AP English Literature case studies
AP English Literature · Put your knowledge to work in context.
AP English Literature and Composition is a College Board Advanced Placement course and exam that assesses how well students analyze imaginative literature - prose fiction, drama, and poetry - and how effectively they build written arguments about it. It is designed for high school students who have done college-level work in close reading and literary interpretation, and it is typically taken after a year of the AP course, though the exam is open to any prepared student. The AP English Literature case studies are 5 cases and about 2,157 words.
1The Overqualified Thesis
A student drafts a free-response essay on a passage in which a narrator describes returning to a childhood home now occupied by strangers. The student's opening paragraph reads: "In this passage, the author uses imagery, diction, and tone to show that memory is powerful and that the past shapes who we are." The body paragraphs each name a device, quote one line, and restate that the device 'creates a nostalgic feeling.' The conclusion repeats that memory is powerful.
498 words, about 2 min2Two Poems, One Clock
On a multiple-choice section, a student has 60 minutes for 55 questions across five passages (roughly 11 questions per passage). She is strong on prose but slow on poetry.
475 words, about 2 min3The Quotation She Cannot Place
A student writing the poetry free-response essay has chosen a poem she understands well and has a strong thesis about how the speaker's view of nature shifts. She wants to support a claim about the poem's final image, but she cannot recall the exact wording of the last two lines.
394 words, about 2 min4The Passage That Resists the Prompt
A prose passage presents a first-person narrator describing a dinner party. The narrator reports dialogue and gesture in flat, precise sentences but never states what anyone feels.
410 words, about 2 min5The Conclusion That Argues With Itself
A student's free-response essay on a prose passage has a strong thesis: the narrator's apparent sympathy for a character is undercut by the narrator's own self-interest. The two body paragraphs are solid.
380 words, about 2 min