How To Pass The AP Lang Exam 2025

Summary

In this comprehensive guide by Coach Hall Writes, students receive vital tips and strategies to excel in the 2025 AP Lang exam. The video emphasizes understanding the scoring system and the significance of composite scores in achieving college credit. It details the test structure, offering in-depth advice for both the multiple choice and free-response questions (FRQs). Through a lively and instructive approach, students are encouraged to play to their strengths, practice with mock exams, and apply various techniques for each essay type, aiming to improve their scores and effectively manage time. Whether it's mastering the Multiple Choice or enhancing essay commentary, Coach Hall provides students with the insights they need to navigate the exam successfully.

Highlights

• Understand how the AP Lang exam's scoring system works—it's key to aiming for the right score. 🎯
• Compose a composite score by balancing your performance in MCQs and essays. 🧮
• Strategize for each section: spend time wisely and focus on your strengths. ⏳
• Familiarize yourself with the digital format to avoid exam day surprises. 📲
• Practice with past exams under timed conditions to boost familiarity and confidence. 🕒
• In essays, prioritize commentary—clarity and depth over merely listing facts. 💡

Key Takeaways

• The AP Lang exam has two main parts: multiple choice and FRQs, each carrying specific weight in scoring. 📝
• Scoring composite scores require understanding both sections' contributions—MCQ is 45%, and essays are 55%. 🔢
• Choose strategies—play to strengths by starting with easier segments and using process of elimination. 💡
• Utilize past mock exams and practice thoroughly to simulate exam conditions for better preparedness. 📚
• Embrace the digital format: know the features and limitations, such as how copy-pasting works. 💻
• Remember key tips for essays: know your thesis, ensure quality over quantity, and use strong commentary. ✍️

Overview

The AP Lang exam can be daunting, but understanding its structure is the first step toward conquering it! This video by Coach Hall Writes breaks down the test into digestible bits, emphasizing how the exam is scored between 1 to 5, and how composite scores impact college credit eligibility. The focus is not just on passing but excelling, depending on the colleges you're aiming for.

Dive into details with Coach Hall as you explore strategies for the multiple choice and essay sections. Learn how to tackle each question type with confidence by playing to your strengths and understanding the digital format's nuances. Whether it's crafting a flawless synthesis essay or mastering the subtle art of rhetorical analysis, this guide has you covered.

With a bag full of strategies and tips—from the importance of key sentences to making the most of your practice tests—Coach Hall transforms exam prep into a strategic game. Remember, it's not just what you know, it's knowing how to apply it under exam conditions. Happy studying and here's to crushing your AP Lang exam!

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction and Overview In the introductory chapter titled 'Introduction and Overview,' the host welcomes viewers back and sets the stage for the content focusing on the 2025 AP Lang exam. The host emphasizes the importance of subscribing to the channel, turning on notifications, and checking out additional resources linked in the description. A key question is introduced regarding how the AP Lang test is scored, underscoring students' aims to achieve specific scores. The chapter implies an ongoing commitment to assisting students in their exam preparations.
• 01:00 - 03:00: AP Lang Exam Scoring This chapter discusses how students receive composite scores ranging from one to five on their AP Lang Exam, with the term 'qualifying score' commonly being a three. It emphasizes that the College Board does not refer to this as 'passing,' contrary to common student parlance. The chapter also advises students to check individual college or university acceptance criteria, as each institution decides which scores are acceptable for credit.
• 13:00 - 24:00: Multiple Choice Tips The chapter 'Multiple Choice Tips' discusses the acceptance of scores from the AP Language exam by different colleges. It highlights that while some schools accept a score of three as valid for college credit in English, more prestigious institutions may require a higher score, such as a four or five. Additionally, it mentions the availability of sending one free score report, though the deadline for requesting this report is in June, before scores are actually released. The chapter concludes by noting that the AP Lang exam is divided into two parts, one of which includes multiple choice questions.
• 24:00 - 33:00: FRQ General Tips The chapter titled 'FRQ General Tips' discusses the importance of different sections in an exam. It explains that the free response questions (FRQs), often referred to as essays, and the multiple choice sections have different weightings towards the final score. The multiple choice section is worth 45% of the composite score and consists of 45 questions, each contributing equally regardless of complexity. On the other hand, the essays account for 55% of the overall score, emphasizing their significance in the composite score calculation.
• 33:00 - 51:00: Synthesis Essay Tips The chapter emphasizes the importance of time management during tests, highlighting that all questions, regardless of difficulty, are worth the same amount of points. Students are advised not to spend excessive time on difficult questions to maximize their test performance. Additionally, it discusses how essays, including the synthesis essay, are evaluated. Each essay is scored by a trained AP reader using a six-point rubric specific to the essay's prompt. Notably, each synthesis essay is reviewed by a different scorer who is specialized for that particular prompt.
• 51:00 - 61:00: Rhetorical Analysis Tips The chapter discusses the evaluation process for rhetorical analysis essays, indicating that each essay is reviewed by at least three different people trained for the specific rhetorical analysis prompt. It explains that in contrast to multiple-choice questions, where each correct answer accounts for one point, essays are scored differently.
• 61:00 - 75:00: Argument Essay Tips The chapter provides tips on how to approach writing an argument essay, particularly focusing on understanding a six-point rubric used for scoring. It mentions that argument essays are an important component, accounting for 55% of the composite score. The example given involves multiplying the score to calculate the final result.
• 75:00 - 77:00: Conclusion and Additional Resources In this chapter, the focus is on understanding how to calculate scores for multiple essays and how these contribute to a student's overall composite score. The process involves converting essay ratings into total points, using a specific mathematical formula, and then rounding the result to the nearest point. This helps in accumulating a final score, which reflects the student's achievements overall. The chapter aims to clarify the process of adding up these scores and understanding their impact on the final grading assessment.

How To Pass The AP Lang Exam 2025 Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 hey everybody welcome back to coach allall rights in today's video we're going to be going over some tips for the 2025 AP Lang exam before we get started let's be sure to stay in touch make sure that you subscribe to the channel and turn those notifications on also be sure to check out the description box below for links to helpful videos one question that students often ask is how is the test scored and the reason why students want to know this is because they're trying to shoot for a particular score
• 00:30 - 01:00 so let's talk about composits students will receive a composite score between a one and a five students will receive their scores in July typically A3 is considered a qualifying score the College Board doesn't like to use the term passing the test even though that is how I've heard most students refer to it please keep in mind that each college or university determines which scores they will accept for credit so check the requirements for the schools that you're interested in applying to while many
• 01:00 - 01:30 schools will accept a three on the AP Lang exam for College English one or comp one whatever it's called at that school some of the more prestigious colleges require a four or even a five you are allowed to send one free score report but the signups for this end before you actually receive your scores typically the deadline for the free score report is in June the AP Lang exam has two parts the multiple Choice
• 01:30 - 02:00 section and the frqs that stands for free response question I just call them the essays the multiple choice section is worth 45% of your composite the essays are worth 55% of your composite score since there are 45 multiple choice questions and the multiple choice section is worth 45% of your score each question is worth one point regardless of the difficulty level or question type that means that the easiest question on
• 02:00 - 02:30 the test and the hardest question on the test are both worth one point keep this in mind on test day because you don't want to get bogged down with one really challenging question and waste too much time on it now as far as the essays each essay will be scored by an AP reader who's been trained for that specific prompt the essays are scored on a Sixpoint rubric this means that the person who scores your synthesis essay has been trained for that specific synthesis prompt a different person will
• 02:30 - 03:00 look at your rhetorical analysis essay and they've been trained for that specific rhetorical analysis prompt and then the same thing for argument so at least three separate people will be scoring your essay let's talk about how the points themselves actually work we said that each multiple choice question is worth one point so this means that if a student answers 28 questions out of 45 correctly then they're going to get 28 points the the essays are a little bit
• 03:00 - 03:30 different though because there's a Sixpoint rubric and there are three essays that account for 55% of the composit you need to multiply the score the number I use with my students in class is 3.05 66 so what I have my students do is I have them take the scores for each of their three essays and add those together so for the sake of this example let's just say that the student has earned four points out of a total of six
• 03:30 - 04:00 for each of their three essays so if they have three essays that they earned a four on they've earned 12 points out of a possible 18 so we're going to take that 12 and multiply it by 3.56 6 that's going to give us 36.6 s we're going to round this to 37 points so that means that the student has earned 28 points plus 37 points so they've earned 65 points total now what is this mean for a composite
• 04:00 - 04:30 score here is a sample of what the cut scores could look like please know that these are an estimate and that these numbers could change depending on the year or the version of the test now if you've seen some of my other videos you might notice that these numbers look a little higher than those previous videos that's because last year in my opinion the cut scores seemed a little bit higher than what we had been expecting so going into the 2025 exam
• 04:30 - 05:00 for my own students at least I'm choosing to use these higher cut scores so with the previous numbers our student in question earned 65 points that means that the student likely will earn a three on the exam they're at the upper end of that three composite now this could be very helpful for the student to know because if they earn just four more points then in theory they could move up to a four possibly remember these numbers are not
• 05:00 - 05:30 necessarily exact so how can the student earn those four points well there's different scenarios but they could answer four more multiple choice questions correctly if that's the goal I would encourage the student to look at ones that they answered incorrectly and try to learn from their mistakes also if they could get one more point on one of their essays so let's say they get a five out of six on one of their essays that would be essentially another three points so then they would need just one point on one of the essays plus one more
• 05:30 - 06:00 multiple choice question in my opinion that's pretty doable so in general for my students I encourage them to aim for approximately 60% on their McQ and a four out of six on their essays that is the general goal for my students who are trying to earn A3 now for my students that are trying to earn a four or a five in some sense it feels like there are more variables with that so we essentially plug in the numbers like like we did with the sample
• 06:00 - 06:30 question we look at their multiple choice and their essay scores and we try to figure out where they can gain those extra points or perhaps where they already are gaining those extra points I know a lot of teachers do a mock exam but if you're a student who's watching this video and your school does not offer a mock exam and you want to try one on your own I would recommend using scores from a timed cold read that means that you wrote the essay during the time constraints of the exam so approximately 55 minutes for a synthesis essay and 40
• 06:30 - 07:00 minutes for rhetorical analysis or argument also when I say a cold read essay what I mean by that is that you have not seen the prompt before you actually started writing the reason why I think this is important for a mock exam is because it closely simulates what you experience on test day for an accurate mock exam try to simulate the test as much as you can this would also mean doing a timed fulllength McQ practice test meaning that you answer
• 07:00 - 07:30 the 45 questions in one hour now let's break down each portion of the test to talk about some tips to help you improve your score we're going to start with the multiple choice for the multiple choice there are five total passages the first two passages are going to be reading comprehension you're going to receive a non-fiction passage and there will be approximately 10 to 13 corresponding questions passages three four and five are going to be the writing McQ so there's still multiple Cho choice but these are shorter passages and they're
• 07:30 - 08:00 going to say essentially that the passage is a draft at the top these passages contain five to eight questions and the questions themselves are about editing so things like adding and deleting sentences using the right transition word things like that a lot of my students tend to prefer the writing McQ which brings me to one of my tips you want to play to your strengths so it's important to realize that you do not have to answer the MC Q questions in
• 08:00 - 08:30 order you can skip around within the multiple choice section and in some cases that has actually greatly benefited my students so for my students who tend to do noticeably better with the writing McQ remember those are passages three four and five but they also sometimes struggle with pacing meaning that if they start at question one and work through 45 they might be rushing those last couple passages so what we had them do is the next time they took a practice test they started
• 08:30 - 09:00 with passage three they started with the writing questions took the time they needed to answer the questions correctly for the questions that they were better at and then they went back to the reading passages and answered those questions and we noticed that in almost every single instance the student score went up by about five points now granted that is anecdotal evidence but if you are the type of student who notices that you do a lot better with the writing McQ but you feel like you have to rush it cuz it's the end of the section you
• 09:00 - 09:30 might consider starting with those questions as well I will say this though most of my students start with question one and go to question 45 they don't skip around but for some of my students it really has helped them be a little bit more strategic like I said if they noticed a start contrast between their writing McQ and their reading McQ it's important that you answer all questions even if you have to guess you do not want to leave anything blank because you are rewarded points for getting the answer right it's not like they're taking away points
• 09:30 - 10:00 if you get it wrong so even if you just have a complete guess you have a 25% chance of getting it right and that's because starting in 2025 there are now going to be four multiple choice answers instead of five it's also important to remember that a difficult passage can have easy questions and an easy passage can have difficult questions my students have corroborated this in the past there have been times where they said the passage itself was hard but the questions were easy and if they didn't
• 10:00 - 10:30 realize this they might have been a little bit intimidated to read the passage so I think that's important don't discount the passage just because it's difficult it doesn't mean that the questions are going to be hard as well my next tip is to go back to the passage this is honestly one of my number one tips not just for the AP Lang exam but also for the SAT and the ACT don't try to answer based on memory the answer choices are often very similar and so it's really important that you go back to the passage and confirm what it has
• 10:30 - 11:00 said when asked about specific words or lines make sure that you read the surrounding lines for context clues one of the things that I like about the digital exam is that they highlight the section that they're talking about and from what I've heard from students who took the exam digitally they said this was helpful that being said I do think it's important to realize that we need to look at the context because sometimes there's a clue that's not in the lines in question so if the question asks about lines 52 to 53 and let's say
• 11:00 - 11:30 that's the middle of a paragraph you should read that whole paragraph not just those specific lines because if you only read those specific lines you're probably missing an important context clue now I'm sure as students you've probably heard this tip before but you want to use the process of elimination even if you can eliminate two answer choices you are increasing your odds of answering it correctly so use the process of elimination to get rid of answers that are obviously wrong now a lot of students will tell me okay
• 11:30 - 12:00 but then I get it narrowed down to two and I'm not sure which one to pick and I tend to pick the wrong one don't worry I've got tips for that as well so there are some answer traps if you will so it's important to read carefully one thing to remember is that half right is still wrong so what I mean by this is there are times when the answer choice is partially true but the entirety of the answer choice is not true a lot of times students will see these answer choices that are are partially true and
• 12:00 - 12:30 they'll latch on to the part that is true and they'll think oh maybe I just misunderstood the passage because I know that this part is right and so then they'll convince themselves that the part that's wrong is actually right don't do that know that they sometimes have an answer choice that is half right don't fall for that if it's half right it's still wrong there's also times when the answer choice is true but it doesn't actually answer the question so let's say that the question is about parag five and one of the answer choices is
• 12:30 - 13:00 true it did happen in the passage but it happened in let's say paragraph 2 well in that case the answer choice is true of the passage but it's not actually answering the question but there are times when students want to pick that because they remember oh yeah it said that in the passage that's why it helps to go back and double check your answers by rereading the passage go back to the passage to make sure that you are answering accurately it's also important to realize that a single word can make the answer wrong so this is kind of like
• 13:00 - 13:30 the half right is still wrong but there are times when a single word makes the whole answer Choice wrong so you want to read carefully because I have found that sometimes when students are reading quickly they miss the word that's changing the meaning of the answer Choice another tip is don't Linger on challenging questions it's okay to guess flag it and move on and the reason why is this is a pacing issue remember that each question is worth one point so these really challenging questions are worth the same amount of points as those
• 13:30 - 14:00 easy questions if you linger too long on a challenging question you could be short changing yourself time to answer other questions that you're actually going to be more accurate with so because it's a digital test you can flag it and move on I do think you should guess though just in case you don't have time to go back to it so click something but flag it so that you can go back to it if time permits now let's talk about some tips for the frq section these tips I'm going to start with are General but I will go into each of the specific
• 14:00 - 14:30 essays personally I advocate for students writing their weakest essay last here's my reasoning it is relatively easy to score at least a one 120 or a three out of six and I don't mean that to insult anyone who has earned that score by saying oh it's easy to get that score that being said I have found that my students can write a one 120 relatively quickly so let's think of this scenario if you're going to have to
• 14:30 - 15:00 rush any of your essays it would be better to rush one of your weaker essays as opposed to one of your stronger ones because so often I've had students tell me oh if I just had five more minutes on this essay I could have done this this and this and it would have improved my score you don't want to have to rush your strong essay so what does this look like on exam day it kind of depends for some of my students they know that one of the essay types is automatically their weakest like they just struggle with it it whether it's rhetorical
• 15:00 - 15:30 analysis or argument they just kind of all year feel like they don't jive with one of the essays and that's okay so for some students they can walk into the test and be like yep I'm gonna do let's say question three last because arguments my weakest now I have other students who are kind of equally good at all the essays but they don't necessarily drive with certain prompts so for these students what they do is on test day they look at each of the three promps they figure out what they're
• 15:30 - 16:00 being asked to write about and then based on that they figure out okay I'm going to do this one first second and third so the one that they like the least becomes their weakest essay and they put that one last this strategy has worked well for my students so it's something that you might choose to consider it's going to be important that you use your scratch paper to plan I know that some students think that planning or outlining their essay is taking up too much time but I've seen so many times where students get halfway through an essay and they realize that
• 16:00 - 16:30 they want to change their argument or that they don't know what to say next and I honestly think if they had planned a little bit more that they could have avoided that I believe you get three pieces of scratch paper you can also take notes and potentially like type notes on the digital platform itself but for some students the scratch paper is just simply easier but please take a minute to plan out your essays before you write them last year after the test I asked students some of their best tips for the digital exam because last year
• 16:30 - 17:00 in 2024 not everyone took the digital test this year though in 2025 it'll be digital so those students said that one of the things that helped them the most was knowing some of those keyboard shortcuts they said it's important to remember that you can't copy and paste the sources but you can copy and paste the words that you've typed it's also important to know the rubric so know the rubric for each of the FR frc's think of the rubric as the rules of the game if you will you want to know what the reader is looking for and we want to
• 17:00 - 17:30 think of it as earning points not taking away points so you're trying to earn as many points as possible in general commentary tends to be the most challenging part of any of the three essays so one quick tip for commentary is to keep asking why the word because can be really helpful also synonyms of shows so illustrates highlights suggests underscores those can be helpful as a teacher and a reader if I see words like because and then any of the synonyms for
• 17:30 - 18:00 shows I at least know okay the student is trying for commentary here and in most cases that means we're looking at at least a one 120 so just something to think about again this is why you need to know your rubric I tell my students to focus on quality body paragraphs so in my classroom we worry about quality not quantity most of my students write two body paragraphs instead of three and they score just fine however I know there are some teachers out there who require three body paragraphs so for
• 18:00 - 18:30 classroom purposes please do what your teacher recommends and on test day I personally would advocate for you doing what works best for you for that prompt under those time constraints if applicable try for the sophistication point so last year I was working with a tutoring student and we went over how to earn the sophistication point and then each week after that when she'd write an essay and we'd review it I would try to guess which bullet point of the sophistication Point she was going for and more often often than not I would know very quickly which one she was
• 18:30 - 19:00 going for and honestly I think it kind of helped not only that students writing but as a teacher I felt more comfortable awarding the sophistication point I'm not saying she earned it every time but she did earn it quite often and this is also a strategy that I've worked on with my own students right now in class at the time I'm filming this we're working on argument essays and one of the ways that you can earn the sophistication point in an argument essay is to have a vivid and persuasive style and this includes making rhetorical choices so
• 19:00 - 19:30 we've been focusing on how to write about personal experience in a very detailed way now again this is anecdotal evidence but as a teacher I've noticed when I can tell my students are trying to implement these techniques I tend to give out more sophistication points so just something to consider so for those of you that are working toward earning the sophistication point if that is in your scope of goals my advice would be to know the rubric and to know how you can earn it and then be very clear about about your attempts to try it so whether
• 19:30 - 20:00 it's the Vivid style or broader context lean into that and even if you don't earn the sophistication Point typically the essay is stronger because you're trying those techniques now let's talk about the synthesis essay so this is going to be question one on the exam and it is the most timec consuming of the essays for the synthesis essay you are given six to eight sources in recent years it's been six sources and at least one of these sources is a visual text so this means that it could be a chart a
• 20:00 - 20:30 graph a cartoon a photograph in most cases there have been two visual texts and at least one of them has been something quantitative like a chart or a table so when you see your synthesis prompt on test day the first step is to identify the topic what are you being asked to write about it could be a topic that you're readily familiar with so in the past they've had prompts about libraries and stem and cursive writing or it could be a topic that you might not have ever really considered before
• 20:30 - 21:00 for my students they had a prompt about vertical farming and that was not something that most of them knew anything about if it's a topic that you are not familiar with Don't Panic there will be enough information in the sources for you to be able to write the essay successfully in the prompt itself they're going to give you the different perspectives on the issue so basically some people think this or argue this others think this take a second to ask yourself hey do I know anything about this topic this could potentially help you bring in some broader context later
• 21:00 - 21:30 regardless of whether or not you know the topic you want to ask yourself why is this topic worth discussing this question was helpful for some of my students a few years ago I forgot which prompt we were working with but I remember them saying that the topic itself was kind of boring and not something they cared about and admittedly I remember agreeing with them in that moment however I framed it differently for them I said you know what it might not be super relevant to us but it's relevant to somebody so the question is who are the stakeholders of this issue and why did they care so if the topic is something that you're not
• 21:30 - 22:00 familiar with or maybe not very interested in remember that somebody cares about this issue so it might help to ask yourself okay why is the College Board asking me to write about this my students that year said that asking them themselves that question really did help keep in mind that there's a couple different prompt types for this so it's still a synthesis question regardless but some prompts are going to ask you about the role or value of a topic whereas other prompts are going to ask you to identify fact fa S I do have a
• 22:00 - 22:30 couple videos specifically about Factor synthesis prompts so if you have questions about that definitely check out those videos as you're approaching the synthesis sources please read the provided information for each Source a lot of students skip the provided information and I don't think they realize how potentially helpful it could be so there's going to be a box that has I believe an MLA citation and then there's going to be a sentence that is italicized and that's going to say in rather plain language what the source is if you look at the citation it's going
• 22:30 - 23:00 to tell you who the author is it's also going to tell you the title and the publication so is it an article from Newsweek is it a book looking at the title especially can be helpful to determine if the source will support your tentative position because usually when students read the different perspectives for a synthesis prompt they tend to side with one or the other and I do think it can be helpful to ask yourself what are my feelings on this issue before I read the sources but there are times when admittedly students
• 23:00 - 23:30 might not know how they feel about it and therefore it would be better to just start reading the sources and deciding okay which perspectives do I agree with remember that when you're given a citation it's listed as last name comma first name last year at the AP reading I read for one of the synthesis prompts and I noticed that there were some cases where students were referring to the author of The Source by their first name and we actually don't want to do that the first time that you refer to the author you should use their full name but then after that you can refer to
• 23:30 - 24:00 them by their last name however in some cases the name might be kind of unique and if you don't realize that it's listed as last name comma first name it might be confusing which name to use so just remember that if it says last name comma first name and you're trying to refer to them by their full name you need to flip it another tip for you is to not discount long sources I've had students tell me sometimes that if a source looks really long they skip it yes reading along longer Source can take
• 24:00 - 24:30 more time but sometimes the longer sources actually have really good info also usually one of the first sources is going to be some sort of contextual source that maybe gives you the history of the topic or other background info so while you might not necessarily site that Source in your essay it can be helpful especially if you're unfamiliar with the topic but just because the source is long doesn't mean that you should skip it in fact the long sources like I said tend to have really good info now it is okay in my opinion to skim or to speedread if you're worried
• 24:30 - 25:00 about pacing I would practice that skill before exam day though also for what it's worth in class I ask my students to read all the sources if I know we're going to be talking about a prompt however when we're practicing for the exam I tell them that if there is a source that they know they are not going to use or if there is a source that they genuinely do not understand I tell them that they can skip it and move on I want them to use their time effectively and if there's a source that they're not going to use it's probably not worth
• 25:00 - 25:30 them annotating it and if there's a source that they don't understand it's possible that if they keep reading the other sources they can come back to that source and it might make more sense so remember that there's sometimes a difference between how we approach it in the classroom versus exam day on exam day we might need to be more strategic but I will actually give my students a prompt and time them for 15 minutes that way they get used to having to read sources quickly if this is something that you haven't done in class yet it might be worth practicing also for what it's worth a lot of my students try to
• 25:30 - 26:00 do that pre-reading and outlining for synthesis in 10 minutes as opposed to five and that's simply because they want to use those extra five minutes for rhetorical analysis but again that's just a matter of preference as you're reading the synthes of sources look for relationships between the sources so as each Source enters the conversation how does it fit so when you read Source B ask yourself how does this relate to Source a does it agree with or disagree agree with Source a what new information
• 26:00 - 26:30 does it add and then as you read Source C repeat those questions it can be really helpful to look at the relationships between the sources as you go also depending on the prompt some of my students like to take notes not just by annotating the sources but if it's a Factor's prompt they might write down the name of the factor like let's say it's uh finances and then as they're reading and they see that Source a is about finances they'll write finances a and then maybe Source D is also about
• 26:30 - 27:00 finances so they'll write like a comma D and that way they know that those sources are ones that they can go to if they want to talk about finances that would presumably be something that my students would do on their scratch paper on exam day it's helpful to look for short quotes as you go so on the digital exam you should be able to highlight these short quotes remember you're not going to be able to copy and paste them as far as I know as far as what to quote though I tend to advocate for my students to select facts statistics real world examples or expert testimony just
• 27:00 - 27:30 because these can be good logical evidence think about it this way if the author of the article is using the facts to make their article more logical those same facts could make your paper more logical I also advocate for my students not over highlighting some of my students like to color code and they have you know a different color for different types of evidence and what have you and that's wonderful I think students should find a system that works for them however I've also seen cases where students have highlighted way too much and then they couldn't find a
• 27:30 - 28:00 certain quote that they were looking for so as the exam approaches find a strategy that works for you as you are reading the sources consider your outside knowledge so do you have any personal experience or do you have any outside knowledge about this topic that relates to the sources now you yourself are not a source but this can make for excellent commentary so a quick example would be for the library prompt one of the sources was a schedule of a library some of my students when we do that prompt will talk about classes that they
• 28:00 - 28:30 have been to or that they went to as children at our local library so they're taking the source and they're kind of making a personal connection to it this can help to situate the issue in a broader context before you start writing you should know your position so essentially your thesis like what are you going to argue and with that you should know your main ideas and I believe you should know which sources you're going to use because you need to use at least three sources and so I
• 28:30 - 29:00 think it's helpful if students have a little outline my students tend to write a pretty simple outline they might write their thesis and then they'll put main idea one and they'll put what it is just like a word or a phrase and then beneath it they'll put the sources that they intend to use that's kind of the bare minimum some of my students do more detailed outlines with evidence and commentary notes so it is kind of customized to the student but I do require the bare minimum of position main ideas and sources because I want to make sure that the students know that
• 29:00 - 29:30 they're going to include three sources and then it becomes a checklist because the rubric is really harsh if you don't have three sources it's also important to keep in mind that you don't get extra points for including all the sources I know that if you take a class like APUSH or another AP History Class they might advocate for including more sources for that discipline but sometimes for a synthesis essay if a student tries to include all the sources it can feel like you're just kind of stuffing them in there and it can feel like there's a lot more evidence than commentary in general
• 29:30 - 30:00 most of my students tend to use four sources it can be helpful to use the original Source credentials as needed so instead of saying According To Source a you could say according to a New York Times article called Blah Blah Blah or according to soand so an expert on whatever it's important that you embed your quotes so don't just drop them in there and I advocate for a parenthetical citation as a teacher I just find this easier to
• 30:00 - 30:30 read and to check that students have the right number of sources please remember that when it says three sources that means that it's three different sources so if you site Source a source B and then Source a that's still two sources Source a and Source B so it's not about the number of citations it's about the number of distinct sources I have a couple different videos about how to site things for a synthesis essay so I'll include links to that in the description below in case you want more examples as you're writing your
• 30:30 - 31:00 synthesis essay you're going to need commentary it helps if you think about why you chose the evidence and as I said before I like to see strong verbs so instead of shows you can do emphasizes underscores highlights illustrates these verbs work for the other essay types as well it can also help if you think about the shortterm and long-term impact on society so again going back to this idea of why is this issue worth talking about think about the why and also the so what
• 31:00 - 31:30 now let's talk about rhetorical analysis this one is my favorite of the essays and keep in mind that I do have playlists for each of these essays on my channel so feel free to check those out but the rhetorical analysis essay playlist on my channel is Pretty robust so if you have any questions about the tips I'm about to give you chances are I have a separate video about that when you approach a rhetorical analysis prompt you're going to want to identify the rhetorical situation certain compon opponents of the rhetorical situation are going to be specified you're going
• 31:30 - 32:00 to know who the speaker is chances are you might be given some context now depending on what type of text it is you may or may not be told the audience so if it's something like a commencement speech they're going to tell you which college it was at so you would know the graduates but if it's something like an excerpt of a non-fiction text you're going to have to ask yourself okay who would likely read this so think about the title and what the book is about they will give you plenty of information so make sure you read The Prompt
• 32:00 - 32:30 carefully The Prompt is also going to give you the task you're going to have to analyze how the writer makes rhetorical choices to either convey a message develop an argument or achieve a purpose so zero in on which of the three of those you're being asked to write about message argument or purpose as you're reading the passage it can help to annotate For What and why what rhetorical choices is the writer making and why are they making those choices it also helps if you divide the passage
• 32:30 - 33:00 into sections chronologically because this helps you follow the line of reasoning so what is the speaker doing in the first half versus the second half or the beginning middle and end a chronological analysis tends to read better as opposed to a device driven analysis which tends to jump around make sure that your thesis has two to three clear rhetorical choices ideally with the specific message argument or purpose if you're looking for tips on thesis statements I do have separate videos
• 33:00 - 33:30 about this I personally advocate for my students to use rhetorically accurate verbs as I think doing so strengthens their thesis statements it's also important to make sure that the claims or the main ideas of your body paragraphs are in chronological order at least in my opinion and that they correspond with your thesis because every once in a while I'll come across a student essay where the thesis has the choices in one order and then in the body paragraphs it doesn't match that order you do want it to match up
• 33:30 - 34:00 whichever choice you write first in your thesis should be body paragraph one one of the pitfalls of rhetorical analysis essays is limited commentary it doesn't mean that there's no commentary present it just means that the commentary is rather superficial so some phrases to avoid would be things like paints a picture in the reader's mind or to get his point across these expressions are rather empty and we want to be more precise to help improve your commentary keep asking why in relation to the
• 34:00 - 34:30 rhetorical situation I have a video on my Channel about my favorite rhetorical analysis sentence frames and these sentence frames can help you improve your commentary I'll link that video in the description below one question that I'm often asked about the AP Lang essays in general is do I need a conclusion now technically the answer is no it's not part of the rubric however if you have time to write one we encourage you to do so I would say the body paragraph SS are probably the most important but I do
• 34:30 - 35:00 think a good conclusion can truly help your essay so for rhetorical analysis oftentimes I see conclusions where students are merely summarizing what they've already written they're basically just restating their thesis now if the thesis wasn't defensible in the intro but they rewrite it in the conclusion paragraph and it's defensible they can earn the thesis point it doesn't have to be in the intro so that might be one benefit of restating your thesis just not in the exact same words as the intro that being
• 35:00 - 35:30 said because these essays are rather short because again you only have 40 minutes writing a conclusion that just summarizes your points doesn't always feel effective so I tell my students to zoom out and to do that I have them consider one or both of these questions it kind of depends on the passage first I ask them to consider how the passage is historically relevant now that question might not apply to all passages or it might not be as obvious for all passages but look at when the passage
• 35:30 - 36:00 was written and think about what issues were going on at the time and how that relates you could also ask yourself how the message of the passage is relevant today for more information on this check out my rhetorical analysis conclusion video where I give some examples the last essay on the exam is the argument essay for some students this one is the most challenging because you have to come up with your own evidence argument arent and synthesis are rather similar it's just that with a
• 36:00 - 36:30 synthesis you are provided with the evidence that you can use and for an argument essay it comes from your knowledge base now I know that can be intimidating but I do have some techniques to help first of all you want to make sure that you understand the topic so when you're reading the prompt slow down because for example the phrasing striving for Perfection is not the same as Perfection so you want to make sure that you zero in on the actual topic you're being asked to write about
• 36:30 - 37:00 sometimes when students are rushing they misunderstand The Prompt and then by default it weakens their essay so as you're reading the prompt slow down and make sure you know what you're being asked to write about a lot of my students benefit from what I call the reasons first approach so what I have them do is I have them identify the issue that they're writing about and essentially ask themselves why is this issue helpful or harmful now sometimes help or harmful might not be the best words depending on the topic so you can
• 37:00 - 37:30 kind of adapt that the answers that they come up with are sometimes the main ideas of their essay once they've selected their evidence so for example let's say that we're doing the prompt about exploring the unknown I would ask them why is it helpful to explore the unknown and they might tell me it leads to personal growth it leads to Innovation it leads to other discoveries and so those would be some reasons and then as they plan their evidence they can match their evidence to those reasons and those reasons would go in
• 37:30 - 38:00 their thesis so you might brainstorm more reasons than you'd actually write about but it can help you determine your main ideas to plan evidence I use the pneumonic chores there are others out there there's rehugo chelps and there's a few others honestly they all kind of mean the same thing so if your teacher uses a different one that's totally okay chores stands for current events history outside knowledge reading experience and science outside knowledge is kind of a
• 38:00 - 38:30 catchall category so it's basically like anything that doesn't fit anywhere else so outside knowledge can be Sports pop culture theater anything like that now on exam day if my students do chores I do not expect them to have equal examples for each category in fact for some of the categories they might not have an example at all this is just to give them a guide to kind of figure out the different possible examples they could do now some of my students like to start with chores instead of starting with the reasons it just kind of depends
• 38:30 - 39:00 as you're thinking about your evidence you want to think about specific evidence so just saying Sports is too broad gymnastics is somewhat specific but it would be better to focus on a particular person so in this case Simone biles and you can actually make that even more specific too so for instance are we talking about her getting the twisties and withdrawing from competition are we talking about her comeback at the subsequent Olympics when we say specific evidence It generally helps if you have proper
• 39:00 - 39:30 nouns so specific people or events be mindful that events like the Civil Rights Movement the American Revolution World War II while proper nouns are are oftentimes still too broad and can be narrowed down further one fear that I know students have is what if I can't think of any good examples based on the prompt so here's a technique that might be helpful if you're struggling to come up with evidence ask yourself what do I
• 39:30 - 40:00 know a lot about think about topics that you could speak about for a few minutes even if they're not academic topics this tip started because I had some students who were self-proclaimed experts on Dance Moms and a couple years ago in class they thought it would be funny if they would write about Dance Moms for pretty much every prompt that I gave them and here's the thing because they knew about dance mom so well they wrote some really strong WR paragraphs and they were able to connect Dance Moms
• 40:00 - 40:30 to a variety of different prompts and I also noticed that as they wrote about Dance Moms more their writing got better so even though it might not be this topic that seems very academic if you will they wrote about it articulately and it made for an interesting essay since then I've had other students who have written about their Niche topics so I had a student who was very familiar with Marie C and so I read multiple essays about that
• 40:30 - 41:00 I've had other students who are very familiar with certain historical figures or time periods and they were really drawing on their evidence and they were really drawing on info from maybe their a push class if you're struggling to come up with evidence think about a topic that you know well and then ask yourself can I relate this to the prompt somehow I can't promise that that technique will always work but I have seen it work really well for students who are struggling with certain prompts it's also important to remember that when you are introducing your evidence
• 41:00 - 41:30 you need to provide context for the evidence that you choose don't assume that the reader knows because readers are not supposed to infer background knowledge or connections I found that this happens most often when students are writing about someone that they consider to be relatively famous I found that this happens most often when students are writing about rather famous events or people so for instance it could be Thomas Edison and the light bulb or Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on
• 41:30 - 42:00 the bus students assume that because those are very popular examples that the reader knows what they're talking about and it's true the reader might know but the reader is not supposed to take their knowledge of the topic and project it onto your essay so you need to give that appropriate background information think about why you chose that example in the first place and make sure it's really clear why that evidence fits the prompt sometimes it might feel like you're explaining something obvious but those might be important Connections in your
• 42:00 - 42:30 line of reasoning another question I'm frequently Asked is do I need to address the counterargument some teachers make this mandatory in their classrooms however it is not a mandatory part of the rubric it can however lead to a nuanced argument I tell my students to consider whether a concession and reputation or a counter claim and rebuttal would help their argument and where it would be most effective so while I don't require my students to put it into their timed
• 42:30 - 43:00 essays it is a skill that we practice in class and for those timed essays I asked them to consider would it truly help their argument and if so where should it go a lot of times students like to put it at the end because that way if they run out of time they can just scrap it and they still have the rest of their essay intact but there might be times where it would make more sense to put it toward the beginning it just kind of depends it's important to think about your line of reasoning as well so as you're planning your essay think about
• 43:00 - 43:30 the order of your main ideas and the Order of your evidence you want to ask yourself you know should I pair two related examples together or is one example going to be sufficient for the paragraph it helps to focus on transitions or some teachers call it linking language to connect ideas within and between paragraphs there's one sample essay from the college board for the exploring the unknown prompt that I like to use to demonstrate this it was one of the
• 43:30 - 44:00 essays that was rescored with the Sixpoint rubric the student does a great job of connecting their ideas throughout the essay I'll try to link that one below in case you've never seen it before but those transitions or linking language it's really the same thing can be very helpful to guide your reader throughout your essay for those that are trying for the sophistication point for style consider making rhetorical choices all those choices that you in ra you can now make when you're writing your argument one of
• 44:00 - 44:30 the most common that I see students trying to do is an anecdote you are allowed to write about personal experience and quite frankly some prompts really do lend themselves to personal experience but I think there's a way to do it well I do have a couple videos on this but if you're writing about personal experience make sure that you include those relevant details and the lesson or message you want to make sure it's clear why you're telling that story but that's exactly what it is it's a story so you can employ that narrative
• 44:30 - 45:00 style to make it more engaging a good example of this for the apang exam is one of the essays for that same exploring the unknown prompt that I mentioned the student wrote a three paragraph essay that starts with an anecdote about going to a ropes course I like to use that one as a model for my students because the other essay I mentioned is a very like traditional structure and the one with the ropes course is maybe a little bit more unique and I think it's valuable for students to see both all right there you have it
• 45:00 - 45:30 those are some of my best tips to prepare for the AP Lang exam in 2025 if you found this video helpful please give it a thumbs up and also make sure that you are subscribed to the channel that way you don't miss any new content I'll also be doing some YouTube lives as the exam gets closer and like I said I do have playlists of each of the different essays so if you have questions about what you're learning in class or if you just want a little bit of outside help as you prepare for the exam please be sure to check out those
• 45:30 - 46:00 videos as well thank you so much for watching happy writing