Reprinted: 7/7/2012
Included here is a “starter kit” of AP Language prompts that I have found useful in my teaching. I have included copy-ready versions of all prompts that are either undated or precede 1999. From 1999 to the present all prompts and sample responses are available online at apcentral.collegeboard.com. Those prompts are marked below with an asterisk.
PASSAGE ANALYSIS
Compare & Contrast
First Space Satellite 1985
Momaday & Brown describe landscapes 1986
Galapagos Islands
Coca Cola letters (satire) 1998
Okefenokee swamps 1999*
Audubon & Dillard on birds 2003*
Memoir or Autobiography
Richard Rodriguez' attitude toward family (Includes samples)
Gary Soto autobiography 1996 (Includes samples)
Autobiography of Frederick Douglass 1997
Meena Alexander, “Fault Lines” 1997
Jamaica Kincaid, “On Seeing England for the First Time” 1999
Essay Passage from Nonfiction Book, Newspaper, or Magazine
Norman Mailer’s “Paret was a Cuban…” AP Lit Exam 1984
Joan Didion, Santa Ana winds (Includes samples)
Martin Luther King, Jr., “Why We Can’t Wait”
Sir Savile about King Charles II 1994 (Includes samples)
Ellen Goodman, “Company Man” 1994
Mary Oliver, “Owls” 2001*
Richard Rodriquez, “Days of Obligation” 2004*
MagnaSoles, mock press release from The Onion 2005*
Letter
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s letter to her daughter 1996
Charles Lamb’s letter to William Wordsworth 1998
George Eliot’s letter to an American woman 2001*
Speech
Queen Elizabeth I to her troops 1992
Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address 2002*
Alfred Green 1861 speech to African Americans 2003 (Includes samples)*
ARGUMENT
Evaluate the Effectiveness of an Argument
De Tocqueville, essay on democracy 1988
John Ruskin, soldier or merchant 1995
Neil Postman, contrasts Orwell & Huxley’s vision of the future 1997
Orwell on Gandhi, human perfection over “sainthood” 2000*
Milan Kundera, Testaments Betrayed , public and private lives 2002*
Respond To or Write an Argument
See “INDEX of AP Language Argument Questions,” which is the final handout in the Teaching
Argument Packet. This is an extensive listing of generally brief prompts that requires students to write their own arguments.
Compiled and indexed by
Valerie Stevenson
AP English Language, Patrick Henry High School