AP ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND COMPOSITION Scoring Guide

Unit 3 Exam

Read the following passage carefully before you choose your answers.

(This passage is from the preface to a work published early in the nineteenth century.)

The prevailing taste of the public for anecdote has been censured and ridiculed by critics, who aspire to the character of
superior wisdom: but if we consider it in a proper point of view, this taste is an incontestible proof of the good sense and
profoundly philosophic temper of the present times. Of the numbers who study, or at least who read history, how few
derive any advantage from their labors! The heroes of history are so decked out by the fine fancy of the professed
historian; they talk in such measured prose, and act from such sublime or such diabolical motives, that few have sufficient
taste, wickedness or heroism, to sympathize in their fate. Besides, there is much uncertainty even in the best authenticated
antient* or modern histories; and that love of truth, which in some minds is innate and immutable, necessarily leads to a
love of secret memoirs and private anecdotes. We cannot judge either of the feelings or of the characters of men with
perfect accuracy from their actions or their appearance in public; it is from their careless conversations, their half-finished
sentences, that we may hope with the greatest probability of success to discover their real characters. The life of a great or
of a little man written by himself, the familiar letters, the diary of any individual published by his friends, or by his
enemies after his decease, are esteemed important literary curiosities. We are surely justified in this eager desire to collect
the most minute facts relative to the domestic lives, not only of the great and the good, but even of the worthless and
insignificant, since it is only by a comparison of their actual happiness or misery in the privacy of domestic life, that we
can form a just estimate of the real reward of virtue, or the real punishment of vice. That the great are not as happy as they
seem, that the external circumstances of fortune and rank do not constitute felicity, is asserted by every moralist; the
historian can seldom, consistently with his dignity, pause to illustrate this truth, it is therefore to the biographer we must
have recourse. After we have beheld splendid characters playing their parts on the great theatre of the world, with all the
advantages of stage effect and decoration, we anxiously beg to be admitted behind the scenes, that we may take a nearer
view of the actors and actresses.

Some may perhaps imagine, that the value of biography depends upon the judgment and taste of the biographer; but on the
contrary it may be maintained, that the merits of a biographer are inversely as the extent of his intellectual powers and of
his literary talents. A plain unvarnished tale is preferable to the most highly ornamented narrative. Where we see that a
man has the power, we may naturally suspect that he has the will to deceive us, and those who are used to literary
manufacture know how much is often sacrificed to the rounding of a period or the pointing an antithesis.

* ancient

1. In the context of the entire passage, the word “anecdote” (first sentence) is best understood to mean
(A) an unreliable secondhand account
(B) an official government document
(C) a narrative in the style of a morality play
(D) an informal story involving personal details
(E) a timeless legend

2. The author portrays the critics mentioned in the first sentence as people who are likely to

This study source was downloaded by 100000844400947 from CourseHero.com on 11-17-2024 09:09:28 GMT -06:00

AP English Language and Composition Page 1 of 8

https://www.coursehero.com/file/117761647/APC-Answer-Key-UE-3-Part-1-MC-2021-22pdf/
 Scoring Guide

Unit 3 Exam

(A) identify with the public at large

(B) become the subjects of biography
(C) be profoundly philosophical
(D) keep diaries themselves
(E) prefer formal history

3. The author's strategy in the first two sentences is to

(A) flatter those who would criticize popular opinions
(B) incite readers to act in a manner inconsistent with their beliefs
(C) moralize about the injustices present in society
(D) build a logical argument and support it with facts from history
(E) promote an impression of sympathy with public preferences

4. Of the following contrasts, which pertains most directly to the theme of the passage?
(A) “sublime” (third sentence) and “diabolical” (third sentence) motives
(B) “antient” (fourth sentence) and “modern” (fourth sentence) histories
(C) “their appearance in public” (fifth sentence) and “their real characters” (fifth sentence)
(D) “great” (seventh sentence) and “insignificant” (seventh sentence) persons
(E) “virtue” (seventh sentence) and “vice” (seventh sentence)

5. In the context of the passage, the reason that few who read history “derive any advantage from their labors” (second
sentence) is that
(A) the common reader is unable to appreciate what he or she reads
(B) the historian’s preoccupation with facts makes for dull reading
(C) the focus of history on the distant past is too remote for most readers
(D) the historian tends to present historical figures unrealistically
(E) most historical accounts tend to moralize

6. The author suggests that the preference of many readers for “secret memoirs and private anecdotes” (fourth
sentence) is
(A) a reprehensible reaction in terms of its consequences
(B) a grudging response to heroic lives
(C) an unfortunate lapse in propriety
(D) a justifiable form of curiosity
(E) a natural result of a love of fiction

7. The purpose of the sentence “A plain . . . narrative” (middle of paragraph 2) is to

This study source was downloaded by 100000844400947 from CourseHero.com on 11-17-2024 09:09:28 GMT -06:00

Page 2 of 8 AP English Language and Composition

https://www.coursehero.com/file/117761647/APC-Answer-Key-UE-3-Part-1-MC-2021-22pdf/
 Scoring Guide

Unit 3 Exam

(A) propose a self-contradictory opinion for consideration

(B) elaborate on a specific anecdote
(C) shift the thematic focus considerably
(D) develop a statement made in the previous sentence
(E) create a stylistic effect through literary allusion

8. Taken as a whole, the passage is best described as

(A) an indignant response to a personal affront
(B) a documented presentation of facts
(C) a casual reaction to a problem
(D) an extended definition of a term
(E) an argument employing illustrative comparisons

This study source was downloaded by 100000844400947 from CourseHero.com on 11-17-2024 09:09:28 GMT -06:00

AP English Language and Composition Page 3 of 8

https://www.coursehero.com/file/117761647/APC-Answer-Key-UE-3-Part-1-MC-2021-22pdf/
 Scoring Guide

Unit 3 Exam

Read the following passage carefully before you choose your answers.

(This passage is taken from a book that examines Canadian book clubs.)

So pronounced is the book-club phenomenon that the format has spread to other venues and media, the most famous of
these being the ‘book club’ component of Oprah Winfrey’s television talk show. Staged like an actual book-group
meeting, with invited discussants and a cozy living-room setting, the Winfrey show can boost a featured title to instant
bestsellerdom and turn authors into stars. There are now ‘book clubs’ online, in bookstores, and functioning as consumer
focus groups for publishers.1 Colleges, bookstores, and resorts have recently begun to develop ‘readers’ retreats.’2
Newsletters, magazines, newspapers, and published guides advise readers how to find, establish, and manage successful
clubs.3

The widespread popularity of these reading groups has even occasioned a form of ‘book-club backlash.’ In a newspaper
opinion piece titled ‘Why I Won’t Join the Book Club,’ one contributor expressed alarm that reading was becoming
another scheduled activity to be slotted in ‘like the trip to the gym and the grocery store’; self-improving readers ‘pop’
books as they would vitamin tablets. But books ‘are not about schedules,’ author Stephanie Nolen argues; rather, they are
‘about submerging yourself . . . about getting lost, about getting consumed.’4 Considerable attention was garnered by
another article, detailing the darker side of some New York City reading groups. Headlined ‘Book-Club Lovers Wage a
War of Words’ when reprinted by the Globe and Mail, it could equally well have been titled ‘When Book Clubs Go Bad’:
‘No longer just friendly social gatherings with a vague continuing-education agenda, many of today’s book groups have
become literary pressure cookers, marked by aggressive intellectual oneupmanship and unabashed social skirmishing. In
living rooms and bookshops, clubs are frazzling under the stress, giving rise to a whole new profession: the book-group
therapist.’5 The clubs that Elaine Daspin describes here seem to be functioning as unconsciousness- rather than
consciousness-raising sessions, where competitive readers battle for interpretive supremacy. While book-club therapists
may well be confined to the rarefied worlds of the Upper East Side or Long Island, authors of recent book-club guides
reiterate the need to establish common purposes, regular routines, and guidelines for thorough preparation.

Clearly, the positives outweigh the pitfalls; book clubs are in demand because they offer individual readers an extra
dimension of appreciation and understanding. Yet despite the fact that shared discussion of literary texts is also the
foundation of literary study in school, college, and university classrooms, literary theorists and reader-response critics
have yet to devote much attention to such shared and synergistic study, instead construing readers as isolates or
abstractions. (Studies tend to focus on the emotional responses or cognitive activities of individual readers, or to infer
such reactions by examining the properties of a literary text.) But club and classroom participants know that there is
something different, something added, about sharing and discussing literature with other people.

1
For an example of an online ‘book club’—this one produced by a mass-market circulation women’s magazine—see Conversations
(Book Club) on Chateleine Connects at www.canoe.ca/chateleine.

2
For example, Vancouver bookseller Celia Duthie is developing such ‘retreats’ at a country inn. There are discussion periods and visits
by authors and, most importantly, time to read. See Keyes, ‘Out of the Woods.’

3
Some popular guides are Greenwood et al., The Go on Girl!; Jacobson, The Reading Group Handbook; and Saal, The New York
Public Library Guide to Reading Groups. A new entry to the field, developed with a particular eye to the needs of Canadian clubs, is
Heft and O’Brien, Build a Better Book Club.

This study source was downloaded by 100000844400947 from CourseHero.com on 11-17-2024 09:09:28 GMT -06:00

Page 4 of 8 AP English Language and Composition

https://www.coursehero.com/file/117761647/APC-Answer-Key-UE-3-Part-1-MC-2021-22pdf/
 Scoring Guide

Unit 3 Exam

4
Nolen, ‘Why I Won’t Join the Book Club’

5
Daspin, ‘Book-Club Lovers Wage a War of Words.’ The piece originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal.

9. The “recent book-club guides” (end of paragraph 2) tend to emphasize

(A) how book clubs need to be structured and regular in order to succeed
(B) how difficult it is to start a book club in New York
(C) how often even the best book clubs fail
(D) the variety of reasons that people have for starting book clubs
(E) the challenges of selecting books for discussion

10. The first paragraph serves to

(A) explain why the author enjoys one way of reading
(B) describe the extension of a particular activity into nontraditional areas
(C) make generalizations that will be developed later
(D) explore ways in which people can structure free time
(E) detail the power of media and mass marketing to censor

11. The function of the second sentence of paragraph 3 (“Yet despite . . . abstractions”) is to
(A) argue for the value of a particular literary theory
(B) explain how important it is not to make abstract judgments
(C) point out a discrepancy between teaching practices and literary theory
(D) highlight the demand for a way to measure emotional responses to texts
(E) explore the author’s views about reading in isolation

12. The last paragraph marks a shift from

(A) popular to academic contexts

(B) supported to unsound generalizations
(C) impersonal to personal examples
(D) subtle irony to explicit sarcasm
(E) neutral to negative characterization of book clubs

13. The organization of the passage can best be described as

This study source was downloaded by 100000844400947 from CourseHero.com on 11-17-2024 09:09:28 GMT -06:00

AP English Language and Composition Page 5 of 8

https://www.coursehero.com/file/117761647/APC-Answer-Key-UE-3-Part-1-MC-2021-22pdf/
 Scoring Guide

Unit 3 Exam

(A) personal narrative followed by analysis

(B) empirical data followed by conjecture
(C) nonjudgmental explanation of a current phenomenon followed by a question
(D) descriptive analysis followed by a final judgment
(E) condemnation of a practice followed by partial acceptance

(1) Most people believe that the important decisions they make—from what car they buy to whom they vote for—are
rational ones based on facts and analysis. (2) However, because of the phenomenon known as confirmation bias, logical
decision making is rarely so simple. (3) Confirmation bias, which describes the human tendency to interpret new
information in a way that supports our preexisting beliefs, makes people tend to accept information that confirms what
they already believe and reject information that undermines those beliefs.

(4) Research has repeatedly demonstrated just how prevalent this phenomenon is in the world. (5) Confirmation bias has
been found to affect the decisions of doctors, judges, and jurors. (6) It has even been shown to affect memory. (7) In a
classic experiment, students who watched their schools compete in a football game subsequently remembered the
adversary’s team performing worse than their own: confirmation bias caused the students, who already believed in their
own school’s superiority, to interpret what they had seen as support for their preexisting beliefs. (8) Confirmation bias has
also been shown to affect completely inconsequential decisions, as in experiments involving what direction dots are
moving in or the average size of a number series. (9) Here, too, subjects’ interpretations were found to be affected by
decisions they had already made about what they were being asked to evaluate.

(10) Confirmation bias does admittedly have its uses: it can, for example, increase the efficiency with which we process
information and also protect us against information that might be damaging to our self-esteem. (11) But when the stakes
are high, the risks of making biased decisions are simply too great. (12) An example of a high-stakes situation would be
when jurors are deliberating a defendant’s fate. (13) Fortunately, there are techniques, like those used by Warren Buffett
(born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1930) when he makes his financial decisions, that can minimize the risks of confirmation
bias. (14) The first is to be aware that our decisions may be affected by our tendency toward confirmation bias. (15) The
second is to test our beliefs by seeking out points of view that differ from our own.

14. The writer is considering adding the following sentence to the passage after sentence 3.

Though the phenomenon has been observed throughout history by philosophers, historians, and novelists, the term
“confirmation bias” itself wasn’t invented until the 1960s by British psychologist Peter Wason.

Should the writer add this sentence after sentence 3 ?

Yes, because it provides contextualizing information that is necessary for the audience to understand the
(A)
writer’s argument.
Yes, because it contains an important insight into the exigence that prompted the writer to write the
(B)
passage.
Yes, because it offers an effective appeal to the audience’s sense of logic by detailing the long history of
(C)
confirmation bias.
No, because it fails to give enough details about Peter Wason’s credentials to establish his credibility
(D)
with the audience.
No, because it gives evidence that is not relevant to the passage’s overall line of reasoning and therefore
(E)
does not strengthen the validity of the writer’s argument.

This study source was downloaded by 100000844400947 from CourseHero.com on 11-17-2024 09:09:28 GMT -06:00

Page 6 of 8 AP English Language and Composition

https://www.coursehero.com/file/117761647/APC-Answer-Key-UE-3-Part-1-MC-2021-22pdf/
 Scoring Guide

Unit 3 Exam

15. In sentence 13 (reproduced below), the writer wants to include a piece of relevant evidence that will help convince
the reader to accept the techniques used by Warren Buffet as credible.

Fortunately, there are techniques, like those used by Warren Buffett (born in Omaha, Nebraska, in1930) when he
makes his financial decisions that can minimize the risks of confirmation bias.

Which of the following versions of the underlined portion of sentence 13 best accomplishes this goal?
(A) (as it is now)
(B) whose ability to tell a story is legendary
(C) one of the most successful investors in history
(D) a noted philanthropist
(E) whose father was a member of the United States Congress

16. Which of the following sentences in the passage can best be described as the writer’s thesis statement?
(A) Sentence 1
(B) Sentence 5
(C) Sentence 8
(D) Sentence 11
(E) Sentence 15

(1) Most people believe that the important decisions they make—from what car they buy to whom they vote for—are
rational ones based on facts and analysis. (2) However, because of the phenomenon known as confirmation bias, logical
decision making is rarely so simple. (3) Confirmation bias, which describes the human tendency to interpret new
information in a way that supports our preexisting beliefs, makes people tend to accept information that confirms what
they already believe and reject information that undermines those beliefs.

(4) Research has repeatedly demonstrated just how prevalent this phenomenon is in the world. (5) Confirmation bias has
been found to affect the decisions of doctors, judges, and jurors. (6) It has even been shown to affect memory. (7) In a
classic experiment, students who watched their schools compete in a football game subsequently remembered the
adversary’s team performing worse than their own: confirmation bias caused the students, who already believed in their
own school’s superiority, to interpret what they had seen as support for their preexisting beliefs. (8) Confirmation bias has
also been shown to affect completely inconsequential decisions, as in experiments involving what direction dots are
moving in or the average size of a number series. (9) Here, too, subjects’ interpretations were found to be affected by
decisions they had already made about what they were being asked to evaluate.

(10) Confirmation bias does admittedly have its uses: it can, for example, increase the efficiency with which we process
information and also protect us against information that might be damaging to our self-esteem. (11) But when the stakes
are high, the risks of making biased decisions are simply too great. (12) An example of a high-stakes situation would be
when jurors are deliberating a defendant’s fate. (13) Fortunately, there are techniques, like those used by Warren Buffett
(born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1930) when he makes his financial decisions, that can minimize the risks of confirmation
bias. (14) The first is to be aware that our decisions may be affected by our tendency toward confirmation bias. (15) The
second is to test our beliefs by seeking out points of view that differ from our own.

This study source was downloaded by 100000844400947 from CourseHero.com on 11-17-2024 09:09:28 GMT -06:00

AP English Language and Composition Page 7 of 8

https://www.coursehero.com/file/117761647/APC-Answer-Key-UE-3-Part-1-MC-2021-22pdf/
 Scoring Guide

Unit 3 Exam

17. The writer is considering adding the sentence below immediately after sentence 1 in order to further develop the
argument in the first paragraph.

When I decided where to go to college, for example, I thought I had considered every factor and made the best
possible choice.

Should the writer add this sentence after sentence 1 ?

(A) Yes, because it describes a personal experience that helps illustrate the point made in sentence.
Yes, because it makes the audience feel closer to the writer by revealing information about the writer’s
(B)
past.
Yes, because it demonstrates the writer’s authority by showing how the writer overcame confirmation
(C)
bias.
No, because it makes the writer seem biased because it uses personal experience as support for an
(D)
argument.
(E) No, because it does not clarify when this experience occurred and therefore might be irrelevant.

18. In sentence 3 (reproduced below), the writer is considering deleting the underlined portion, adjusting the
punctuation as necessary.

Confirmation bias, which describes the human tendency to interpret new information in a way that supports our
preexisting beliefs, makes people tend to accept information that confirms what they already believe and reject
information that undermines those beliefs.

Should the writer keep or delete the underlined text?

Keep it, because it completes the writer’s comparison between the way people think they make decisions
(A)
and the way they actually make decisions.
Keep it, because it develops the writer’s ideas by providing a definition of confirmation bias, which is
(B)
the central concept of the passage.
Keep it, because it advances a narrative in the passage about how the writer came to understand the
(C)
importance of confirmation bias.
Delete it, because it fails to add vivid details about or examples of confirmation bias, making the writing
(D)
less effective.
Delete it, because it introduces a cause of bias in the way people accept or reject ideas whose effects are
(E)
not elaborated on later in the passage.

This study source was downloaded by 100000844400947 from CourseHero.com on 11-17-2024 09:09:28 GMT -06:00

Page 8 of 8 AP English Language and Composition

https://www.coursehero.com/file/117761647/APC-Answer-Key-UE-3-Part-1-MC-2021-22pdf/
Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)