AP English Literature and Composition
AP English Literature and Composition is an introductory college-level course in literary analysis offered through the Advanced Placement (AP) program by the College Board, designed for high school students to engage deeply with imaginative literature including fiction, poetry, and drama from various periods spanning the English Renaissance to the present.[1] The course emphasizes close reading to cultivate skills in interpreting how authors use language and literary elements—such as character, setting, structure, figurative language, and narration—to convey meaning, evoke responses, and explore complex human experiences.[2] No prerequisites are required, and it aligns with introductory college curricula in literature and composition, preparing students to analyze diverse perspectives with maturity without endorsing specific cultural or political values.[1] Typically spanning a full academic year, the course involves approximately 153 class periods, fostering abilities in textual evidence use, argumentation, and sophisticated interpretation through reading, discussion, and writing.[1] The course framework is organized into nine units, scaffolded across three genres: short fiction (units 1, 4, and 7, weighted 42%–49% on the exam), poetry (units 2, 5, and 8, 36%–45%), and longer fiction or drama (units 3, 6, and 9, 15%–18%), allowing teachers flexibility in sequencing while ensuring progressive skill development.[1] Key skills are categorized into seven areas, including explaining the function of characters and settings, analyzing narrative structures and figurative language, comparing texts, developing textually substantiated arguments, and demonstrating sophistication through nuanced contextual insights.[2] Students explore recommended works like The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne or Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, alongside poetry and short stories, to identify literary techniques, tensions, and ambiguities that shape meaning.[1] This thematic and genre-based approach encourages critical thinking and writing practice, such as crafting thesis-driven essays that defend interpretations with evidence and reasoning.[3] The course culminates in a three-hour AP Exam administered annually in May, consisting of a 60-minute multiple-choice section (55 questions, 45% of the score) testing comprehension and analysis across the units, and a two-hour free-response section (55% of the score) with three essays: poetry analysis, prose fiction analysis, and a literary argument on a chosen theme or work.[1] Scored on a 1–5 scale, the exam is criterion-referenced, with scores of 3 or higher often qualifying students for college credit or placement, depending on institutional policies.[3] Developed collaboratively by high school teachers and college faculty, the course and exam were updated for fall 2024 to reflect current pedagogical practices, and it supports diverse career paths in fields like education, law, and media.[1]Course Overview
Description and Purpose
The AP English Literature and Composition is an Advanced Placement course offered by the College Board for high school students, designed to mirror a first-year college literature survey by engaging learners with sophisticated literary works.[2] This program introduces students to the rigorous analysis of prose, poetry, and drama, fostering a deep appreciation for how authors employ language, structure, and themes to explore human experience.[1] The primary purposes of the course are to cultivate skills in close reading, critical analysis, and interpretive writing applied to literary texts spanning various historical periods and genres, such as short fiction, longer narratives, and dramatic works.[1] Unlike traditional high school English classes that may emphasize memorization, this course prioritizes independent critical thinking and evidence-based interpretations to prepare students for advanced academic discourse.[1] Typically spanning one full academic year, it encourages students to develop nuanced responses to literature through sustained engagement and discussion.[2] Successful performance on the associated AP exam can qualify students for college credit or advanced placement at participating universities, aligning the high school experience with postsecondary expectations. The separate AP English Literature and Composition course and exam was launched in 1980 as part of the broader Advanced Placement program, which began in 1955, to bridge the gap between secondary and higher education curricula, enabling motivated high schoolers to tackle college-level challenges early.[4][5]Prerequisites and Student Eligibility
The College Board does not enforce strict prerequisites for enrollment in AP English Literature and Composition, stating explicitly that there are no required prior courses. However, the course assumes students have engaged in prior literature studies during secondary school, including exposure to texts from diverse authors and time periods ranging from the English Renaissance to the present, to build foundational skills in reading and analysis.[1][6] The ideal student profile includes juniors or seniors who demonstrate proficiency in reading and comprehending complex, college-level texts, along with basic skills in essay writing and vocabulary development. These students should be prepared for critical thinking, literary analysis, and argumentation, including the ability to recognize patterns in texts, develop evidence-based claims, and engage maturely with diverse perspectives and potentially controversial content.[1][6][7] Eligibility for the course generally requires enrollment in a high school that offers AP programs, with no minimum GPA mandated by the College Board; however, many schools impose additional criteria such as teacher recommendation to ensure student readiness. Underprepared students may face significant challenges, including overload from the course's rigorous demands for in-depth reading, analytical writing, and interpreting ambiguities or ironies in literature, which can lead to difficulties in crafting defensible theses supported by textual evidence.[1][8][9] School counselors play a key role in advising students on course fit, evaluating prior English performance, overall academic load, and readiness for college-level work to promote equitable access and informed enrollment decisions.[10]Curriculum and Skills
Core Learning Objectives
The AP English Literature and Composition course is structured around a set of seven essential skills that form the foundation of students' analytical and interpretive abilities, as outlined in the official Course and Exam Description (CED) by the College Board.[1] These skills emphasize close reading to identify textual details revealing character perspectives, motives, and themes; structural analysis to explain plot functions and text organization; interpretation of literary devices such as similes, metaphors, symbols, imagery, tone, and meter; contextual understanding of settings, cultural influences, and character relationships; development of argumentation through defensible thesis statements; and synthesis of textual evidence to support reasoning while avoiding mere plot summary.[1] Together, these objectives aim to cultivate students' capacity to engage deeply with imaginative literature, fostering mature analysis of diverse perspectives without prescribing specific cultural or political values.[1] A key focus within these skills is the analysis of poetry, where students learn to examine elements like meter, imagery, and tone to understand their effects on meaning and reader experience, often constituting 36-45% of exam content.[1] In short fiction, which accounts for 42-49% of the exam, emphasis is placed on narrative techniques, character development, and perspective to explore complexities in individual situations and motivations.[1] For longer fiction or drama, comprising 15-18% of the exam, students analyze plot conflicts, structural contrasts, and character responses to broader contexts, such as concepts of "home" or societal tensions.[1] These genre-specific analyses build toward thematic explorations of identity, culture, and time/place, encouraging students to connect literary elements to larger human experiences without rigid prescriptions.[1] Writing objectives reinforce these skills by requiring students to craft thesis-driven essays that present defensible interpretations supported by sufficient, relevant textual evidence, consistently linking commentary to a clear line of reasoning.[1] Essays must demonstrate sophistication through exploration of complexities or alternative views, maintaining clarity and control in composition, while explicitly avoiding plot summary in favor of analytical depth.[1] Progress toward these objectives is assessed through in-class discussions that probe interpretive arguments, timed essays evaluating evidence synthesis, and mock exams mirroring the AP format to track skill mastery.[1] These assessments, often facilitated via tools like AP Classroom progress checks, ensure alignment with the course's emphasis on substantiated literary argumentation.[1] Recommended readings from diverse genres provide practical contexts for applying these skills in practice.[1]Recommended Literary Works and Genres
The AP English Literature and Composition course does not prescribe a fixed canon of texts, allowing teachers significant flexibility to select works that align with the curriculum's emphasis on literary analysis skills. Instead, the College Board provides illustrative examples across genres to guide instruction, ensuring students engage with a variety of literary forms from the English Renaissance to the present day.[1] These recommendations prioritize depth over breadth, supplemented by shorter pieces like poetry and short fiction to build proficiency in close reading and argumentation.[1] Genres studied include poetry, prose fiction (both short stories and longer novels), and drama, with approximate exam weightings of 36-45% for poetry, 42-49% for short fiction, and 15-18% for longer fiction or excerpts from novels and plays. Poetry selections often feature British Romantic and Modernist examples, such as John Donne's metaphysical "The Sun Rising" or Elizabeth Bishop's imagistic "The Fish," to explore figurative language and structure. Novels and plays span realism, modernism, and postmodernism, including works like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (Romantic science fiction) or William Shakespeare's Hamlet (Elizabethan tragedy). Short fiction from the 19th to 21st centuries, such as Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" or Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl," highlights narrative techniques and cultural perspectives.[1] Recommended works draw from British literature, including Shakespeare (Hamlet, The Tempest), Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice), and Virginia Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway); American literature, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon; and world literature, like Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart or Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis. Additional examples emphasize diverse voices, including Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah, and Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner. These selections represent a non-exhaustive list intended to model complex, analyzable texts.[1][11] Criteria for text selection focus on works that span the 16th century to the present, fostering analysis of character, setting, and literary devices while representing diverse voices in terms of gender, ethnicity, and global perspectives. Teachers choose texts to scaffold student growth, starting with more accessible pieces and progressing to challenging ones that provoke mature discussions of cultural or controversial elements. This approach ensures equitable engagement without endorsing specific ideologies.[1][11] Instructors have broad autonomy to tailor selections to local contexts, organizing by genre, theme, chronology, or author studies, as long as they support core skills like interpreting textual evidence. For instance, a course might emphasize several novels and plays alongside poems and short stories to cover the curriculum's nine optional units.[1] Recommendations evolved with the 2019 course redesign, which shifted from a content-heavy framework to a skills-based one, enhancing inclusivity by removing restrictions like "literary merit" for the exam's open-ended question and encouraging more contemporary and non-Western authors to reflect broader cultural narratives. This update broadened access to diverse texts, such as those by Octavia E. Butler (Kindred) or Yaa Gyasi (Homegoing), promoting representation of underrepresented voices.[11][12]Instruction and Resources
Teaching Approaches
Teaching approaches in AP English Literature and Composition emphasize active engagement with literary texts to develop students' analytical and interpretive skills, aligning with the course's core objectives of close reading, argumentation, and contextual understanding.[1] Instructors often employ Socratic seminars, where students lead discussions using self-generated questions on works like John Donne's poetry or Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, fostering critical thinking, textual evidence-based dialogue, and annotation practices such as highlighting motifs or structural elements.[13] These seminars encourage collaborative exploration of themes, characters, and narrative techniques, with teachers facilitating through guided questioning to ensure equitable participation and depth of analysis.[1] Close reading workshops complement this by guiding students in deliberate, line-by-line examinations of passages, using tools like graphic organizers or data sheets to annotate diction, tone, and symbolism in texts such as William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" or Elizabeth Bishop's "The Fish."[1] Writing instruction centers on workshops that build argumentative prose through iterative processes, including peer review sessions where students provide feedback on thesis development and evidence integration in essays analyzing works like Shakespeare's Hamlet.[1] Timed essay practice simulates analytical pressures, followed by revision cycles that refine claims with textual support, progressing from paragraph-level responses—such as explications of Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl"—to full essays emphasizing sophistication in argumentation.[1] These workshops promote recursive writing, where drafting, editing, and polishing occur in response to peer and instructor input, enhancing students' ability to craft defensible interpretations of literature.[13] To enrich textual analysis while maintaining a primary focus on original works, teachers integrate multimedia elements such as film adaptations—for instance, versions of Hamlet or Whale Rider—to explore thematic parallels and cultural contexts without supplanting close engagement with the source material.[1] Digital annotations via tools like shared online platforms allow students to collaborate on highlighting key passages in poetry units, supplementing but not replacing print-based reading of authors like Gwendolyn Brooks.[1] This approach underscores the course's emphasis on imaginative literature, using media sparingly to illuminate narrative structure or character dynamics in longer fiction like Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God.[13] Pacing in the course typically involves studying a selection of major works selected for depth across genres, balanced with dedicated poetry units and skill-building drills to scaffold progression through the curriculum's nine units.[1] For example, a semester might allocate 2-4 weeks to novels like Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment or Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, interspersed with shorter poetry analyses and targeted exercises on elements like plot or narration, ensuring coverage of diverse periods and voices without overwhelming breadth.[1] This structure allows flexibility for thematic organization, such as units on temptation or innocence, while incorporating progress checks to reinforce skills.[13] Differentiation strategies address diverse learners by providing accommodations in line with College Board guidelines, such as scaffolding texts from accessible short fiction to complex dramas for students with reading challenges or ESL backgrounds.[1] Instructors offer tutorials, optional after-school sessions, and group-based activities like jigsaw discussions on Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man to support varying readiness levels, while incorporating culturally diverse texts to promote inclusivity.[1] Tailored feedback in workshops and flexible participation in seminars ensure equitable access, with adjustments like extended time for annotations or alternative response formats to meet individual needs without compromising rigor.[13]Preparation Materials and Strategies
Students preparing for the AP English Literature and Composition course and exam can access a range of official resources from the College Board to build foundational knowledge and skills. The Course and Exam Description (CED) provides a detailed framework outlining the course content, including big ideas like character, setting, and structure, along with essential skills for literary analysis.[1] Sample syllabi offer models for course organization, demonstrating how teachers integrate reading, discussion, and writing activities to meet course objectives.[14] Additionally, the AP Classroom platform delivers free instructional materials, such as unit guides, progress checks, and sample free-response questions with scoring guidelines, enabling students to practice independently or in class. With the exam administered digitally starting in 2025 via the Bluebook app, AP Classroom provides online multiple-choice and free-response practice to simulate the exam experience.[15] Third-party preparation materials supplement official resources by offering targeted review and practice. Barron's AP English Literature and Composition Premium, 2025 includes in-depth content review, diagnostic tests, and eight full-length practice exams with detailed explanations to reinforce exam strategies, including digital practice.[16] Similarly, The Princeton Review's AP English Literature & Composition Premium Prep, 26th Edition (2025) provides content breakdowns, test-taking techniques, and five full-length practice tests, emphasizing skills like close reading and essay structuring, with online digital practice.[17] Online platforms, such as Khan Academy's resources on poetry elements and literary analysis, help students dissect poems through videos and exercises focused on structure, imagery, and meaning, though these are general rather than AP-specific.[18] Effective student strategies emphasize active engagement with texts and consistent practice. Maintaining a reading journal encourages annotation and reflection on themes, character development, and literary devices, fostering deeper comprehension during independent reading.[19] Practicing timed free-response questions, available through AP Classroom, builds stamina and precision in crafting analytical essays under exam conditions.[20] Joining study groups allows peers to discuss interpretations and debate textual evidence, enhancing critical thinking and exposure to diverse perspectives.[21] Many AP English Literature courses incorporate summer reading assignments to establish a strong literary foundation before the school year begins. This common practice typically involves 1-2 novels or plays, such as classics like The Great Gatsby or Their Eyes Were Watching God, accompanied by reflective essays or discussions to practice close reading and argumentation.[22] To support underserved students, the College Board has expanded access through equity initiatives since 2020, including fee reductions and enhanced digital tools. The AP Classroom app provides free-response practice questions and personalized feedback without cost barriers, aligning with the organization's policy to promote equitable participation in AP programs.[23]Examination Details
Format and Structure
The AP English Literature and Composition exam is administered annually in early May and lasts a total of 3 hours.[1] It is structured into two main sections designed to assess students' close reading, analytical, and interpretive skills developed in the course.[24] The exam evaluates proficiency in analyzing literary texts through both objective and subjective formats, with the multiple-choice section focusing on immediate comprehension and the free-response section emphasizing sustained argumentation.[1] Section I consists of 55 multiple-choice questions to be completed in 1 hour, accounting for 45% of the total exam score.[24] Starting with the 2025 exam, each question has four answer choices.[24] This section includes five sets of 8–13 questions each, preceded by passages from poetry, prose fiction, or drama, with at least two sets based on poetry and two on prose fiction or drama.[1] Questions test skills such as identifying literary elements, interpreting meaning, and understanding structure and style within these literary contexts.[24] Section II comprises three free-response questions to be completed in 2 hours, contributing 55% of the exam score.[1] Students are allotted approximately 40 minutes per essay, with the prompts requiring a poetry analysis essay, a prose fiction analysis essay, and an open-ended literary argument based on a work of their choice.[24] These essays demand sophisticated reasoning and evidence-based claims about literary works' themes, characters, and techniques.[1] The exam is administered digitally through the College Board's Bluebook app, with in-person testing at schools; this fully digital format became standard by 2025 following pilots from 2021 to 2023.[24] Accommodations, such as extended time, are provided for students with disabilities in accordance with College Board policies to ensure equitable access.[1]Question Types and Analysis
The multiple-choice section of the AP English Literature and Composition exam consists of 55 questions based on five sets of passages, each set containing 8–13 questions and drawn from prose fiction, drama, or poetry.[24] These questions assess students' ability to identify and analyze literary elements across seven skill categories: explain the function of character (16–20%), setting (10–13%), plot and structure (16–20%), or narrator/speaker (21–26%); analyze word choice, including imagery and symbols, and figurative language (10–13%); perform comparisons between texts (10–13%); and develop a literary argumentation (3–6%).[1] At least two passages are from prose fiction (potentially including drama) and two from poetry, ensuring a balance across genres.[24] The free-response section features three essays, each requiring a defensible thesis supported by evidence from the text.[25] The first essay prompts students to analyze a poem, explicating its form, theme, and literary devices, such as how imagery or syntax contributes to meaning, based on an unseen poetic passage.[25] For example, students might explore the role of metaphor in conveying a speaker's emotional conflict in a provided poem.[26] The second essay focuses on prose fiction, asking students to analyze narrative voice, character development, or other elements in an excerpt from a novel or short story.[25] Typical prompts require examining how an author's choices, like point of view or diction, shape the reader's understanding of a character's motivations or the story's themes.[27] The third essay is an open question, where students craft a literary argument on a broad theme—such as isolation or ambition—using any work of fiction, poetry, or drama studied in the course.[25] This response must integrate specific textual evidence to support the interpretation, without relying on external sources beyond the chosen work.[28] Across all questions, responses emphasize evidence-based analysis grounded in close reading of textual details, with no incorporation of outside research or personal anecdotes.[24] Students are expected to select relevant quotes and explain their significance through sophisticated commentary on literary techniques.[1] Exam passages for multiple-choice and the first two free-response questions are unseen texts similar to those recommended in the course, spanning genres like British and American literature from the 16th to the 21st centuries.[1] These selections ensure exposure to diverse styles and periods while testing interpretive skills on unfamiliar material.[24]Scoring and Performance
Grading Scale and Criteria
The AP English Literature and Composition exam is scored through a combination of the multiple-choice section and the free-response section. The multiple-choice section consists of 55 questions, each worth 1 point for a correct answer, with no points deducted for incorrect answers or unanswered questions; this policy, eliminating the previous quarter-point penalty, has been in place since the 2011 exam administration.[29][30] The raw score from this section is scaled to contribute 45% to the overall composite score.[24] The free-response section includes three essays, each scored on a 0-6 scale by trained readers using an analytic rubric that evaluates three main categories: thesis (0-1 point), evidence and commentary (0-4 points), and sophistication (0-1 point).[31] For the thesis, 1 point is awarded for a defensible statement that responds to the prompt, regardless of whether the rest of the essay fully supports it. The evidence and commentary row grants points progressively for the use of specific textual evidence and its explanation in relation to the thesis, with up to 4 points for consistent, convincing analysis that integrates multiple literary elements such as imagery, structure, or tone. Sophistication earns 1 point for demonstrating nuanced understanding, such as exploring complexities, alternative interpretations, or broader literary contexts, though it is not required for a high score. These criteria apply similarly across the poetry analysis, prose fiction analysis, and literary argument essays, with the total free-response score out of 18 scaled to contribute 55% to the composite score.[31] The composite score is a weighted sum of the scaled multiple-choice and free-response sections, converted to the final AP score on a 1-5 scale through a process that ensures comparability across years.[32] A score of 5 indicates extremely well qualified performance, equivalent to an A+ or A in a college course; 4 signifies very well qualified (A-, B+, or B); 3 is qualified (B-, C+, or C); 2 is possibly qualified; and 1 indicates no recommendation for college credit.[33] To maintain consistency, the chief reader for the exam, a qualified educator appointed by the College Board, develops the scoring guidelines, oversees daily operations at the annual AP Reading, and trains table leaders and readers—typically including hundreds of high school teachers and college faculty per subject—who score responses in a multi-day event.[32] This training emphasizes uniform application of the rubric through practice scoring and calibration. Final scores are released to students via the College Board online portal in early July, following secure processing and verification.[34]Historical Grade Distributions
The Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition exam has seen steady growth in participation over the past two decades, reflecting broader expansion of the AP program in U.S. high schools. In 2002, approximately 215,000 students took the exam, increasing to around 350,000–400,000 annually since the 2010s and reaching a peak of 416,531 in 2025. This growth aligns with increased access to advanced coursework, particularly post-pandemic recovery efforts that encouraged higher enrollment. Data from College Board annual reports indicate that participation increased by about 9.5% from 2019 to 2025, driven by expanded offerings in diverse school settings.[35][36] Score distributions have shown variability influenced by curriculum updates, global events, and scoring adjustments, with a general upward trend in qualifying scores (3 or higher) in recent years. Historically, the rate of students achieving a 5 has ranged from 6% to 16%, while 3+ rates hovered between 50% and 66% from 2000 to 2019 before climbing higher post-2021. The 2021 exam, affected by pandemic disruptions, marked the lowest performance with only 43.9% scoring 3 or higher and a mean score of 2.47; subsequent years saw recovery and gains, with 77.9% achieving 3+ in 2022 and stabilization around 72–77% through 2025. Following the 2019 curriculum refresh, which emphasized skills-based analysis and diverse texts, scores improved slightly, with the 3+ rate rising from 49.7% in 2019 to 60.1% in 2020 and continuing upward, though much of the post-2021 increase stems from methodological recalibrations to maintain standards amid expanded access. Representative distributions for recent years are summarized below:| Year | Test Takers | % Score 5 | % Score 4 | % Score 3 | % Score 2 | % Score 1 | % 3+ | Mean Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 380,136 | 6.2 | 15.7 | 27.8 | 34.3 | 16.0 | 49.7 | 2.62 |
| 2020 | 333,980 | 9.3 | 17.3 | 33.5 | 27.8 | 12.2 | 60.1 | 2.84 |
| 2021 | 321,029 | 4.9 | 12.0 | 26.9 | 37.3 | 18.8 | 43.9 | 2.47 |
| 2022 | 339,401 | 16.9 | 27.3 | 33.7 | 14.1 | 7.9 | 77.9 | 3.31 |
| 2023 | 356,043 | 14.9 | 27.8 | 34.5 | 14.4 | 8.4 | 77.2 | 3.26 |
| 2024 | 389,272 | 13.7 | 26.9 | 31.8 | 16.5 | 11.1 | 72.4 | 3.16 |
| 2025 | 416,531 | 16.2 | 26.9 | 31.0 | 15.9 | 10.0 | 74.2 | 3.24 |