Practice Exam 2: AP English Literature Study Guide

Take this as one full AP Literature simulation. This second exam is meant to test transfer, not familiarity: none of its major passage sources are reused from Practice Exam 1.

SECTION I

55 multiple-choice questions. 60 minutes. Do not check answers or use chapter notes while the section is running.

BREAK

After Section I ends, take one 10-minute break. Do not score Section I during the break.

SECTION II

3 free-response tasks. 120 minutes total. The tasks are presented in the standard order: Poetry Analysis, Prose Fiction Analysis, Literary Argument. Use one continuous 120-minute clock.

Do not view any answer key or scoring guidance until all three Section II responses are complete.

Section I: Multiple Choice

Five passage sets, 55 questions, 60 minutes. Do not check answers between sets, and do not return to Section I once Section II has begun.

Passage Set 1

From “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë (1847)

1801—I have just returned from a visit to my landlord—the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country! In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society. A perfect misanthropist's Heaven—and Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us.

A capital fellow! He little imagined how my heart warmed towards him when I beheld his black eyes withdraw so suspiciously under their brows, as I rode up, and when his fingers sheltered themselves, with a jealous resolution, still further in his waistcoat, as I announced my name. “Mr. Heathcliff?” I said. A nod was the answer. “Mr. Lockwood, your new tenant, sir. I do myself the honour of calling as soon as possible after my arrival, to express the hope that I have not inconvenienced you by my perseverance in soliciting the occupation of Thrushcross Grange: I heard yesterday you had had some thoughts—”

“Thrushcross Grange is my own, sir,” he interrupted, wincing. “I should not allow any one to inconvenience me, if I could hinder it—walk in!” The “walk in” was uttered with closed teeth, and expressed the sentiment, “Go to the Deuce!” even the gate over which he leant manifested no sympathising movement to the words; and I think that circumstance determined me to accept the invitation: I felt interested in a man who seemed more exaggeratedly reserved than myself.

Question 1

The narrator's description of himself and Heathcliff as “such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us” chiefly reveals

A. the narrator's dislike of remote settings.
B. the narrator's misplaced assumption of kinship with Heathcliff based on shared isolation.
C. Heathcliff's stated desire for companionship.
D. the narrator's plan to leave the district soon.

Question 2

Heathcliff's physical response to the narrator's arrival (“black eyes withdraw so suspiciously,” fingers sheltering “with a jealous resolution”) primarily functions to

A. convey warmth concealed beneath a gruff exterior.
B. suggest that Heathcliff is afraid of the narrator.
C. establish Heathcliff's guarded hostility before he speaks a single word.
D. indicate that Heathcliff does not recognize the narrator.

Question 3

The narrator's gloss on Heathcliff's “walk in” as meaning “Go to the Deuce!” chiefly demonstrates

A. the narrator's inability to understand plain speech.
B. the narrator's skill at reading hostility beneath ordinary courtesy.
C. Heathcliff's genuine hospitality.
D. a translation error in the narrator's account.

Question 4

The narrator's statement that he “felt interested in a man who seemed more exaggeratedly reserved than myself” suggests that the narrator

A. is put off by Heathcliff's rudeness and intends to leave quickly.
B. has met Heathcliff on a prior occasion.
C. believes Heathcliff to be mentally unstable.
D. recognizes something of himself in Heathcliff's guardedness, which draws him despite the unwelcoming behavior.

Question 5

The narrator's tone throughout this opening is best described as

A. wry and self-aware, registering Heathcliff's unfriendliness with amusement despite the cold reception.
B. openly hostile toward Heathcliff.
C. anxious and apologetic.
D. entirely neutral and without personal reaction.

Question 6

The gate that “manifested no sympathising movement” chiefly functions as

A. an extension of Heathcliff's own unwelcoming manner, personified to reinforce the mood.
B. a literal obstacle preventing the narrator's entry.
C. a symbol of the narrator's own reluctance to enter.
D. evidence that the house is abandoned.

Question 7

The narrator's use of the exclamation “A capital fellow!” immediately after describing Heathcliff's suspicious withdrawal is best read as

A. sincere praise based on Heathcliff's good manners.
B. an error the narrator later corrects.
C. a direct quotation from Heathcliff himself.
D. ironic, given the guarded behavior just described.

Question 8

Which best describes the function of the narrator's opening claim that this is “certainly a beautiful country”?

A. It establishes an appreciation for the setting that later complicates the narrator's account of Heathcliff's unfriendliness.
B. It proves the narrator intends to farm the land himself.
C. It contradicts everything the narrator says afterward.
D. It signals that the passage is set in a foreign country.

Question 9

The phrase “a perfect misanthropist's Heaven” chiefly conveys

A. the narrator's genuine dislike of scenic isolation.
B. a literal description of the local religious community.
C. an appreciative, half-ironic framing of remoteness as an ideal suited to withdrawal from society.
D. the narrator's plan to become a hermit permanently.

Question 10

The narrator's formal self-introduction (“Mr. Lockwood, your new tenant, sir”) set against Heathcliff's terse “A nod was the answer” primarily establishes

A. a balanced, mutually respectful exchange.
B. that Heathcliff does not speak English.
C. an imbalance in social performance, with the narrator's courtesy met by minimal, withholding response.
D. the narrator's authority over Heathcliff.

Question 11

The narrator's phrase “I heard yesterday you had had some thoughts—”, left unfinished by Heathcliff's interruption, primarily conveys

A. Heathcliff's active resistance to hearing out the narrator's explanation.
B. the narrator's habit of never finishing sentences.
C. a printing error in the text.
D. the narrator's forgetfulness.

Passage Set 2

From “The House of Mirth” by Edith Wharton (1905)

Selden paused in surprise. In the afternoon rush of the Grand Central Station his eyes had been refreshed by the sight of Miss Lily Bart. It was a Monday in early September, and he was returning to his work from a hurried dip into the country; but what was Miss Bart doing in town at that season?

If she had appeared to be catching a train, he might have inferred that he had come on her in the act of transition between one and another of the country-houses which disputed her presence after the close of the Newport season; but her desultory air perplexed him. She stood apart from the crowd, letting it drift by her to the platform or the street, and wearing an air of irresolution which might, as he surmised, be the mask of a very definite purpose.

An impulse of curiosity made him turn out of his direct line to the door, and stroll past her. He knew that if she did not wish to be seen she would contrive to elude him; and it amused him to think of putting her skill to the test. “Mr. Selden—what good luck!” She came forward smiling, eager almost, in her resolve to intercept him. One or two persons, in brushing past them, lingered to look; for Miss Bart was a figure to arrest even the suburban traveller rushing to his last train.

Question 12

Selden's observation that Lily's “desultory air perplexed him” primarily establishes

A. that Lily is lost in the station.
B. that Lily has just arrived from a foreign country.
C. that Selden dislikes Lily.
D. a gap between Lily's outward appearance and Selden's ability to explain it, inviting the reader's curiosity along with his.

Question 13

The narrator's phrase “wearing an air of irresolution which might, as he surmised, be the mask of a very definite purpose” chiefly suggests

A. that Selden's judgment of Lily is certain and reliable.
B. that the narrator, not Selden, is the one uncertain of Lily's intentions.
C. that Lily has no purpose in being at the station.
D. a tension between how Lily appears and what she may actually intend, filtered through Selden's uncertain perception.

Question 14

Selden's decision to “stroll past her” out of curiosity primarily reveals him as

A. someone entirely indifferent to Lily.
B. an observer who treats Lily as a subject of interested, faintly testing scrutiny.
C. someone who has arranged to meet Lily at the station.
D. afraid of being seen by Lily.

Question 15

Lily's exclamation “Mr. Selden—what good luck!” upon seeing him functions in this passage to

A. contrast with the narration's earlier suggestion that Lily's air concealed “a very definite purpose,” raising a question about how coincidental this meeting truly is.
B. confirm that their meeting is entirely accidental from both sides.
C. reveal that Lily is angry with Selden.
D. indicate that Lily did not recognize Selden at first.

Question 16

The detail that other people at the station “lingered to look” at Lily primarily serves to

A. show that the station is unusually crowded that day.
B. suggest that Lily is behaving inappropriately in public.
C. indicate that Selden is a celebrity being recognized.
D. establish Lily as a figure who draws public attention wherever she appears.

Question 17

The narrative perspective of this passage is best described as

A. first-person, limited to Lily's own thoughts.
B. second-person, addressing the reader directly.
C. omniscient, with equal access to every character's thoughts.
D. third-person, filtered primarily through Selden's impressions and inferences about Lily.

Question 18

Selden's willingness to “put her skill to the test” by seeing whether Lily would avoid him suggests that he regards Lily as

A. entirely transparent and easy to read.
B. a stranger he has never met before.
C. someone whose self-presentation is a practiced performance he can test through observation.
D. someone in physical danger who needs his help.

Question 19

Which best describes the function of the opening sentence, “Selden paused in surprise”?

A. It indicates that Selden is about to leave the station.
B. It establishes Selden's perspective as the passage's organizing lens before Lily herself appears.
C. It reveals that Selden and Lily have quarreled recently.
D. It has no bearing on the rest of the passage.

Question 20

The detail that Selden was “returning to his work from a hurried dip into the country” primarily functions to

A. indicate that Selden and Lily traveled together.
B. prove that Selden dislikes his job.
C. establish Selden's own routine against which Lily's presence at the station seems anomalous.
D. explain why Selden is unfamiliar with train schedules.

Question 21

The narrator's speculation about “the country-houses which disputed her presence” chiefly conveys

A. a simple, certain fact about Lily's social calendar.
B. a literal legal dispute over property.
C. Lily's dislike of country houses.
D. the social demand Lily's presence commands, filtered through Selden's uncertain inference.

Question 22

Selden's assumption that Lily, if unwilling to be seen, “would contrive to elude him” chiefly reveals his sense of Lily as someone who

A. is incapable of avoiding anyone.
B. has no awareness of being watched.
C. actively wants to avoid Selden specifically.
D. possesses deliberate control over whether and how she is seen by others.

Question 23

Selden's repeated use of conjectural language, including what he ‘might have inferred’ and what Lily's manner ‘could be the mask’ of, primarily functions to

A. prove that Selden knows Lily's plan before she speaks.
B. establish the narrator as equally uncertain about Selden himself.
C. keep Lily filtered through Selden's speculative reading, making her highly visible while her intentions remain partly opaque.
D. reveal that Lily is deliberately lying to everyone in the station.

Question 24

Taken as a whole, the passage presents Lily chiefly as

A. socially conspicuous yet difficult for Selden to read, creating tension between public visibility and private intention.
B. socially invisible because the crowd ignores her.
C. entirely transparent to Selden from the moment he sees her.
D. openly hostile toward Selden's attention.

Passage Set 3

From “A Midsummer Night's Dream” by William Shakespeare (1596)

THESEUS. Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour Draws on apace. Four happy days bring in Another moon. But, O, methinks how slow This old moon wanes! She lingers my desires Like to a stepdame or a dowager Long withering out a young man's revenue.

HIPPOLYTA. Four days will quickly steep themselves in night; Four nights will quickly dream away the time; And then the moon, like to a silver bow New-bent in heaven, shall behold the night Of our solemnities.

THESEUS. Go, Philostrate, Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments. Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth. Turn melancholy forth to funerals; The pale companion is not for our pomp. [Exit Philostrate.] Hippolyta, I wooed thee with my sword And won thy love doing thee injuries, But I will wed thee in another key, With pomp, with triumph, and with reveling.

Question 25

Theseus's comparison of the waning moon to “a stepdame or a dowager / Long withering out a young man's revenue” chiefly conveys

A. genuine affection for elderly women.
B. confusion about the lunar calendar.
C. impatience, figuring the delay as something that selfishly withholds what is rightfully his.
D. Theseus's respect for legal inheritance customs.

Question 26

Theseus's admission “I wooed thee with my sword / And won thy love doing thee injuries” chiefly introduces

A. a plan to fight another war before the wedding.
B. a boast about Theseus's military conquests unrelated to Hippolyta.
C. evidence that Hippolyta does not consent to the marriage.
D. a history of violence between the two that the coming marriage is meant to transform into a different key.

Question 27

The phrase “I will wed thee in another key” uses “key” to mean

A. a different manner or mode, contrasting the coming celebration with the conquest that preceded it.
B. a literal object used to unlock a door.
C. a musical instrument Theseus plans to play at the wedding.
D. a secret Theseus intends to reveal to Hippolyta.

Question 28

The dramatic function of opening the play with Theseus and Hippolyta's exchange, before other characters appear, is to

A. establish a frame of impending celebration and unresolved tension against which the rest of the plot will unfold.
B. resolve the play's central conflict immediately.
C. introduce the character who will prove least important to the plot.
D. delay the audience's sense of where the play is set.

Question 29

Theseus's repeated emphasis on ‘Four happy days’ and on the old moon's slow waning chiefly conveys

A. indifference to the wedding's timing.
B. confusion about when the wedding will occur.
C. interest in astronomy for its own sake.
D. impatience with time as an obstacle between present desire and the coming marriage.

Question 30

Which best describes the function of Hippolyta's brief, two-part reply relative to Theseus's longer speech?

A. It suggests she has less to say because she cares less about the marriage.
B. Its comparative economy creates a contrast in temperament that the exchange establishes without further comment.
C. It indicates that Hippolyta is not permitted to speak at length.
D. It is identical in length and content to Theseus's speech.

Question 31

The instruction to “Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments” primarily reveals Theseus's intention to

A. cancel the wedding celebrations entirely.
B. punish the youth of Athens for a prior offense.
C. actively shape the public mood of the city to match his own anticipation.
D. delay the wedding by engaging the youth in other business.

Question 32

The phrase “the pale companion is not for our pomp,” referring to melancholy, personifies the emotion as

A. a welcome guest at the wedding.
B. an unwelcome figure explicitly barred from the celebration.
C. a family member of Theseus.
D. a rival suitor for Hippolyta.

Question 33

Hippolyta's image of the moon as “a silver bow / New-bent in heaven” chiefly conveys

A. fear of the coming wedding night.
B. an anticipation of the wedding rendered through fresh, celestial imagery that tempers complaint.
C. a literal weapon Hippolyta plans to use.
D. confusion about the passage of time.

Passage Set 4

“Yet Do I Marvel” by Countee Cullen (1925)

I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
To struggle up a never-ending stair.
Inscrutable His ways are, and immune
To catechism by a mind too strewn
With petty cares to slightly understand
What awful brain compels His awful hand.
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!

Question 34

The catalog of unexplained phenomena in lines 3–8 (the blind mole, mortality, Tantalus, Sisyphus) primarily functions to

A. build a pattern of accepted, unquestioned mysteries against which the poem's final couplet will register as a distinct and personal case.
B. prove that God does not exist.
C. demonstrate the speaker's knowledge of Greek mythology for its own sake.
D. contradict the poem's opening claim that God is good.

Question 35

The opening line, “I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,” establishes a tone that the final couplet chiefly

A. unsettles, since the stated faith in God's goodness is placed under new pressure by the poem's closing example.
B. confirms without complication.
C. contradicts entirely, reversing the speaker's belief.
D. repeats without variation.

Question 36

The word “inscrutable” in line 9 chiefly conveys

A. that God's ways are easily understood by careful study.
B. the speaker's anger at God.
C. that God's reasoning lies beyond human capacity to fully grasp or judge.
D. a specific theological doctrine the speaker rejects.

Question 37

The volta, or turn, in this sonnet occurs most clearly at

A. the poem's first line.
B. line 13, where “Yet” signals a shift from general theological musing to the speaker's specific, personal case.
C. line 5, with the mention of Tantalus.
D. there is no turn in this poem.

Question 38

The final line's phrase “bid him sing” chiefly suggests that the speaker's identity as a poet is experienced as

A. entirely a matter of the speaker's own free choice.
B. something imposed by a “brain” beyond the speaker's control, paralleling the other mysteries the poem has catalogued.
C. unrelated to the poem's larger meditation on God.
D. a punishment the speaker actively resents.

Question 39

The movement from the poem's general examples of mysterious suffering to the speaker's personal statement in the final couplet chiefly allows the speaker to

A. place his own racial and artistic condition within a larger pattern of mysteries while making the final case more immediate.
B. resolve every theological question raised earlier.
C. abandon the poem's concern with divine justice.
D. prove that the mythological examples were included only as decoration.

Question 40

Which best describes the function of the mythological examples (Tantalus, Sisyphus) chosen for this poem?

A. They are examples of figures who successfully escaped divine punishment.
B. They are figures punished by fate for reasons the poem treats as difficult to fully justify, paralleling the poem's central concern.
C. They have no thematic connection to the poem's final couplet.
D. They are included only to display the speaker's classical education.

Question 41

The poem's closing exclamation point chiefly serves to

A. mark the final line as a heightened, keenly felt culmination of the mysteries catalogued earlier.
B. resolve the poem's tension with clear reassurance.
C. mark the final line as a question.
D. suggest the speaker is no longer serious.

Question 42

The allusion to Tantalus, “baited by the fickle fruit,” functions within the poem's catalog to

A. provide an example of deserved punishment the speaker fully endorses.
B. contradict the poem's opening claim about God's goodness.
C. add a specific mythological instance of suffering whose justice the poem treats as difficult to fully explain.
D. introduce a lighthearted, comic tone.

Question 43

The phrase “a mind too strewn / With petty cares” chiefly conveys

A. confidence that human minds can fully grasp divine reasoning.
B. the speaker's own freedom from worldly concerns.
C. criticism of God for creating distracting cares.
D. human limitation, distracted by small concerns, as one reason God's ways remain inscrutable.

Question 44

The poem's title, “Yet Do I Marvel,” echoes language from which part of the poem?

A. the poem's opening line only
B. the poem's dedication
C. a line not otherwise present in the poem
D. the final couplet, where the same phrase reappears to launch the poem's culminating claim

Passage Set 5

From “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold (1867)

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Question 45

The reference to Sophocles primarily functions to

A. prove that the speaker is narrating a historical event from ancient Greece.
B. place the sound of the sea inside a long human history of hearing suffering reflected in the natural world.
C. claim that Sophocles wrote this poem first.
D. establish that the speaker prefers Greek landscapes to English ones.

Question 46

The metaphor ‘The Sea of Faith / Was once, too, at the full’ chiefly presents faith as

A. a literal body of water that once covered the earth.
B. something that once seemed surrounding and sustaining but is now imagined as receding.
C. a private belief the speaker has never questioned.
D. an argument that physical tides are caused by religion.

Question 47

The shift from ‘Was once, too, at the full’ to ‘But now I only hear’ primarily creates

A. a contrast between an imagined former fullness and the speaker's present experience of loss.
B. proof that the speaker has physically moved to a different beach.
C. a transition from sadness to complete reassurance.
D. evidence that the speaker no longer hears the sea.

Question 48

The phrase ‘melancholy, long, withdrawing roar’ chiefly makes the loss described in the stanza feel

A. gradual, audible, and still in progress.
B. cheerful because the sea is moving.
C. entirely private and unrelated to the world outside the speaker.
D. caused by the person the speaker addresses as ‘love.’

Question 49

The direct address ‘Ah, love, let us be true / To one another!’ primarily functions as

A. a sudden announcement that the speaker plans to end the relationship.
B. proof that private love will restore the vanished Sea of Faith.
C. a personal response to the instability the speaker has just described in the larger world.
D. a return to the historical discussion of Sophocles.

Question 50

The contrast between a world that ‘seems / To lie before us like a land of dreams’ and the claim that it has ‘neither joy, nor love, nor light’ chiefly

A. celebrates appearance as more reliable than reality.
B. opposes an attractive surface to a harsher judgment about what the world actually provides.
C. shows that the speaker has fallen asleep.
D. describes a literal country the lovers intend to visit.

Question 51

The repeated negatives in ‘neither joy, nor love, nor light, / Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain’ chiefly

A. narrow the speaker's complaint to a single missing quality.
B. create a comic list that lightens the poem's mood.
C. accumulate different forms of absence until the world's apparent richness feels stripped away.
D. prove that the speaker literally possesses none of these experiences.

Question 52

The final image of a ‘darkling plain’ where ‘ignorant armies clash by night’ chiefly recasts the human world as

A. a clearly ordered battlefield in which each side understands its purpose.
B. a historical battle the speaker witnessed.
C. a scene of conflict without reliable knowledge, direction, or shared certainty.
D. proof that war is the only subject of the poem.

Question 53

Which best describes the structural movement of the excerpt?

A. It moves from private love to ancient history and ends in religious certainty.
B. It moves from a historical analogy, through a vision of cultural loss, to a personal appeal and a final image of collective confusion.
C. It remains focused on one unchanging description of the sea.
D. It begins in despair and ends by resolving that despair completely.

Question 54

The speaker's attitude in the final stanza is best described as

A. carefree because private love has eliminated every source of uncertainty.
B. detached from the world's problems.
C. confident that social conflict will soon end.
D. sorrowful about loss yet urgent in asking for fidelity as one human response to it.

Question 55

Taken as a whole, the excerpt chiefly develops the idea that

A. knowledge of ancient literature removes modern uncertainty.
B. religious decline makes intimate relationships impossible.
C. natural beauty proves that human suffering is insignificant.
D. awareness of historical and cultural instability makes truthful human connection feel more necessary, even though it cannot erase the larger uncertainty.

Section II: Free Response

3 tasks | 120 minutes total

The three tasks are presented in the standard order. Keep one continuous 120-minute clock. About 40 minutes per task is a useful pacing reference, but the section is scored on the completed responses, not equal time blocks.

FRQ 1: Poetry Analysis

“Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802” by William Wordsworth

Earth has not any thing to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

FRQ 1

Read the following poem carefully. Then, in a well-organized essay, analyze how Wordsworth uses poetic elements and techniques to convey the speaker’s complex response to the city at this particular moment.

FRQ 2: Prose Fiction Analysis

From “Riders to the Sea” by J. M. Synge (1904)

[Cottage kitchen, with nets, oilskins, spinning wheel, some new boards standing by the wall, etc. Cathleen, a girl of about twenty, finishes kneading cake, and puts it down in the pot-oven by the fire; then wipes her hands, and begins to spin at the wheel. Nora, a young girl, puts her head in at the door.]

NORA. [In a low voice.] Where is she? CATHLEEN. She's lying down, God help her, and may be sleeping, if she's able. [Nora comes in softly, and takes a bundle from under her shawl.] CATHLEEN. [Spinning the wheel rapidly.] What is it you have? NORA. The young priest is after bringing them. It's a shirt and a plain stocking were got off a drowned man in Donegal.

[Cathleen stops her wheel with a sudden movement, and leans out to listen.] CATHLEEN. Is the sea bad by the white rocks, Nora? NORA. Middling bad, God help us. There's a great roaring in the west, and it's worse it'll be getting when the tide's turned to the wind. [She goes over to the table with the bundle.] Shall I open it now? CATHLEEN. Maybe she'd wake up on us, and come in before we'd done. [Coming to the table.] It's a long time we'll be, and the two of us crying.

FRQ 2

Read the following passage carefully. Then write a well-organized essay in which you analyze how Synge uses dramatic elements and techniques to convey the complex relationship between the two sisters and the danger they discuss.

FRQ 3: Literary Argument

FRQ 3

Many works of literature portray a character who deliberately withdraws from people or relationships around them. Choose a work of fiction in which an important character chooses such withdrawal. In a well-written essay, analyze how the character’s withdrawal contributes to an interpretation of the work as a whole.

END OF EXAM

Score this exam only after both sections are complete. The Section I answer key and Section II scoring guidance for this exam appear in the back matter, after both practice exams.

BACK MATTER

Check Your Work

An answer key is useful only if it identifies the decision that failed. For each multiple-choice miss, check the deciding evidence, the strongest distractor, and the failure type. For free response, compare the thesis, evidence, commentary, and complexity of the reasoning with the scoring criteria. Do not assign quality from polish alone.

This book does not convert an original practice-exam raw score into an estimated AP score of 1–5. Cut scores vary across exam forms and years. Use the two exams to identify repeated skill errors, pacing problems, and whether corrections hold on new material.

A rationale should explain the deciding evidence and the strongest distractor. It should not reteach the chapter.

MCQ Key Format

Every rationale contains four pieces: the correct answer, the deciding evidence, the strongest distractor, and a failure type: scope, function, degree, inference, precision, or complexity.

The full Practice Exam 1 and Practice Exam 2 Section I keys appear here, after both simulations. Chapter practice keys remain with their instructional sets.

FRQ Scoring Guidance

Every full FRQ task in this book has task-specific scoring guidance: a defensible thesis example, evidence targets, Row B guidance, Row C guidance, and one common failure to avoid. The scored model essays in Chapters 15, 16, and 17 include actual row-by-row scores because a completed response exists to score. A task by itself cannot receive a row score.

Use the task-specific Row B rules from Chapter 14. Poetry Analysis and Prose Fiction Analysis require literary-element or technique analysis at the upper Row B levels. Literary Argument does not impose a device quota.