Create an account to track your scores
and create your own practice tests:
Question of the Day: AP English Language
Passage adapted from “An Essay on Friendship” (1841) by Ralph Waldo Emerson
I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frost-work, but the solidest thing we know. For now, after so many ages of experience, what do we know of nature, or of ourselves? Not one step has man taken toward the solution of the problem of his destiny. In one condemnation of folly stand the whole universe of men. But the sweet sincerity of joy and peace, which I draw from this alliance with my brother's soul, is the nut itself whereof all nature and all thought is but the husk and shell.
Happy is the house that shelters a friend! It might well be built, like a festal bower or arch, to entertain him a single day. Happier, if he know the solemnity of that relation, and honor its law! He who offers himself a candidate for that covenant comes up, like an Olympian, to the great games, where the first-born of the world are the competitors. He proposes himself for contest where Time, Want, Danger are in the lists, and he alone is victor who has truth enough in his constitution to preserve the delicacy of his beauty from the wear and tear of all these. The gifts of fortune may be present or absent, but all the hap in that contest depends on intrinsic nobleness, and the contempt of trifles. There are two elements that go to the composition of friendship, each so sovereign, that I can detect no superiority in either, no reason why either should be first named. One is Truth.
A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness, with which one chemical atom meets another. . . .
Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds. I knew a man who, under a certain religious frenzy, cast off this drapery, and omitting all compliments and commonplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. At first he was resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. But persisting, as indeed he could not help doing, for some time in this course, he attained to the advantage of bringing every man of his acquaintance into true relations with him.
In the third paragraph, to what does Emerson compare chemical atoms?
The kind and serene aspects of friendship.
The ability of friends to bond when found in groups of other people.
The boisterous and angry types of discussions that characterize some friendships.
The non-technological aspects of friendship.
The unaffected character of true friendship.
The English language is an intricate study of many different rules regarding grammar, punctuation, tense, and other parts of speech. As you prepare for your AP English Language test, you will want to find ways to study that will prepare you for questions that you might see on your test. While there are many different options for you to use as you prepare for the test, one way is to use the AP English Language Question of the Day from Varsity Tutors’ Learning Tools. By using the Question of the Day, you will receive a unique AP English Language sample question each day that will help you review the information that may be on the test and get you in the habit of studying for your test on a daily basis. Whether you need English tutoring in Providence, English tutoring in Nashville, or English tutoring in San Antonio, working one-on-one with an expert may be just the boost your studies need.
Using the Question of the Day each day as you prepare for the exam can help get you into a daily AP English Language review routine. Taking just a few minutes out of each day to focus on your review will keep your mind fresh when it comes to the topic. Each day, you will get a multiple-choice question that pertains to an AP English Language topic. In many questions, you will receive a passage to read. This will require you to think critically about the whole passage, as well as the specific concept that the sample question pertains to. Varsity Tutors offers resources like free AP English Language Practice Tests to help with your self-paced study, or you may want to consider an AP English Language tutor.
Once you answer the question, you will be given a number of different tools and statistics that can be valuable in your test preparation. One of the main benefits of the Question of the Day is the full explanation of the answer. This can be very important, especially if you don’t understand the correct answer or the process by which the correct answer was obtained. By receiving a full explanation along with the answer, you will be able to go beyond the simplicities of the AP English Language sample question itself to gain a full understanding of the concept as well. In addition to the AP English Language Question of the Day and AP English Language tutoring, you may also want to consider taking some of our AP English Language Flashcards.
Another feature of the Question of the Day are the statistics that you will receive by answering each question. These statistics will provide you information about how many correct answers you have in the subject, your percentile versus that of others who have also answered the question, and how much time it took you to answer the question against the average. By having these statistics at your disposal, you will be able to measure yourself against other prospective test-takers and get an idea of how you measure up against them. Further, it will help to focus your AP English Language study plan by giving you an idea of what types of questions you are strongest with, as well as where you may be able to improve.
The AP English Language Question of the Day gives you the opportunity to receive a question each day that’s similar in format to your upcoming AP English Language test. It’s just one of many review resources available from Varsity Tutors’ Learning Tools, all of which can help you as you move forward toward the test.
Certified Tutor
All AP English Language Resources
