CLEP English Literature

It is entirely multiple choice: approximately 95 questions in 90 minutes, which works out to under a minute per question. Because many questions attach several items to one passage, budget your time by passage rather than by question, and do not let a single dense poem consume five minutes.

ACE recommends a credit-granting score of 50, worth 6 semester hours. That is a recommendation, not a guarantee: each institution sets its own credit-granting policy, which may differ, so confirm the required score and credit hours with your college before you register.

Literature from the Anglo-Saxon period to the present, weighted by period: 10% Middle Ages, 15% 16th and early 17th century, 10% Restoration and 18th century, 20% Romantic, 20% Victorian, and 25% 20th century to the present. Genre weighting is 45% poetry, 20% drama, 15% novels, 10% short stories, and 10% nonfiction.

The difficulty comes from breadth and from close reading, not from trick questions. You must recognize authors from short quotations, place excerpts in the right period, and analyze tone, imagery, and style quickly. Candidates who have only skimmed anthologies usually struggle with the poetry-heavy sections and unfamiliar minor writers.

The official source page does not state a retake policy, waiting period, or attempt limit, so treat this as unconfirmed and check current CLEP policy directly with the College Board or your test center before relying on a retake. Plan to sit the exam once, well prepared.

Registration is $97.00. Optional preparation materials are sold separately; for example, the official CLEP English Literature Examination Guide is a $10.00 PDF. Test-center administration fees, where they apply, are set locally and are not part of the registration price.

Follow the chronological survey, because the exam rewards a sense of historical development: Middle Ages, Renaissance and early 17th century, Restoration and 18th century, Romantic, Victorian, then 20th century to the present. Spend the most time on the last three, which together account for about 65% of the questions.

Misidentifying an author from a quotation, confusing adjacent periods, and answering from plot memory instead of the passage in front of them. Others include ignoring meter and form terms, and running out of time on long poems. Practice reading unfamiliar verse cold and naming tone and imagery in one pass.

Shift from reading to retrieval: quiz yourself on author-quotation matching, period markers, and metrical terms, then do timed passage sets that mirror the 45% poetry weighting. Read criticism excerpts too, since about 10% of questions involve nonfiction and some ask you to follow an argument's reasoning.