Rhetorical analysis multiple choice questions, also called "reading" multiple choice questions, are intended to measure your reading skills. During the test, you will read two nonfiction passages and then answer questions about the speaker, purpose, meaning, exigence, structure, and language of the texts. These questions are essentially slightly-harder versions of the questions on the "reading" sections of the SAT or ACT.

The test will include 23-25 rhetorical analysis multiple choice questions. That's a little more than half of the total 45 multiple choice questions that make up the test. The 23-25 questions will be split between two different passages.

Becoming a better reader doesn't happen overnight, so unfortunately there's nothing you can do to "cram" for these questions. Whereas many AP tests measure your mastery of the content that you learn over the course of one school year, the AP Lang test measures the languages skills you've been developing over the past 16/17/18 years. So, unlike some subjects, you can't simply complete a few sets of practice problems and, by the end, successfully master a particular thing you need to know for the AP test. Reading a few books or completing a few sets of practice questions will not make an immediate or noticeable difference in your ability to understand or analyze texts because our growth as readers happens gradually, incrementally, and imperceptibly.

Becoming a good reader takes time, patience, and lots of practice. So, to be honest, if you come into AP Lang as a bad reader, there's not anything you can do, nor anything I can teach you, that's going to make you a great reader in a week, a month, or even a year. But don't worry; you're not a bad reader. If you were, you wouldn't be in AP Lang. And even if you're not a superstar reader, there are still ways to improve. But remember--it will take time, so the sooner you commit to becoming a stronger reader the better. Here are a few pieces of advice...

1) Actually read the texts that you're assigned to read for homework. It's probably easier to get away with not doing your homework in Language Arts than in any other subject. It's usually possible to fake your way through class discussions with vague generalizations, and if you're put on the spot you can always mumble something like, "I read it all, but I didn't really understand that part." But it's very simple. If you don't read, you're not going to get better. The only way to become a better reader is to read and then to exchange ideas about what you read with other people. So, please. Do your homework.

2) Whenever you read, read slowly and carefully. Annotate. Highlight. Take notes. Start a reading journal. Reread parts you don't understand. Pause and reflect after every page. Skimming through a text or reading it as quickly as you can just so you can say you read it is almost as bad as not reading at all. You need to be sure that you're actually thinking about what you read.

3) When you encounter a text that you think is "boring" or "unrelatable" or just "too hard," double down and spend extra time studying that text. Boring, unrelatable, and really hard texts are usually the texts that force us to grow as readers because they require more thinking and focus than texts that are exciting, relatable, or easy to read.

4) Read on your own outside of school. The people who earn 4s and 5s on the AP test are students who have, over the course of their entire lives, spent more time reading--both in school and on their own--than their peers. If you don't think of yourself as "a reader," you should reevaluate your priorities and then head to the library.