CliffsAP English Literature and Composition
Chapter One
The AP Literature Exam Section I:
Multiple-Choice Questions
Introduction
The multiple-choice section of the exam normally contains between fifty and sixty questions
on four different passages. One passage has at least fifteen questions and is reused on a future
exam. Two of the passages are prose; two are poetry. Though the poems are usually complete
works, the prose passages are likely to be taken from longer works such as novels or works of
nonfiction.
The four passages represent different periods of British and American literature. It is likely that
one is chosen from the sixteenth or the early seventeenth century and one from the restoration
or eighteenth century, unless these periods are represented by passages on the essay section of
the test. The two other sections are from nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers. The exam
as a whole is likely to include several works by female and minority writers.
You may, by extraordinarily good luck, find a passage on the exam that you've studied in your
English class, but the odds are heavily against it. The passages chosen for the exam are almost
always those that have not found their way into textbooks and anthologies. Thoug ... read full excerpt from Cliffs English Literature and Composition ebook
