AP English Language & Composition

AP English Language & Composition practice that grades your essays

Write a real AP Lang essay and get scored feedback against the rubric in seconds, not next week. Then drill every skill Section I tests across 1,000+ questions covering all 9 units of the course.

7 days of full access, no card required. After that, keep practicing on the free multiple choice plan or continue from $89/year.

Question 2 · Rhetorical analysis feedback
Your answer

The author opens with a series of short declarative sentences, which creates urgency and pushes the reader toward the call to action in the final paragraph…

Rubric breakdown 4 / 6 points
Thesis: a defensible claim about the writer’s rhetorical choices
Evidence: specific references to the text support the claim
Commentary: names the choice but does not explain what it does to this audience. Say why it moves them.

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How it works

This is what Magna tells you about your answer

Below is a real essay answer going through Magna. Watch what comes back: not just a score, but which rubric points the answer earned, which it missed, and what the missing ones needed. That is the difference between practicing and guessing.

Feedback arrives in seconds. You rewrite, resubmit, and see whether the fix earned the point.

The question bank

Everything in AP English Language & Composition, covered

9
units matched to the College Board CED
36
skill focuses spanning reading and writing questions
1,000+
questions across multiple choice and essay
Seconds
to get feedback on a written answer

Essay, actually graded

Write a long or short essay and get a point-by-point breakdown against a rubric aligned with official AP scoring criteria. You see which points you earned, which you missed, and what a full-credit answer includes.

Multiple choice that teaches reasoning

Every question comes with a worked explanation, not just a letter. You learn why the wrong answers are wrong, which is where most AP Lang points are lost, and Ask Magna is there if the explanation still leaves a gap.

Practice built around your gaps

Magna tracks what you get right and stops feeding you those. Your next set weights toward the topics you keep missing.

You choose the shape of the practice

Pick the unit, the question type, the difficulty, the length. Build a 10-question warm-up or a full timed set.

Why essays

Three essays, 55% of your score

AP Lang is a writing exam wearing a reading exam’s clothes. More than half your score comes from three essays drafted under time pressure. Writing them is easy. Finding out whether your argument would have earned the point is the hard part, because meaningful feedback on an essay takes teacher time that no one has enough of.

Section II gives you two hours and fifteen minutes, including a fifteen-minute reading period, for the synthesis, rhetorical analysis, and argument essays, each scored on thesis, evidence and commentary, and sophistication. Essays that name a device without explaining its effect, or drop in sources without making them argue, lose points and usually feel right anyway. Magna closes that loop. You write, you get scored, you see the gap, you rewrite.

Question 1
Synthesis
Whether your sources are doing argumentative work or just sitting there as decoration.
Question 2
Rhetorical analysis
Whether your commentary explains the effect of a choice, or only names the device.
Question 3
Argument
Whether your thesis is defensible and whether your reasoning holds from one paragraph to the next.

All three essay types are live on Magna, each scored against a rubric aligned with official AP scoring criteria for thesis, evidence and commentary, and sophistication.

Skill Builder and Ask Magna

Learn how to solve the problem, not just this problem

Most question banks answer a wrong answer the same way: here is the solution, here is why. It makes sense, you move on, and the next hard question leaves you exactly as stuck. Reading a solution is not the same as being able to produce one.

AP exams reward that less than most courses, because they are built from graphs, experiments and scenarios you have never seen. Memorizing worked examples does not help. Having a method does.

Skill Builder
The question The passage is an op-ed urging a city council to fund a public library expansion. Analyze the rhetorical choices the writer makes to persuade the council.
Who is the audience, and what do they care about? · MCQ
Find the choice: what does the writer do in paragraph two? · MCQ
What effect does that choice have on this audience? · Short
Why that choice, for this audience, in this situation? · Short
Now answer the original

The same moves work on any rhetorical analysis prompt, whatever the passage.

Skill Builder takes a hard question apart in front of you, asking each underlying skill as a smaller question before handing the original back. You end up with the sequence rather than the answer: what to identify first, what that tells you, what comes next. Because it follows skills rather than content, the same sequence works on the next unfamiliar question.

Ask Magna
My commentary got no credit but I quoted the text. Why?
You did quote it. Before we look at the score, what does your quote show the writer doing, and what does that do to the reader? Say it in one sentence.
The short sentences speed the reader up, so the problem feels urgent…
That sentence is commentary. Your paragraph quoted the device but never said that. Add it and the point is yours.

Your AI tutor, on every question. Got it wrong and still cannot see why? Ask. Ask Magna works through the reasoning with you rather than handing over the answer, so you leave understanding the concept, not just the letter. It is there on multiple choice, on essay feedback, and on anything you want explained again.

Getting started

Three steps, no setup

Pick your target

Choose a unit, a topic, or the whole course. Choose MCQ, essay, or a mix.

Answer like it’s exam day

Timed or untimed. Type your essay the way you would write it.

Get scored and go again

Rubric-aligned feedback in seconds. Open Skill Builder on anything that stumped you, ask Magna if it is still unclear, and your next set weights toward what you missed.

The evidence

More students scored 4s and 5s after a class started using Magna

In a year-over-year AP Government study at the same school with the same teacher, students using Magna had stronger outcomes after accounting for Unit 1 baseline performance. Both cohorts sat the same Unit 1 assessment before Magna was introduced, so the comparison is not just that the second class was stronger.

3.25x
higher odds of scoring a 5
2.25x
higher odds of scoring a 4 or higher
12% → 35%
share of the cohort scoring a 5
40% → 67%
share of the cohort scoring 4 or higher

Quasi-experimental study, not a randomized trial. AP US Government at a single high school, 2024 cohort (no Magna) vs. 2025 cohort (with Magna), same teacher, logistic regression controlling for Unit 1 baseline, p<0.05. Results in other AP courses, including AP English Language & Composition, may differ.

75.8%
of surveyed students said they prefer Magna to AP Classroom for essay practice
4+ hrs
saved on a full class set of written responses, graded in the first pass
Used by students now attending
Stanford UC Berkeley Carnegie Mellon Georgia Tech UCLA UIUC UW-Madison
For teachers and departments

Assign the written responses you have been avoiding

You know written practice moves scores, and you know what it costs: a class set of 30 is an evening, and by the time they come back the unit has moved on. Magna grades them against the rubric the moment a student submits. You keep the judgment and override anything you disagree with. What you get back is the evening, plus a view of which rubric points the whole class is missing.

Get your evenings back

Magna handles the first pass on every written response, saving 2 to 4 minutes per essay. On a full class set, that is 4+ hours back per assignment.

See the class, not just the scores

Per-topic and per-rubric-point breakdowns show you where the class is losing points, before the unit test tells you.

Aligned to the CED, not to us

Questions map to the College Board units, topics, and skills, so what you assign matches what you teach.

The whiteboard conversation, for thirty students at once

When a student is stuck, you break the problem down with them: what do we know, what does that tell us, what comes next. Skill Builder runs that same sequence for every student who needs it, on any question, without you at the board.

Course coverage

All 9 units, every skill the exam tests

College Board publishes skill categories rather than official unit titles for AP Lang, so the unit names below describe each unit’s skill focus. Expand a unit to see the skills it develops; every skill category has its own question sets.

Reading the rhetorical situation4 topics
Speaker, audience, purpose, and contextHow occasion and exigence shape a textNoticing the choices behind a piece of writingWriting for a stated audience
Claims and evidence4 topics
Finding the thesis and the claims beneath itKinds of evidence and what each can carryWriting a defensible claimSelecting evidence that actually supports it
Reasoning and organization4 topics
Tracing a line of reasoning through a textMethods of development: comparison, causation, definition, narrationOrganizing paragraphs so the argument accumulatesCommentary that links evidence to claim
Style4 topics
Word choice, syntax, and tone as argumentative toolsHow style signals a relationship to subject and audienceMaking sentence-level choices deliberatelyRevising for precision and effect
The rhetorical situation, revisited4 topics
Comparing how different writers meet the same occasionShifts in tone and perspective across a textEntering a conversation already in progressPositioning an argument for a skeptical reader
Claims, evidence, and sources4 topics
Evaluating the credibility and relevance of sourcesQualified claims: conceding and rebuttingSynthesizing multiple sources into one argumentPutting sources in conversation with each other
Sustaining an argument4 topics
Spotting gaps and leaps in a line of reasoningTransitions that carry logic, not just flowSustaining an argument across a full essayAnticipating and answering objections
Style and sophistication4 topics
Irony, understatement, and other calculated risksHow syntax controls emphasis and paceA voice that earns the sophistication pointPrecision under time pressure
Putting the exam together4 topics
Full multiple choice sets: reading and writing questionsTimed synthesis, rhetorical analysis, and argument essaysPacing the 45-question hourTurning feedback into a final review plan
Comparison

How Magna compares

Magna
Most AP question banks
AP Classroom
Multiple choice with explanations
Yes
Yes
Limited
Essay practice
Yes
Yes
Yes
Scored point by point against the rubric
Yes
Varies, often self-scored
Teacher grades by hand
Tells you which rubric point you missed
Yes
No
Teacher review
Rewrite and resubmit against the same rubric
Yes
No
No
Breaks a hard question into guided sub-problems
Yes
No
No
AI tutor on any question
Yes
Varies
No
Class-level view of missed rubric points
Yes
Varies
Teacher reports
FAQ

Questions, answered

How does the essay grading work?

You write your answer, and Magna scores it point by point against a rubric built for that specific prompt and aligned with official AP scoring criteria. You see which rubric points you earned, which you missed, and what a full-credit response contains. Rubrics are developed and reviewed by subject-matter experts and practicing AP teachers.

Can Magna grade all three AP Lang essays?

Yes. Synthesis, rhetorical analysis, and argument essays are all live. Each is scored point by point against a rubric aligned with official AP scoring criteria for thesis, evidence and commentary, and sophistication, and you can rewrite and resubmit against the same rubric.

What is the Section I format?

Section I is 45 multiple choice questions in 1 hour, worth 45% of your exam score: five sets with 23 to 25 reading questions on nonfiction passages and 20 to 22 writing questions that ask you to revise draft passages. Magna covers both kinds, by skill category or as a full timed section.

Where do the passages come from?

Practice passages are nonfiction of the kind the exam uses: essays, speeches, journalism, and public arguments. Question sets are written to the skill categories in the College Board Course and Exam Description.

Is AP English Literature available too?

Yes. AP English Literature is live on Magna as its own full course, covering poetry, prose fiction, and drama, with all three of its essays graded. Find it under Courses in the site menu.

What is Skill Builder?

Skill Builder breaks a hard question into the sub-problems it is really made of. It identifies the skills the question requires, asks you each one separately as a smaller multiple choice or short-answer question, then asks you to connect the pieces and solve the original. Instead of reading someone else’s solution, you build your own, and you come away with a method that works on the next unfamiliar question rather than just the answer to this one.

What is Ask Magna?

Ask Magna is an AI tutor built into the platform. On any question, you can ask why an answer is right, why yours was wrong, or for a concept to be explained another way. It works through the reasoning with you rather than handing you the answer.

Can my teacher assign this?

Yes. Teachers can assign question sets and see class-level results by topic and by rubric point. If your school does not use Magna yet, ask them to book a demo, or set yourself up with an individual account.

Does Magna replace AP Classroom?

Most teachers use both. AP Classroom provides official course resources and practice. Magna complements it with immediate, point-by-point feedback on written responses, plus added volume. In a survey of 66 AP students at one California high school, 75.8% said they prefer Magna to AP Classroom for essay practice.

How much does Magna cost?

Start with a 7-day free trial that unlocks everything, including essay grading, Skill Builder, and Ask Magna. After the trial, paid plans start at $89 per year. If you would rather not pay, you keep free access to the full multiple choice bank. Schools and districts have separate plans with teacher tools and class reporting.

What happens when my free trial ends?

Nothing you have done disappears. You move to the free plan, which keeps the complete multiple choice question bank and worked explanations across every topic. Essay grading, Skill Builder, Ask Magna, and detailed insights resume when you upgrade.

Get started

Start with one essay answer

Write one essay answer and see what the rubric actually says about it. That is usually enough to know whether this is worth your time.

AP® is a registered trademark of the College Board, which was not involved in the production of and does not endorse this product.