Tackling the

Multiple Choice
Section of the AP
Literature Exam
Remember
As of this year there is no longer a
Guessing Penalty
There are five possible choices therefore,
if you can clearly eliminate three of the five
then you have a 50% chance of scoring a
correct answer.
Guessing is OK. Answer every question!!!
Sample Poem
Stanza Three

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals ad field deserters
but move in common rhythm when the food must come in or the fire be put out.


9. Many lines within this poem, such as those in stanza III, are not end stopped,
but they demonstrate
A. Run-on structure
B. Enjambment
C. Heroic couplets
D. Petrarchan rhyme
E. Juxtaposition
Sample Poem
Stanza One

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.


12. In line five, the word element can BEST be understood to represent
A. Swimming Seals
B. Bouncing Balls
C. Laziness
D. Toiling Oxen
E. Meaningful work
Sample Poem
Stanza Three

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals ad field deserters
but move in common rhythm when the food must come in or the fire be put out.


9. The repeated phraseology used in the third stanza can be identified as
A. Alliteration
B. Anaphora
C. Apposition
D. Apostrophe
E. Assonance

Anaphora is the repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases
or clauses.
Alliteration is the repetition of initial consonant sounds.
Apostrophe is an address or invocation of something that is inanimate
Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in the middle of words.
Apposition is a grammatical structure in which two nouns refer to the same word.
Remember
Pay particular attention to critical words within the questions: ONLY,
EXCEPT, ALWAYS, NOT , NEVER, BEST and the phrase: All of the
following EXCEPT.
Know the answer before you look at your choices. Know what you are
looking for to avoid distractors and misleads.
Work through process of elimination to see if you can get to 50/50.
Easy questions are worth as much as hard questions. They may try to get
you to waste time with a toughie right off the bat move on to the easy
ones in a passage before going back to POE the toughie.
In every set of Multiple Choice problems there are some easy ones and
some hard ones. Dont second guess the easy ones. Take the points
and be happy.
Dont play games with letter patterns I have answered C five times in a
rowthe right answer is the right answer. Dont second guess.
Remember: answer every question.