AP English Students Face the AP Exam

Sierra Concha reading lots of books. Photo by David LaDeaux '13. Copyright Red Cloud Indian School.

AP English Students Face the AP Exam

By Sierra Concha '13

Eight AP English students prepared all year for the most intense school day they’ve had yet. On May 9th, they spent three hours working on multiple choice and writing three essays to the best of their abilities on the national AP English Literature Exam. This test is designed for the top English students across the country as a rigorous test of their college-level abilities.

Shane Star ‘13 never experienced a test like this one. “It was the hardest test ever,” he said. The students were assigned seats and were given a 15 minute break between the multiple choice section and essay section. There were 55 multiple choice questions and the students were given 60 minutes to complete them. Then, three different essay prompts were given and each one had to be written within 40 minutes. Christian Phelps ‘13 found the test to be a challenge as well. “I never wrote so much at one time,” he stated. “My hand was cramping halfway through and my fingertips were sore from the pen pushing against it.”

The AP English class took prompts from past years and wrote an in class essay once a week since the beginning of senior year and took multiple choice frequently as well. For the last essay prompt, students must choose a book to write about that matches the prompt. Throughout this year the students were required to read The Great Gatsby, Fahrenheit 451, Ceremony, Siddhartha, Hamlet, The Color Purple, The Tempest, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Catcher in the Rye and Reservation Blues. The main goal of this class was to gain college-level reading and writing skills and prepare for the test that could help further ourselves in our college education.

Students won’t receive the test results until July, but each student worked to their full potential in the three hours they were given to prove themselves worthy of passing a college English course.