
<p>Look at old prompts. If you’re a decent essay writer, you won’t have a hard time getting a 5. Practice released multiple choice questions. That’s pretty much all you need.</p>
<p>I only did 3 pre-tests but I went to my AP Lang teacher and she gave me some prompts then I had her grade it. I usually scored around a 7 on the pre-tests and ended up with a 4 on the exam.</p>