AP English

Since I frequently focus on the FRQ portion of the AP Eng. Lang. exam, I wanted to talk about the multiple-choice section. 

Honestly, it's annoying.

On the real AP exam, you're given 60 minutes to complete 45 multiple-choice questions that pertain to the given passages. In other words, 60 agonizing minutes to complete 45 cryptic questions on the most boring stuff you'll ever read. It's standardized test B.S. at its finest. You're given a bit more time because you have to read, but you still gotta move that ass quickly if you want to finish without spam clicking the last 5 questions. 

Some of the passages are honestly O.K., especially the ones that claim "The passage below is a draft", since it's basically like if a normal student wrote it. Others, however, are excerpts from random works from the 1800s derived from who the hell cares. These are usually awful; the language is old and confusing, they're long, the topic is often abstract, and they're boring. The questions that follow are also pretty challenging, so if you didn't really understand what you read, then you're going to be lost. I really don't understand the obsession with 1800s writing from Britain. 

Because my teacher has made it a routine to give practice MCQ tests every week, I have become a bit more skilled and proficient at the MCQ portion. If I'm being honest, it takes practice and exposure to become better at these tests. You can’t exactly "study" for questions like these, so the best way to improve your score is by taking practice tests and carefully reviewing each question to understand why you got it right—or where you went wrong. My teacher actually goes over why each of the answer choices were incorrect, which really helps in understanding the distractor choices and how to better understand the entire question (and not just understand the correct choice). 

Plus, if you really think about it, 45 questions isn't that much. It sounds like a lot at first, but it will go by quicker than you expect. 

The MCQ certainly isn't the worst part of the test—it's obviously the essays.