Aim for FiveEnglish Language

Exam guide

The AP® English Language and Composition exam

When it is, how it's set up, what's on it, how students have scored, and a straight answer on how hard it is.

Your exam:

Checked against College Board's website in October 2026.

When is the 2027 exam?

Date
, session 1 (usually morning). Your AP coordinator sets the exact start time.
Length
3 hours 15 minutes
How you take it
Fully digital: you answer everything in the Bluebook testing app.
Calculator
No calculator.

See every exam on one page in the 2027 exam calendar.

No format changes for the May 2027 exam

College Board hasn't announced changes to the English Language exam for 2027. Every course's changes

See College Board's list (opens in a new tab) (apcentral.collegeboard.org · AP English Language and Composition row, Most Recent Change column)

Changed in the last two years (1)
  • Multiple choice questions have 4 answer choicesMay 2025

    Each multiple choice question has 4 answer choices instead of 5.

    See College Board's announcement (opens in a new tab) (apcentral.collegeboard.org · AP English Language and Composition row, Most Recent Change column)

How the exam is set up

The sections of the 2027 English Language exam
SectionQuestionsTimeShare of score
Multiple choice23 to 25 reading questions on nonfiction passages, and 20 to 22 writing questions about revising drafts. Each question has 4 answer choices.45 questions1 hour45%
Free responseA synthesis essay that argues a position using at least 3 of 6 sources, a rhetorical analysis of a nonfiction passage, and an argument essay.3 essays2 hours 15 minutes, including a 15-minute reading period55%

What's on the exam

The units build skills you use across the whole exam, so College Board doesn't weight the exam by unit.

  1. Unit 1Rhetorical Situation, Claims and Evidence
  2. Unit 2Audience, Appeals and Thesis
  3. Unit 3Commentary, Line of Reasoning and Development
  4. Unit 4Introductions, Conclusions and Thesis Structure
  5. Unit 5Body Paragraphs, Coherence and Word Choice
  6. Unit 6Synthesis, Sources and Tone
  7. Unit 7Qualifying Claims and Building Sentences
  8. Unit 8Audience, Style and Sentence Choices
  9. Unit 9Counterarguments: Concession, Rebuttal and Refutation

How it's scored

Multiple choice is scored by computer, and a wrong answer costs you nothing, so answer every question. The free-response answers are scored in June by AP teachers and college professors, using a rubric.

Each section's points are weighted by its share of the score, added up, and turned into a score from 1 to 5. College Board doesn't publish exactly how many points each score needs, and the cutoffs can change a little from year to year.

Want a rough idea of where you stand? Try the English Language score calculator with your practice test results. For the 1 to 5 scale and college credit, see how AP scores work.

How students scored in 2026

AP® English Language and Composition scores in 2026, percent of students
Score of 5
15%
Score of 4
28%
Score of 3
32%
Score of 2
15%
Score of 1
10%

Scores of 3 or higher (75% of students) have green bars; 2s and 1s have gray ones. A 3 is where many colleges start to give credit.

In 2026, 75% of students scored 3 or higher, and 15% got a 5. The most common score was a 3.

In 2025, 616,294 students took the exam. 74.3% scored 3 or higher, 13.4% got a 5, and the average score was 3.19. College Board hasn't published the 2026 number of students or average score yet.

Source: College Board's AP English Language and Composition score distributions. Percentages are College Board's, rounded, so they may not add to exactly 100. Compare every course.

Is AP® English Language and Composition hard?

Judging by pass rates alone, English Language is one of the easier exams to pass. In 2026, 75% of students scored 3 or higher: tied for the 7th highest pass rate of the 27 exams on this site. 15% got a 5, tied for the 18th highest share of 5s.

There's no content list to memorize for English Language: it tests reading and writing skills, which build slowly. That makes it hard to cram.

More than half your score (55%) comes from three essays in 2 hours 15 minutes: a synthesis essay using sources, a rhetorical analysis and an argument essay.

The multiple choice mixes reading nonfiction passages with questions about revising drafts. Practice by writing timed essays and getting feedback on them.

Pass rates show how students did, not exactly how hard the material is. They also depend on who takes each exam and how much they prepared. See every course's pass rate.

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Where these facts come from

College Board runs the exams and can change the rules. If something here doesn't match their site, trust their site.