<p>As my school doesn't offer AP English Language, I was going to try and self study it as I enjoy English classes/writing/reading/etc.</p>
<p>Questions:</p>
<p>1) What review books, if any, would you recommend?</p>
<p>2) What studying strategies should I look into (flashcards, practice essay writing, etc)?</p>
<p>3) Approximately how much work would I have to put in to get at least a 4 on the exam? I haven't taken ACT or SAT yet, but I took the PSAT last year as a sophomore and got a 70 on the writing section...and I'm also pretty good (but not fantastic) at analyzing reading passages.</p>
<p>4) If you've already taken the exam, is there any other advice you might have?</p>
<p>Self-studying AP Lang is definitely doable. I took it as a junior and I feel like I could have passed the exam even if I hadn’t taken the exam. To me, the multiple choice felt like a slightly harder version of the English/Reading parts of the ACT (which I’d taken two months before the exam).</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I never used a review book, but I think my class did practice tests from CliffNotes so you could look into that if you would like one. The tests we did were really helpful because all of the literary terms we hadn’t learned in class were included in the multiple choice and we could bring those up to our teacher or look them up ourselves. Underlining/highlighting and annotating the passages first and then doing the questions that went along with it helped me become better at analyzing the passages on the real exam. Reading good examples of essays can help as well; you’ll see what they could have done better and what they did well on, plus learn to improve your own essays.</p></li>
<li><p>I’d recommend looking up the literary terms that are on the exam, as you’ll need to know those for one of the essays and it helps on the multiple choice too. Flashcards will definitely help to learn the literary terms and practicing essays from the CollegeBoard website is beneficial too. I would also read a few classic novels and trying to analyze those if you have the time.</p></li>
<li><p>Honestly, I didn’t put too much effort into studying other than the vocabulary and I got a 4 on the exam. I haven’t taken the PSAT but a 70 on the writing section is good, so I would just make sure you know how to write the essays on the exam (synthesis, analytical, and persuasive) and keep practicing those.</p></li>
<li><p>Read and write a lot. Also, for the synthesis essay (the one where you are given documents), you are only required to incorporate 3 of the documents into your essay. It’s kind of useless to use more than 3 or 4 and wastes a lot of time, so I would choose 3 that you feel helps your argument the most. For the analytical essay, you need to know your literary terms/rhetorical devices and be able to pick them out of the passage that is given. Write about how the rhetorical devices contribute to the author’s writing and the passage’s overall meaning. The persuasive essay is just arguing a point; you’re given a prompt and you have to argue for one side.
The best part about the exam is that you don’t have to follow the 5-paragraph “rule” that seems to dominate middle and high school essays. You can get a good score just writing 3 paragraphs as long as you get your point across.</p></li>
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<p>I hope this helped a little bit and I’d be happy to answer any other questions you might have. Good luck! :)</p>
<p>That’s about the most important object: practice writing as extensively as possible/reasonable/ necessary to get your point across in a limited period of time. Find a few prompts from previous years, maybe start the timer at 45 minutes and develop yourself and your skills until you are able to write around 1.5-2.5 pages in around 25 minutes. Depending on your skill as a writer and your comfort with writing under pressure, you may struggle a lot at first (at least I did, for a while), but stick with it and accept the challenges you face for what they are. </p>
<p>The multiple choice section will probably require a bit more extensive effort on your behalf, but it shouldn’t be that difficult to find an outline of what you’ll need to know. If possible, try to answer released questions from previous exams under specific time limitations, just as you would with writing. Some of the questions are very tricky and deceiving, but you’ll improve with consistent practice. </p>
<p>If you have to pick between the two (which you shouldn’t, but just for terms of reference), definitely put more emphasis on the writing portion, as it is much easier to achieve a high overall score with a lousy multiple choice score and three excellent essays than it is with the other way around. </p>
<p>Other than that, there’s not much more to it. Good luck!</p>
<p>Thanks to both of you for the replies! Now come the next steps: finding out if my school offers the AP test or if I’d have to go elsewhere, and convincing my mother/grandmother to loan me money to buy some prep books…</p>
<p>The AP test for lang/comp was really easy for me. I got a 5 and I didn’t study at all. I got a 690 on SAT CR and a 710 on SAT writing, so if you can get a 700+ on SAT reading and writing, you should be fine. The multiple choice is like an extended SAT CR section and the writing is I think 3 essays. It’s not bad at all, especially compared to most AP tests (like World History, Calculus, Physics, etc)</p>