AP English Language common mistakes
AP English Language · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Writing a summary of the passage's content in the rhetorical analysis essay instead of analyzing how the writer persuades.
Students default to comprehension mode: they were rewarded in earlier grades for accurately restating what a text says, and summary feels safe when they are unsure of the rhetoric.
What to do instead
Before drafting, convert every planned sentence into a 'the writer does X in order to Y' claim. If a sentence only reports content, cut it or attach an effect clause naming the audience response it produces.
Treating 'the audience' as a single undifferentiated mass and ignoring the specific occasion or context that the prompt supplies.
Students skim the prompt's framing sentence (publication, date, speaker role) and jump straight to the passage, so they never register who is being addressed or what exigence is being answered.
What to do instead
Underline the speaker, audience, occasion, and purpose in the prompt before reading. Then annotate the passage for places where the writer acknowledges the audience's likely objections or shared values.
Naming a device ('the author uses pathos and ethos') without explaining the mechanism or its effect on this specific audience.
Students memorize a device list and treat naming as the analytical work; they lack a template for moving from label to function.
What to do instead
Use a three-part sentence frame: the writer [specific move], which [mechanism], so that [audience] is positioned to [effect]. Practice on three sentences from the passage until the pattern is automatic.
Writing an argument essay with a thesis that merely restates the prompt or lists two sides ('both perspectives have merit') rather than taking a defensible position.
Students fear being wrong or oversimplifying a complex issue, and hedging feels intellectually honest, so they avoid committing to a claim that could be challenged.
What to do instead
Draft the thesis as a sentence a reasonable person could disagree with. Test it by writing the strongest counterargument; if no counterargument exists, the thesis is too safe and needs a sharper claim.
Choosing a rhetorical strategy in the synthesis/argument essay that the sources do not actually support, then forcing quotations to fit.
Students decide their position first from personal opinion and only then look at the sources, so evidence selection becomes confirmation-seeking rather than genuine inquiry.
What to do instead
Read and tag all sources first, grouping them by the claim each could support. Let the pattern across sources shape the thesis, and deliberately cite one source that complicates your position and rebut it.
Citing evidence with a bare attribution ('According to Source B, ...') and never explaining how the evidence advances the argument.
Students treat quotation as self-evident proof and run out of time, so commentary gets sacrificed; they also may not know the difference between evidence and analysis.
What to do instead
Enforce a 1:2 ratio: for every line of quoted or paraphrased evidence, write two lines interpreting it. Use the frame 'This matters because it shows...' and delete evidence that cannot earn that commentary.
Producing paragraphs that are chronological tours of the passage or a list of devices rather than paragraphs organized around a single claim.
Students follow the text's own order because it is the easiest path through the material, and they have not been taught to outline by idea rather than by sequence.
What to do instead
Write topic sentences for all body paragraphs before drafting. Each must state an arguable sub-claim, and the paragraph must contain only material that supports that sentence; reorder or cut anything that does not.
Using transitions that signal sequence ('first,' 'also,' 'another example') where the argument needs logical relationships (concession, causation, contrast).
Students learned transition words as decoration rather than as markers of reasoning, so they pick words that only signal 'more is coming.'
What to do instead
Label each paragraph's relationship to the previous one (concedes, therefore, however, because) before writing the transition. Choose the word that encodes that relationship, and vary sentence structure so the logic is carried by syntax, not just connectives.
Writing sentences that are grammatically tangled-dangling modifiers, comma splices, or overloaded subordination-so the analysis becomes hard to follow.
Students compose long, complex sentences to sound academic, adding clauses faster than they can control them, and they rarely reread for syntax.
What to do instead
Reserve the final five minutes for a syntax pass: read each sentence aloud mentally, split any sentence with more than two subordinate clauses, and verify that every opening modifier's subject is the first noun after the comma.
Adopting an inflated, jargon-heavy register ('utilizes multifaceted rhetorical appeals to galvanize the reader') that obscures rather than clarifies meaning.
Students equate formality with sophistication and believe big words signal advanced writing, so they substitute Latinate vocabulary for precise verbs.
What to do instead
Replace every nominalization and inflated verb with a plain equivalent (utilize→use, galvanize→push). Then check that each stylistic flourish-metaphor, parallelism, fragment-serves a persuasive purpose you can name.