How This Exam Asks: The Seven Question Types

This is Unit One of Analyzing and Interpreting Literature, part two of two: how to work a passage under time, and the traps the wrong answers are built from. Part one closed on the governing idea: the board prints the passage and asks what its words do, so recall earns nothing and close reading earns everything. This part pays that idea off at one entry, the one that says every published answer can be supported by pointing at words on the page. Everything before it is procedure. We begin with the order to read in and the arithmetic of ninety-eight minutes, then how to handle a question that resists and why dismissing options beats selecting one. Then the four traps: the option that is true and irrelevant, the one that overstates, the one built on a modern meaning, and the one that answers from the subject instead of the treatment. Then three short procedures, one each for a poem, a prose passage and a scene. Last, the terminology the board assumes, what makes a reading wrong on this exam, and what the board itself says about its samples, its editing and its scoring. By the end you will be able to work a passage in order and eliminate rather than choose. To recognise the four traps and require a pointable answer. To run the three-move procedure for any genre. To hold the assumed terminology and separate the confused pairs. And to judge a reading, use the samples for shape, expect regularised text, and say what fifty means.

Five entries on working the passage: the reading order, the unfamiliar passage, the time budget, the resisting question, and elimination.

Sense first, then the questions.

AIL 0021 The Order to Work In

Read the passage once for sense, without looking at the questions. Then read the questions. Then return to the passage for each one. Reading the questions first narrows the eye, and it makes the whole-passage questions, tone and the speaker's state, harder to answer, because you have been looking for one thing instead of reading.

An unfamiliar passage costs you nothing.

AIL 0022 Meeting a Passage You Cannot Place

The board supplies every passage and expects some of them to be unfamiliar. A candidate who cannot name the author has lost nothing, because no question asks for a name. Time spent trying to recall the work is time taken from reading the words on the page, so do not spend it placing the passage.

Seventy-three seconds for each question.

AIL 0023 The Arithmetic of Ninety-Eight Minutes

Eighty questions in ninety-eight minutes gives about seventy-three seconds each. Passages carry three or four questions, so a passage and its questions together can have four to five minutes. A passage that has taken seven minutes is taking them from somewhere else, and one slow passage costs three others.

Eliminate, guess, and move on.

AIL 0024 When a Question Resists

When a question resists, mark it, choose the best remaining option, and move on. Unanswered questions score nothing and there is no penalty for a wrong guess, so a blank scores the same as a wrong answer. A candidate who eliminates two options and guesses among three has raised the odds from one in five to one in three.

Dismiss an option on one wrong word.

AIL 0025 Eliminating Rather Than Choosing

Most options can be dismissed on a single word. An option claiming the speaker is sarcastic fails if no line is sarcastic. An option claiming a shift fails if the tone is level. Dismissal is faster and more reliable than positive selection, because selecting first invites you to confirm what you have already chosen.

Five entries on the four traps the wrong options are built from, and on the single test every right answer has to pass.

True about the passage, and still wrong.

AIL 0026 Trap One: The True but Irrelevant Option

An option can state something true about the passage and still be wrong, because it does not answer the question asked. A tone question is not answered by a true remark about imagery. Truth is not the test on this exam; responsiveness is. Check that the option answers the question that was actually put.

Absolutes are rarely the answer.

AIL 0027 Trap Two: The Overstated Option

Options carrying always, never, entirely or only are rarely right, because literature resists absolutes. An option saying the speaker would rather travel endlessly than stay is stronger than anything the lines support. Strength of claim is a usable signal: measure the claim against the lines and the overstated option shows itself.

Old words carry their older meanings.

AIL 0028 Trap Three: The Modern Meaning

Words shift. In older writing, wit means intelligence, nice means precise, and grace can mean skill. An option built on the modern sense of an old word is a trap laid for readers who do not slow down. The line's sense decides the word's sense, so let the sentence settle it.

Subject and treatment are separate things.

AIL 0029 Trap Four: Answering From the Subject

A poem about a death is not necessarily solemn, and a poem about a flower is not necessarily light. The exam separates what a passage is about from the attitude it takes toward it. Answering from the subject rather than the treatment is a steady source of error, because a grave subject can be handled lightly.

Point at the line, or reconsider.

AIL 0030 The Answer Is on the Page

Every published answer in the sample set can be supported by pointing at words in the passage. If a candidate cannot point at the line that carries the answer, the answer is probably a guess dressed as a reading. That is the payoff of the governing idea: the answer is on the page, or it is not an answer.

Three entries, one procedure each: three moves for a poem, three for a prose passage, and three for a scene of drama.

Sentence, then speaker, then the turn.

AIL 0031 A Procedure for a Poem

Find the sentence inside the lines first, ignoring the line breaks, because line breaks are not sentence breaks. Name the speaker and the situation. Then look for the turn, the point where the argument or the feeling changes direction. Most poetry questions are answered somewhere in those three moves.

Who speaks, and from where.

AIL 0032 A Procedure for Prose

Identify who is speaking and whether they stand inside the story or outside it. Mark where the passage changes footing, from narration to speech or from general statement to particular instance. Ask what the narrator seems to think of the people described, and keep the narrator apart from the author.

Who hears this, and who cannot?

AIL 0033 A Procedure for Drama

Ask who is on stage and who is absent, because drama turns on what is not heard. Ask whether a speech is addressed to another character or to the audience. Ask what the audience knows that the speaker does not. Absence carries as much as presence in a scene.

Seven entries on the terms the board assumes, on what makes a reading wrong, and on what the board says about its samples, its editing and its scoring.

A finite list, learned once.

AIL 0034 The Terminology You Are Assumed to Have

The board assumes familiarity with basic literary terminology. The anchor's glossary supplies it: allegory, alliteration, assonance, ballad, blank verse, conceit, elegy, irony, metonymy, ode, paradox, sonnet, synecdoche and the rest. These terms are learned once and used throughout the paper, and basic does not mean optional.

Part for whole is synecdoche.

AIL 0035 The Terms Most Often Confused

Metaphor and simile differ by the word like. Metonymy names a thing by something associated with it, while synecdoche names it by a part. Irony is a gap between what is said and what is meant, and sarcasm is one unkind form of it. Those are the pairs the options are built to confuse.

Better supported, not merely arguable.

AIL 0036 Whether a Reading Can Be Wrong

Literary questions have defensible answers rather than proofs, and the board writes its options so that one is better supported than the others. A reading is wrong on this exam when the words on the page do not carry it, not when a teacher disagrees. Defensible is not the same as right.

The samples show shape, not content.

AIL 0037 What the Sample Questions Are For

The College Board states that the published samples are not used in real exams and exist to show format and difficulty. They are a reliable guide to how the exam asks and an unreliable guide to which passages appear. Use them for their shape, because these exact items will not be on your paper.

Regularised, not reproduced exactly.

AIL 0038 The Exam Edits What It Prints

Sheridan wrote that when an old bachelor takes a young wife, and he capitalised his nouns freely. The board prints marries and modernises the capitals. The sense is preserved, but a candidate should expect regularised spelling and punctuation rather than an original text. Modern spelling does not mean modern writing.

Fifty is the recommended score.

AIL 0039 What a Passing Score Means

The American Council on Education recommends a score of fifty for three semester hours of credit, and each institution sets its own policy. Some questions on the paper are unscored pretest items, so a candidate cannot know which questions counted and should treat every one as though it does.

Types, then craft, then period.

AIL 0040 What the Rest of This Course Does

The next four units drill the question types one at a time: syntax, word meaning, tone and speaker. Units six to fifteen teach the craft of each genre. The last units supply period orientation, and the final unit runs the whole procedure cold on the board's own samples. The procedure is the point throughout.

That is the working procedure, and the entry it all rests on is the one that says the answer is on the page. You can work a passage in order, sense first and questions after, with seventy-three seconds a question and no penalty for a guess, dismissing options on a single wrong word. You can recognise the four traps: the true but irrelevant option, the overstated one, the modern meaning laid over an old word, and the answer drawn from the subject instead of the treatment, and you can refuse any answer you cannot point at on the page. You can run three moves on a poem, sentence, speaker and turn; three on prose, who speaks and from where; and three on drama, who hears and who cannot. You hold the terminology the board assumes and the pairs it builds distractors from. And you know a reading is wrong when the words do not carry it, that the samples show shape and not content, that the printed text is regularised, and that fifty is the recommended score. The next unit takes the first question type in depth, the syntax that hides inside old sentences.