AP English Language and Composition Practice Exam

[Pages:32]AP English Language and Composition Practice Exam

SECTION I

TIME: 1 HOUR

Directions: After reading each passage, choose the best answer to each question and completely fill in the corresponding oval on the answer sheet.

Questions 1?14. Read the following passage carefully before you choose your answers.

The following is an excerpt from a paper Jane Addams (1869?1935) gave at the School of Applied Ethics in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1892.

You may remember the forlorn feeling which occasionally seizes you when you arrive early in the morning a stranger in a great city: the stream of laboring people goes past you as you gaze through the plate-glass window of your hotel; you see hard working men lifting 5 great burdens; you hear the driving and jostling of huge carts and your heart sinks with a sudden sense of futility. The door opens behind you and you turn to the man who brings you in your breakfast

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with a quick sense of human fellowship. You find yourself praying that you may never lose your hold on it all. A more poetic prayer 10 would be that the great mother breasts of our common humanity, with its labor and suffering and its homely comforts, may never be withheld from you. You turn helplessly to the waiter and feel that it would be almost grotesque to claim from him the sympathy you crave because civilization has placed you apart, but you resent your 15 position with a sudden sense of snobbery. Literature is full of portrayals of these glimpses: they come to shipwrecked men on rafts; they overcome the differences of an incongruous multitude when in the presence of a great danger or when moved by a common enthusiasm. They are not, however, confined to such moments, and if we 20 were in the habit of telling them to each other, the recital would be as long as the tales of children are, when they sit down on the green grass and confide to each other how many times they have remembered that they lived once before. If these childish tales are the stirring of inherited impressions, just so surely is the other the striving 25 of inherited powers.

"It is true that there is nothing after disease, indigence and a sense of guilt, so fatal to health and to life itself as the want of a proper outlet for active faculties." I have seen young girls suffer and grow sensibly lowered in vitality in the first years after they leave school. 30 In our attempt then to give a girl pleasure and freedom from care we succeed, for the most part, in making her pitifully miserable. She finds "life" so different from what she expected it to be. She is besotted with innocent little ambitions, and does not understand this apparent waste of herself, this elaborate preparation, if no work 35 is provided for her. There is a heritage of noble obligation which young people accept and long to perpetuate. The desire for action, the wish to right wrong and alleviate suffering haunts them daily. Society smiles at it indulgently instead of making it of value to itself. The wrong to them begins even farther back, when we restrain the 40 first childish desires for "doing good," and tell them that they must

AP ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND COMPOSITION PRACTICE EXAM

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wait until they are older and better fitted. We intimate that social obligation begins at a fixed date, forgetting that it begins at birth itself. We treat them as children who, with strong-growing limbs, are allowed to use their legs but not their arms, or whose legs are daily 45 carefully exercised that after a while their arms may be put to high use. We do this in spite of the protest of the best educators, Locke and Pestalozzi. We are fortunate in the meantime if their unused members do not weaken and disappear. They do sometimes. There are a few girls who, by the time they are "educated," forget their 50 old childish desires to help the world and to play with poor little girls "who haven't playthings." Parents are often inconsistent: they deliberately expose their daughters to knowledge of the distress in the world; they send them to hear missionary addresses on famines in India and China; they accompany them to lectures on the suffer55 ing in Siberia; they agitate together over the forgotten region of East London. In addition to this, from babyhood the altruistic tendencies of these daughters are persistently cultivated. They are taught to be self-forgetting and self-sacrificing, to consider the good of the whole before the good of the ego. But when all this information and culture 60 show results, when the daughter comes back from college and begins to recognize her social claim to the "submerged tenth," and to evince a disposition to fulfill it, the family claim is strenuously asserted; she is told that she is unjustified, ill-advised in her efforts. If she persists, the family too often are injured and unhappy unless the efforts 65 are called missionary and the religious zeal of the family carry them over their sense of abuse. When this zeal does not exist, the result is perplexing. It is a curious violation of what we would fain believe a fundamental law--that the final return of the deed is upon the head of the doer. The deed is that of exclusiveness and caution, but the 70 return, instead of falling upon the head of the exclusive and cautious, falls upon a young head full of generous and unselfish plans.

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1. The speaker in the passage can best be described as a person who is

A. an advocate of young people's social activism B. a supporter of class distinctions C. a critic of college education D. against traditional roles for women E. motivated by a desire to help the less fortunate

2. The purpose of the anecdote with which the speaker begins paragraph 1 is to

A. elicit sympathy by retelling a tale of loneliness B. paint a picture of city life to fascinate her listeners C. engage the audience by evoking a common experience D. raise questions that will be answered later E. introduce the idea of the difficulties of the laboring class

3. In line 9, "it" refers to

A. "breakfast" (line 7) B. "praying" (line 8) C. "sense of human fellowship" (line 8) D. "the man who brings...breakfast" (line 7) E. "a sudden sense of futility" (line 6)

4. In context, "grotesque" (line 13) is best interpreted as

A. condescending B. disturbing C. ridiculous D. out of place E. extravagant

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5. The sentence beginning "You turn helplessly to the waiter" (lines 12?15) contains

A. irony B. paradox C. parallel syntax D. abstract diction E. understatement

6. The implication of the phrase "civilization has placed you apart" (line 14) is that the speaker and the waiter

A. have different professions B. are not of the same gender C. pursue different interests D. are not of the same social class E. lack a shared perspective

7. It can be inferred when the speaker states, "literature is full of portrayals of these glimpses" (lines 15?16) that the author is referring to

A. the "forlorn feeling" (line 1) B. the sinking feeling of the heart mentioned in line 6 C. the man who brings in breakfast in line 7 D. the sense of a "common humanity" (line 10) E. the desire for sympathy mentioned in lines 12?15

8. The use of the subjunctive tense in lines 19?20 indicates that the telling of the types of tales to which the speaker refers

A. is not something we do B. would take a great deal of time C. is something only children do D. requires childish confidence E. would not take a great deal of time

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9. The first two sentences of paragraph 2 (lines 16?29) indicate

A. a continuation of the ideas expressed in paragraph 1 B. a change in focus from the ideas in paragraph 1 C. a comparison of ideas with those enumerated in paragraph 1 D. a direct contrast to the ideas expressed in paragraph 1 E. an application of the ideas discussed in paragraph 1

10. The organization of ideas in lines 28?29, "I have seen young girls... value to itself" is best described as

A. an indictment of education B. a historical example followed by specific examples C. a generalization followed by a conclusion D. the speaker's reflection on her girlhood E. a movement from the particular to the general

11. The speaker employs an analogy in lines 43?46 to

A. underscore her belief in the benefits of exercise for young people

B. illuminate the disregard society has for children's tendencies to share

C. emphasize the fact that society ignores the innate abilities of children

D. argue that the desire of the young to help others is not cultivated

E. indicate her dismay at society for disregarding the advice of educators

12. The word "educated" (line 49) is in quotation marks to indicate its

A. ironic usage B. positive effects C. importance D. meaninglessness E. lack of rigor

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13. Which one of the following characteristics of girls is emphasized in lines 56?57?

A. their enlightening education and their contentious relationships with parents

B. their attendance at lectures and the child-rearing practices of their parents

C. their humanitarian training and their parents' desire to stifle this training

D. their self-abnegation and their parents' philanthropic tendencies E. their perseverance and their parent's refusal to condone their

actions

14. The "deed" that the speaker refers to as "that of exclusiveness and caution" (line 69?71) is prefigured in

A. "altruistic tendencies" (line 56) B. the "social claim" (line 61) C. "missionary" efforts (line 65) D. "the religious zeal of the family" (line 65) E. the "family claim" (line 62)

Questions 15?30. Read the following passage carefully before you choose your answers.

The following is an excerpt from Henry David Thoreau's essay "Civil Disobedience," written in 1848.

I HEARTILY ACCEPT the motto,--"That government is best which governs least";1 and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I

1Possible reference to "The best government is that which governs least," motto of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review (1837?1859), or "The less government we have, the better" from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Politics" (1844), sometimes mistakenly attributed to Thomas Jefferson.

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believe,--"That government is best which governs not at all"; and 5 when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government

which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to pre10 vail, may also at last be brought against a standing government. The standing army is only an arm of the standing government. The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. Witness the present Mexican 15 war,2 the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool; for, in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure.

This American government--what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, 20 but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will. It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves. But it is not the less necessary for this; for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of 25 government which they have. Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage. It is excellent, we must all allow. Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country free. It does 30 not settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way. For government is an expedient by which men

2U.S.-Mexican War (1846?1848), considered by abolitionists to be an effort to extend slavery into former Mexican territory.

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would fain succeed in letting one another alone; and, as has been 35 said, when it is most expedient, the governed are most let alone by

it. Trade and commerce, if they were not made of India rubber,3 would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way; and, if one were to judge these men wholly by the effects of their actions, and not partly by their 40 intentions, they would deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievous persons who put obstructions on the railroads.

But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men,4 I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known 45 what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.

After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in 50 the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?--in which ma55 jorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much 60 as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men

3Made from the latex of tropical plants; "India" because it came from the West Indies, and "rubber" from its early use as an eraser.

4 Anarchists, many of whom came from Massachusetts.

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is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are 65 daily made the agents of injustice. A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys,5 and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very 70 steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? Or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power?

5 Boys who carry gunpowder for soldiers.

15. This essay could best be characterized as

A. a diatribe against the government B. an abolitionist speech C. a citizen's call to action D. an anarchist's desire for change E. a conservative's words of praise

16. The dominant rhetorical device in line 4 is

A. oxymoron B. parallel structure C. paradox D. inverted syntax E. catalogue

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17. In lines 11?16, the author draws a connection between the "standing government" and the "standing army" (lines 10?11) to argue that the army and the government

I. are only aspects of a whole II. can be distorted and mistreated III. are manipulated by a minority

A. I only B. II only C. III only D. II and III only E. I, II, and III

18. Footnote 2 serves to do all of the following except

A. justify America's participation in the Mexican-American War B. explain why the author and others did not support the war C. provide insight into the abolitionist cause D. supply the dates of the Mexican-American War E. suggest a possible outcome of the Mexican-American conflict

19. The "American government" (line 18) is juxtaposed to "a single living man" (line 21) to argue that the government is all of the following except

A. moribund B. easily manipulated C. ineffectual D. without real power E. without energy

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20. In line 22, "wooden gun" is

A. metonymy for war B. synecdoche for firearms C. a metaphor for lack of power D. an analogy comparing guns to toys E. an oxymoron providing a truth

21. In lines 22?24, the author's point about "the people" and their expectations of government is that government must be

A. convoluted yet quiet B. mechanistic yet calm C. robotic and disturbing D. intricate and noisy E. complex and alarming

22. "Yet this government...out of its way" (lines 27?29) means that

A. the government helps itself by helping people's business ventures B. the government helps people progress through its support

and effort C. quickly removing itself from the path of the people is the only

help the government can offer D. forcefully inserting itself into the activities of its people helps

them to succeed E. a slow and well-thought-out governmental response leads to

the success of the people

23. Lines 29?30 use which rhetorical device and for what purpose?

A. polysyndeton to reveal the qualities of the American people B. asyndeton to underscore why the American people should

be proud C. allusion to refer to America's recent historical past D. abstract diction to create ambiguity about American achievements E. anaphora to emphasize what the government has not done

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24. The author compares "trade and commerce" to "India rubber" (line 36) to make the point that legislators

A. research how to use India rubber as a commodity to overcome trade and commerce issues

B. create impediments that trade and commerce are fortunately able to overcome

C. instigate trade and commerce agreements but then block their successful completion

D. negotiate trade and commerce agreements but then knowingly sabotage them

E. establish difficulties to trade that only India rubber commerce can navigate

25. The analogy in lines 38?41 not only emphasizes the comparison in line 36 but also

A. points out the danger and injudiciousness of legislators' actions B. creates a contradiction between legislators' desired results and

misguided choices C. reveals why legislators engage in illegal activities regarding

trade and commerce D. distinguishes between the men themselves and their actions

and intentions E. illuminates how the achievements of legislators are not always

a result of their actions

26. Footnote 4 serves to

A. identify where the majority of anarchists reside B. define what an anarchist is C. differentiate the author from anarchists D. explain to whom the author refers E. clarify the actions of "no government" men

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27. The rhetorical device used in lines 43?44, "I ask for, not no government, but at once a better government" is

A. chiasmus B. antithesis C. idiomatic language D. inversion E. a loose sentence

28. The author's point regarding majority rule (lines 53?56) is that the majority should rule

A. only on matters devoid of moral claims B. when the issue entails matters of fairness C. during circumstances that include justice to the minority D. when the situation revolves around matters of right and wrong E. if practical considerations are at least one aspect of the ruling

29. The author's point regarding conscience in lines 57?63 is best stated as

A. conscience should be subservient to the law B. to be a subject entails abiding by the precepts of one's conscience C. individual conscience is more important than the law D. men have consciences as reflected in the morality of legislators E. it is the duty of conscience to obey the laws of legislators

30. The author's tone in the passage as a whole is best described as

A. warmly sympathetic B. harshly critical C. unquestioningly supportive D. staunchly judgmental E. insightfully creative

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Questions 31?43: Read the following passage carefully before you choose your answers.

The following is an excerpt from a contemporary magazine.

On March 23, 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law. This law will supposedly make health insurance more affordable by providing tax cuts to small businesses that offer their employees coverage. It will also 5 provide tax credits to individuals who purchase their own health insurance. Supporters of the act believe it will help nearly thirtytwo million Americans receive coverage. In addition, the government estimates that the act will reduce the deficit by $100 billion in a decade. While these reforms seem like positive steps in the right 10 direction, the act is still shrouded in controversy.

This much-maligned bill passed only after several revisions, which included the loss of a public health insurance option sponsored by the government. Critics of the public option equated government health insurance with socialism, claiming that such a plan would 15 not only expand the government's control over individual liberties, but also would destroy competition within the health insurance industry. If a government option made health care more affordable and provided more people with coverage, then who would choose more expensive coverage provided by private insurers? This was ex20 actly the point that those interested in real reform were trying to make. While capitalist-loving politicians saw this as a threat to the extremely lucrative health care industry (an industry represented by many special interest groups on Capitol Hill), they failed to recognize the fact that a public option would force private insur25 ance companies to lower prices to compete with the government. The public option was not government-mandated health care; it was merely another option.

According to a 2010 report issued by the Centers for Disease

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