English Literature and Composition (Cliffs AP)

Rating:
Summary: Best English AP Prep book
Review: By far the best English AP preparation book - even better than the first edition. It brings everything up to date and adds good new practice exams. Unfortunately, it costs more.

Rating:
Summary: Studied a little, helped a lot
Review: To be honest, I was never a good writer, I got a 650 on my SAT2 writing test. I didn't take the English AP Language course because I didn't like the teacher too much, so I never had any preparation for it. I didn't do any writing in my English honors class either, but we did read a lot.

I did a few multiple choice questions to familiarize myself with the types of questions they would ask, and when I read the questions and I was completely overwhelmed by the amount of technical terms I never learned like "allegory" and all that stuff, so I went to the back and memorized those terms. I read a lot of the essays in the book so I would know what they were looking for. This book helped a lot on the essay. It teaches you how to structure your essay, write up an introduction, write a pretty sentence, and do some analyzing. I didn't do any of the full-length practice tests, so I never really learned how to time myself. And during the actual test, I never reached the last passage of the multiple choice exam. I was panicking so much, I seriously thought of cancelling my score. But because I actually tried, and paid for it.. I didn't. I ended up getting a 4 on the test, which I'm really proud of.

You have to keep practice writing the essays here, that's where it really counts.