When I first saw the new AP Language and Composition test format for 2020, I was taken aback by the new “writing section.” So were all my students. What is this, we wondered, the SAT?
With its choppy text and weirdly-specific questions, the latter half of the AP Lang test’s multiple-choice section does indeed resemble the old paper SAT’s “Writing and Language” section. However, the paired questions do not test standard English conventions like grammar or punctuation. Instead, these questions “ask students to ‘read like a writer’ and consider revisions to stimulus texts.”
New test, similar questions!
Much like those of the old SAT section, the new AP Lang questions refer to individually numbered sentences of a draft passage. Notice the question tasks:
- Which version of the underlined text best accomplishes this goal?
- Which of the following claims would best achieve this purpose?
- Where would the sentence best be placed?
These question phrases come directly from the old paper SAT (which no longer exists—the test is now fully digital). They were known as “specific-purpose” questions. Instead of asking what sounds best, they test whether students can choose the option that serves a particular purpose. In other words, the goal isn’t to express your own opinion, it’s to give the answer the question is looking for.
Incidentally, we used to tell my students these question types were free points, because only one or two answer choices will even begin to address the task. The rest are just well-phrased fluff. They may sound good—tempting, even—but they don’t fulfill the task at hand.
The writer wants to add a rhetorical question here that maintains the tone of the passage and effectively transitions to the topic of the next paragraph. Which of the following sentences best accomplishes this goal?
(A) Where else do we find such deceptively “almost correct” language?
(B) Where else do we experience wording that’s “almost exact” but somehow off?
(C) Where else do we see language that’s so “close to correct” yet subtly wrong?
(D) Where else do we encounter such uncanny phraseology?
Where does AI come into play?
If you’re like me at all, you’ve integrated LLMs like ChatGPT into your writing practice to notable but limited success. Chat can do the work of a writer—but only that. Chat generates a serviceable first draft because that’s its job: “generative” is in its name.
Educators are already scrambling to stave off the deluge of AI-driven cheating methods, spanning from solutions such as implementing handwritten, in-class essays to placing their hopes in a burgeoning AI Content Detection industry. Others are embracing the new technology and spearheading best practice guidelines.
Where does The CollegeBoard lie on this continuum? Their AI guidelines veer on the side of prohibition for creative courses and caution for analytical ones, but in asking students to “read like a writer” and providing just-off-the-mark “stimulus texts,” the new AP Lang test prepares advanced students for a lifetime of editing.
