AP English Language
and Composition
Past Papers

The value of napping

Evaluate evidence about brief daytime sleep and its potential benefits or drawbacks.

What it means to be a writer

Laura Amy Schlitz

Explain how Schlitz uses an award acceptance speech to describe the work of writing.

Other people’s opinions and your possibilities

Mae Jemison

Assess the advice to consider others’ views while making your own judgments.

Managing space debris

Identify the factors that should guide responses to human-made debris in orbit.

Native American contributions in Rez Life

David Treuer

Explain how Treuer develops his argument about Native American communities’ contributions.

Living in the present

Naomi Osaka

Evaluate the value of attending to the present while pursuing personal goals.

Mapping apps and GPS navigation

Weigh the benefits and problems associated with digital navigation tools.

Engaging with the natural world

Raquel Vasquez Gilliland

Analyze how the writer builds a case for engaging closely with nature.

Optimism and pessimism

Amanda Gorman

Develop a position on the relationship between hope and a negative outlook.

Historic preservation laws

Evaluate laws that protect historically important buildings while limiting changes to them.

Bravery in American Like Me

Reshma Saujani

Explain how Saujani uses her experiences to communicate a view of bravery.

Selfies as a record of life

J Wortham

Assess the value of using selfies to document personal experience.

Regulating food trucks and carts

Identify the priorities cities should consider when regulating mobile food businesses.

Preparing to emigrate in We Were Dreamers

Simu Liu

Analyze how Liu conveys the experience of preparing to leave China as a child.

Possessions and personal stories

Jimmy Santiago Baca

Evaluate the claim about the value Americans place on possessions.

Urban rewilding

Evaluate efforts to restore ecological processes and habitats within cities.

Hope and expectations for young people

Michelle Obama

Analyze the message to young people in Obama’s final speech as First Lady.

A community of voices

Maxine Hong Kingston

Assess the importance of people joining their voices to communicate truth.

Vertical farming

Evaluate the potential contribution of indoor, stacked growing systems to agriculture.

A University of Virginia commencement address

Rita Dove

Explain how Dove conveys her wishes for the graduating students.

Fear as a means of persuasion

Carlos Curbelo

Assess whether frightening people is an effective way to influence their thinking.

Investment in STEM education

Assess initiatives intended to strengthen science, technology, engineering and mathematics education.

A Latina Judge’s Voice

Sonia Sotomayor

Explain how Sotomayor’s choices communicate a message about identity.

Making timely decisions

Colin Powell

Assess when decisions should be made despite incomplete information.

Handwriting instruction in schools

Evaluate the place of handwriting lessons in education shaped by digital technology.

Dedicating a statue of Rosa Parks

Barack Obama

Analyze how Obama presents Parks’s significance during the statue dedication.

Striving for perfection

Develop a position on the value and limits of pursuing perfection.

A tribute to Eleanor Roosevelt

Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson

Explain how Johnson commemorates Roosevelt at a memorial foundation event.

A tribute to John F. Kennedy

Ronald Reagan

Analyze Reagan’s choices while honoring Kennedy at a presidential library fundraiser.

A eulogy for Ted Kennedy

Barack Obama

Explain how Obama combines praise and remembrance in his tribute to the senator.

Decisions about wind farms

Identify the most important considerations when establishing a wind farm.

A letter before the Salt March

Mohandas Gandhi

Analyze how Gandhi presents his case and intended action to Lord Irwin.

What deserves the label overrated?

Choose a concept, place or role and justify why its reputation exceeds its value.

Eminent domain and the public interest

Weigh arguments about government acquisition of privately owned property.

A Mount Holyoke commencement address

Madeleine Albright

Explain how Albright connects the audience’s choices with a broader call to action.

Choosing the unknown

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Develop a position on the value of experiences whose outcomes are uncertain.

Monolingualism and language learning

Evaluate whether monolingual English speakers face disadvantages; two source texts are omitted.

A eulogy for Ronald Reagan

Margaret Thatcher

Analyze how Thatcher shapes a tribute to Reagan for an American audience.

Disobedience and social progress

Oscar Wilde

Assess the claim that disobedience can advance society.

School honor codes

Defend a school’s decision to establish, keep, change or remove an honor system.

An argument for nonviolent resistance

Cesar Chavez

Explain how the article builds its case for nonviolence while commemorating King.

The value of polite speech

Explore what courteous expressions contribute to a familiar community or culture.

The value and cost of college

Weigh evidence about whether the benefits of college justify its cost.

Advice to John Quincy Adams

Abigail Adams

Analyze how Adams encourages her son to learn from travel and responsibility.

A class in creativity

Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman

Define creativity and persuade a school board about offering a class devoted to it.

Monuments and memorials

Examine which factors should guide commemorating a person or event with a monument.

People and nature in Last Child in the Woods

Richard Louv

Explain how Louv develops an argument about separation from the natural world.

Ownership and identity

Explore how owning tangible or intangible things relates to a person’s sense of self.

The future of the postal service

Use the sources to develop a position on responses to the postal service’s challenges.

A response to rising steel prices

John F. Kennedy

Analyze how the president challenges the steel companies’ decision before the public.

Certainty and doubt

William Lyon Phelps and Bertrand Russell

Develop a position on the relationship between confidence in beliefs and questioning them.

The locavore movement

Identify the implications of eating locally for a community considering the practice.

A speech opposing child labor

Florence Kelley

Analyze how Kelley addresses a women’s suffrage audience about working children.

America in Rights of Man

Thomas Paine

Evaluate how far Paine’s description of America applies to contemporary society.

Government and green practices

Argue how much responsibility government should take for promoting conservation.

Declining a request for patronage

Samuel Johnson

Explain how Johnson shapes a refusal while addressing the recipient’s hopes.

Freedom and safety

H. L. Mencken

Assess the claim that people prefer security to freedom in contemporary life.

Information technology and daily life

Develop a position on the effects of widespread access to information technology.

A letter to Thomas Jefferson about slavery

Benjamin Banneker

Analyze how Banneker addresses Jefferson’s principles and challenges slavery.

The public role of humorists

Alain de Botton

Assess whether humor gives writers and performers a distinctive social function.

Daylight saving time

Use the sources to evaluate a policy of changing clocks seasonally.

The upper Midwest in The Horizontal World

Debra Marquart

Explain how the memoir constructs a perspective on the region and its identity.

Buy Nothing Day

Develop a position on an annual pause in purchasing as a response to overconsumption.

Priorities for space exploration

Identify and defend the issues that should guide decisions about exploring space.

Satirizing opposing environmental camps

Edward O. Wilson

Compare the paired passages to explain their critique of unproductive debate.

Adversity and the development of character

Horace

Assess the role hardship can play in revealing or developing a person’s abilities.

Individual and public goals of schooling

Examine how education should balance personal fulfillment with civic purposes.

The Indispensable Opposition

Walter Lippmann

Explain how the argument makes the case for freedom of opposing opinions.

Television and everyday life

Barbara Ehrenreich

Evaluate the claims about television with evidence beyond the supplied passage.

Whether to keep the penny

Build a position on eliminating the penny by connecting evidence across sources.

Scientific research in The Great Influenza

John M. Barry

Analyze how the passage presents uncertainty and the work of scientific discovery.

Corporate sponsorship in schools

Weigh the consequences of business partnerships and advertising in schools.

A national school curriculum

Use sources to examine whether a shared national curriculum would be beneficial.

America Needs Its Nerds

Leonid Fridman

Explain how the essay challenges attitudes toward intellectual achievement.

Dissent and disagreement

Daniel J. Boorstin

Evaluate the distinction between disagreement within a group and separation from it.

Advertising and society

Use the source collection to develop an argument about advertising’s effects.

Staying Put and the appeal of moving

Scott Russell Sanders

Explain how Sanders develops his response to the appeal of mobility.

Incentives for charitable giving

Consider the ethical implications of rewarding donations with grades or other benefits.

Decisions behind museum exhibitions

Evaluate the considerations involved in acquiring and displaying museum collections.

Investigative journalism and muckraking

Jessica Mitford

Develop a position on journalism that exposes the misconduct of influential people.

A tribute to Toussaint-Louverture

Wendell Phillips

Explain how praise of a historical figure is designed to move a wartime audience.

The Plastic Pink Flamingo

Jennifer Price

Explain how a cultural object becomes a way to comment on American values.

On the Want of Money

William Hazlitt

Analyze how the passage’s development advances a position about money.

Public opinion and democratic life

Assess the value of publicly expressed opinions with relevant supporting examples.

Compulsory voting

Build a position on requiring eligible adults to vote.

The Inquisitor’s speech in Saint Joan

George Bernard Shaw

Examine how the speaker presents his case against Joan to the church court.

Reading and independent thought

Arthur Schopenhauer

Evaluate one claim about the relationship between reading and thinking for oneself.

Power and responsibility in public life

George F. Kennan

Choose a significant observation and assess how well it applies to a country.

MagnaSoles and advertising satire

The Onion

Explain how the mock product announcement exposes persuasive marketing practices.

Luxury spending and obligations to others

Peter Singer

Evaluate competing arguments about donating money beyond basic necessities.

An 1832 lecture on opportunity and servitude

Maria W. Stewart

Analyze the strategies that convey Stewart’s position on constrained opportunity.

The Mississippi River in Rising Tide

John M. Barry

Explain how descriptions of the river communicate the writer’s fascination.

Mistakes as a basis for learning

Lewis Thomas

Test the claims about error and progress against evidence from reading or experience.

Advice to a travelling son

Lord Chesterfield

Connect the letter’s persuasive methods to the values the father communicates.

Finding a compromise in a controversy

Weigh opposing views on a chosen public issue and defend a possible resolution.

Mexico and California in Days of Obligation

Richard Rodriguez

Trace how contrasts between places express the writer’s conflicted perspective.

Silent Spring and the poisoning of birds

Rachel Carson

Identify the passage’s central claim and explain how its examples support it.

Public art and moral objections

The Atlantic Monthly

Analyze the historical essay’s reasoning and evaluate its relevance to your own time.

Unspoken rules and belonging

Michael Ignatieff

Use examples to explore how unwritten expectations shape membership in a group.

Entertainment and its influence on society

Neal Gabler

Assess whether popular entertainment can damage society, using specific examples.

An appeal to join the Union forces

Alfred M. Green

Explain how Green addresses an audience whose patriotism coexists with exclusion.

Two observers of birds in flight

John James Audubon and Annie Dillard

Compare the writers’ descriptions and the responses they create to the flocks.

A letter encouraging emigration

John Downe

Examine how Downe presents life in America to persuade his wife to join him.

The individual and the community

Scott Russell Sanders

Develop a position on the obligations linking individuals and their communities.

Plagiarism, grades and school accountability

Write an editorial that responds to a school’s dispute over plagiarism penalties.