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The AP LIT “Free-Response” section is comprised of three essay questions, with a two-hour time limit, counting for 55% of your Final Score. You divide your time between the three essays as you see fit.

Each essay is scored from 0-6 points according to a well-publicized AP rubric that weighs the Thesis Statement (0-1 point), Evidence & Commentary (0-4 points), and Sophistication (0-1 point).

One of the essay questions involves analysis of a poem (or a comparison of two short poems). No one knows in advance which poem will appear on test day—that’s the mystery! Your challenge is to write your best essay even though the poem is a surprise, a complex and possibly annoying surprise. Oh, and the clock is ticking.

This challenge is not simply about the content you’ve read or the terms you’ve memorized—it’s about the process of organizing your thoughts and cranking out your response with proficiency. The most valuable assistance I can offer as your tutor is to be your ally in mastering this process.

Our tutoring sessions will focus on close analysis of your writing. We’ll take your 40-minute practice essays and grade them together using the AP rubric. I’ll help you survive your awkward early essays, scrutinize your considerably better essays, and celebrate your AP-worthy gems.

BTW, speaking from experience—my own and my students’—after making it through a handful of groan-worthy 40-minute writing drills, our minds can hit upon a rhythm. The time challenge often becomes a welcome one, allowing us writers to find ourselves “in the zone” while writing, and our performance improves. The aim of our work is for you to write “in the zone” on test day.

The AP LIT “Free-Response” section is comprised of three essay questions, with a two-hour time limit, counting for 55% of your Final Score. You divide your time between the three essays as you see fit.

Each essay is scored from 0-6 points according to a well-publicized AP rubric that weighs the Thesis Statement (0-1 point), Evidence & Commentary (0-4 points), and Sophistication (0-1 point).

One of the essay questions involves literary analysis of a prose passage. No one knows in advance the piece of prose that will appear on test day—that’s the mystery! Your challenge is to write your best essay even though the passage is a surprise, a complex and possibly annoying surprise. Oh, and the clock is ticking.

This challenge is not simply about the content you’ve read or the terms you’ve memorized—it’s about the process of organizing your thoughts and cranking out your response with great efficiency. The most valuable assistance I can offer as your tutor is to be your ally in mastering this process.

Our tutoring sessions will focus on close analysis of your writing. We’ll take your 40-minute practice essays and grade them together using the AP rubric. I’ll help you survive your awkward early essays, scrutinize your considerably better essays, and celebrate your AP-worthy gems.

BTW, speaking from experience—my own and my students’—after making it through a handful of groan-worthy 40-minute writing drills, our minds can hit upon a rhythm. The time challenge often becomes a welcome one, allowing us writers to find ourselves “in the zone” while writing, and our performance improves. The aim of our work is for you to write “in the zone” on test day.

The third of the three essay questions has come to be known as the “Student’s Choice” essay because it identifies a particular literary theme and asks you to write about the theme as it relates to a major literary work of your choice.

The style of this essay question lends itself to advance preparation. Firstly, the College Board AP LIT webpage contains many years’ worth of previous “Student’s Choice” questions, giving us an accurate sense of what to expect.

Better yet, since you are in the driver’s seat, you can prepare by choosing 2-3 major works and mining them for thematic content and literary elements. The next step is to use the info you’ve collected when writing your AP class assignments and practice essays, with the goal of becoming adept at knocking out fast, high-quality essays on your chosen works.

We’ll structure tutoring sessions in two ways: (1) creating your own personalized “Cliff Notes” for the works you’ve chosen, and (2) reviewing your practice essays to establish key themes and thesis statements for you to add to your notes and review for test day.

This type of preparation pays off in other ways, too—you’ll become better at close reading, recognizing literary devices in context, and forming literary arguments. Very highly recommended!

Useful lists of literary devices abound. It’s a good idea to find a relatively brief list, get the terms down by heart, and then learn how to see the devices in action within the narratives you read.

Knowledge of literary devices helps you with both the multiple choice and free-response sections of the exam.

We can devote tutoring sessions to the study of these devices in context, making sure that the 10 or so most important terms are clearly defined and contextualized. If you choose to, we can look at your class assignments through this lens in order to give you practice in featuring literary devices when you write essays about literary works.

Useful lists of poetic devices abound. It’s a good idea to find a relatively brief list, get the terms down by heart, and then learn how to see the devices in action within the poems you read.

Knowledge of poetic devices helps you with both the multiple choice and free-response sections of the exam.

We can devote tutoring sessions to the study of these devices, making sure that the 10 or so most important terms are clearly defined and contextualized. If you choose to, we can look at your class assignments through this lens in order to give you practice in featuring poetic devices when you write essays about poetry.

Useful lists of literary eras, movements, and authors abound—just check Google or YouTube. It’s a good idea to find a relatively brief list and get it down by heart. Knowledge of Literary History helps you answer AP questions that ask explicitly about history, and it also helps you with contextualizing each of the literary excerpts that show up in the exam.

When the AP exam provides a literary excerpt, it usually also states peripheral info such as the name of the work, the author’s name, and/or the date of publication. In answering questions about the excerpted passage, you can use the historical data provided to infer probable themes, tone, style, etc.

We can devote tutoring sessions to the study of Literary History, making sure key terms are understood and contextualized.

The AP multiple-choice section is comprised of 55 questions, with a one-hour time limit, counting for 45% of your Final Score.

The multiple-choice section presents five different literary passages, each one followed by a set of 8–13 questions. The passages are typically chosen from five distinct literary eras, and always include at least two prose fiction passages (this may include drama) and at least two poetry passages.

We can devote tutoring sessions to a discussion of strategies for handling the different MPQ formats. Then, we can look at practice tests to put the strategies into action.

The AP LIT two-hour essay section is a contest of endurance—advance practice can help you build the focus that it takes to write at your best level for a full two hours.

To help you show up on test day with a clear sense of what’s in store, I can proctor a full practice exam, giving you a simulated test-day experience. Then we’ll devote tutoring sessions to a debrief: we’ll address any challenges well in advance of the actual exam so that when May 7th comes around, you can perform at your best.

It’s not practical to expect to read and remember the full list of works that could potentially appear on this year’s exam. It is practical to chart the works you will cover, with the goal of familiarizing yourself with works from different eras and movements.

We can devote tutoring sessions to (1) setting a strategic reading plan, and later (2) discussing how each particular work you have read is emblematic of many other works.

The College Board website contains the rubric for grading free-response essays, and also information about average overall scores for each AP exam at https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-english-literature-and-composition/exam.

We can devote tutoring sessions to (1) discussion of the essay scoring rubric, applying it to essays you have written, and (2) consideration of the points you’ll need to score on the multiple-choice section and free-response essays to reach your desired overall score.

The summer before your AP class, when you have very likely received a lengthy list of lengthy literary works, we can devote tutoring sessions to (1) choosing your reads strategically and (2) discussing/annotating each work as you go.

This partnership helps you make an early start, provides you with a sounding board, and prevents wasted effort.

BTW, it’s never the wrong season for a reading partnership. Winter, spring, summer, or fall . . .