AP English Language Free Response Practice Tests

Question 1 — Synthesis Essay

Many American schools now restrict students’ use of cell phones during the school day. Some states and districts require students to lock their phones in pouches or cabinets from the first bell to the last, while others allow phones between classes or at lunch but not during instruction. Supporters of strict limits argue that they improve learning and school social life; critics raise concerns about safety, communication with families, and whether students ever learn to manage their devices on their own.

Carefully read the following six sources, including the introductory information for each source. Write an essay that synthesizes material from at least three of the sources and develops your position on whether schools should ban student phones for the entire school day.

• Respond to the prompt with a thesis that presents a defensible position.
• Select and use evidence from at least three of the provided sources to support your line of reasoning. Indicate clearly the sources used through direct quotation, paraphrase, or summary. Sources may be cited as Source A, Source B, etc., or by using the description in parentheses.
• Explain how the evidence supports your line of reasoning.
• Use appropriate grammar and punctuation in communicating your argument.

Source A (Ashford article)
Ashford, Dana. “The Quiet Hallway: What Happened When Our School Put the Phones Away.” Lakeshore Educator, 9 Sept. 2025.

The following is excerpted from an article published in a monthly magazine for teachers and school administrators in the Great Lakes region. The author is a high school English teacher. (The author and publication are fictional, created for this 7ESL practice test.)

For eleven years I taught ninth-grade English in a building where the loudest sound between classes was silence—and not the good kind. Students walked the hallways with their heads bowed over glowing screens, thumbs moving, earbuds in. When the bell rang, I spent the first five minutes of every period asking, then pleading, then bargaining for their attention. I lost more of those negotiations than I won.

Last fall our district adopted what it called a “bell-to-bell” policy. Every student now locks his or her phone in a magnetic pouch at the front door and unlocks it at dismissal. I expected a revolt. What I got instead, after about three weeks of grumbling, was noise: the sound of students talking to one another in the cafeteria, arguing about a basketball game, laughing at a joke that did not come from a video.

The change in my classroom was just as striking. Discussions lasted longer. Students who used to sneak glances at their laps now sneak glances at the clock, which is at least a sign that they are present. By the end of the first semester, the number of discipline referrals for phone-related conflicts—fights that started over a posted photo, cheating by text during quizzes—had fallen from 61 the previous fall to 14.

Critics call bans like ours old-fashioned, even authoritarian. I understand the objection, but I think it misreads the problem. A smartphone is not a pencil or a calculator; it is a device engineered by teams of very smart adults to hold the attention of anyone who picks it up. Asking a fifteen-year-old to ignore it for seven hours through willpower alone is like asking him to study in a room with a television playing his favorite show. Many adults cannot manage it. Why should we expect it of children?

A ban does not solve everything. We still have students who are anxious, distracted, or bored, and the pouches do nothing for a teenager who scrolls until two in the morning. But the school day is one of the few places left where we can guarantee young people several hours of undivided time with books, with ideas, and with each other. That guarantee is worth a little grumbling.

Source B (Midvale survey)
Midvale Center for Family and School Research. “Phones and the School Day: A National Survey of Teachers, Parents, and Students.” Midvale Center, 2025.

The following graph is adapted from a report by a nonprofit research organization that surveyed 1,200 high school teachers, 1,500 parents of high school students, and 1,800 high school students in the United States. Each group was asked which phone policy it would prefer for a local public high school. (The organization is fictional, created for this 7ESL practice test.)

Source C (Denholm column)
Denholm, Marcus. “Before You Lock Up the Phones, Talk to the Parents.” Riverbend Courier, 22 Jan. 2025.

The following is excerpted from an opinion column published in a daily newspaper in a mid-sized American city. The author is the parent of two high school students and a volunteer emergency medical technician. (The author and publication are fictional, created for this 7ESL practice test.)

My daughter has type 1 diabetes. The sensor on her arm sends her blood-sugar readings to an app on her phone every five minutes, and the app sends an alert to me and to the school nurse when her numbers drop. Under the “phone-free day” policy our school board is now considering, that phone would spend seven hours sealed in a pouch in her backpack. The board assures me that exceptions will be made for “documented medical needs.” I believe them. I also know how exceptions work in a building of 1,400 teenagers: the child with the exception becomes the child everyone watches.

I am not arguing that phones belong on desks during chemistry. They don’t. Teachers have every right to demand attention, and most parents I know support rules that keep devices out of sight during class. What worries me is the leap from “not in class” to “not at all,” as though the only choice were between chaos and a vault.

Parents of my generation remember the pay phone by the school office. Our children live in a different world, and so, unfortunately, do we. Many families now think first of the worst day—a lockdown, a fire, a bus that breaks down on a county road in January. Safety experts rightly caution that during an emergency, students should follow instructions from adults rather than fumble with their phones, and I take that seriously. But I have answered enough emergency calls to know that information matters, and that a parent who cannot reach a child for hours will fill the silence with fear.

There are also ordinary reasons. Many high school students work after school, care for younger siblings, or depend on rides that change at the last minute. Their lives do not stop at the classroom door, and those lives are coordinated by text.

A sensible policy would treat teenagers as people learning to manage a powerful tool, not as suspects. Keep phones silent and out of sight during class. Let students check them at lunch. Punish misuse firmly. That approach asks more of students than a locked pouch does—and preparing them for adult life is, after all, the point of school.

Source D (Everly policy brief)
Everly, Ruth. “What the Evidence Can and Cannot Tell Us About School Phone Bans.” Policy Brief no. 14, Northgate Institute for Learning Policy, Mar. 2025.

The following is excerpted from a policy brief published by an independent education research institute. The author is an education researcher who studies how adolescents use technology. (The author and publication are fictional, created for this 7ESL practice test.)

Few school policies have spread as quickly, or with as much public enthusiasm, as restrictions on student phones. Before districts commit to a particular model, however, it is worth being honest about what the research actually shows.

The strongest findings concern learning. In several studies of schools that introduced strict bans, test scores rose modestly in the following years, and the gains were largest among students who had previously been lowest-achieving. One plausible explanation is that phones are most distracting for the students who are already struggling to stay engaged; removing the distraction helps them most. These effects are real but small, roughly equivalent to a few additional days of instruction per year.

The findings on well-being are less clear. Teachers and principals consistently report calmer hallways and fewer conflicts, and some surveys show that students in phone-free schools feel less pressure from social media during the day. Yet studies that follow students over time have not found consistent improvements in anxiety or depression. This should not surprise us. Most adolescent phone use happens outside school hours, beyond the reach of any school policy.

Finally, the details matter more than the headline. A ban that exists on paper but is enforced unevenly—strictly in one teacher’s room, loosely in another’s—may produce more conflict than no ban at all, because students experience it as arbitrary. Schools that saw the best results tended to share three features: a clear rule applied to everyone, a simple storage system, and early communication with families about how to reach students in an emergency.

None of this means that phone restrictions are a mistake. It means that they are a tool rather than a cure. A district that locks away phones and considers its work finished may be disappointed. A district that pairs clear limits with teaching—how attention works, how apps are designed, how to set one’s own boundaries—is more likely to see lasting change, both in the classroom and after the final bell.

Source E (Gilchrist essay)
Gilchrist, Nora. “I Hated the Pouch. Then I Didn’t. Then I Did Again.” Youth Forum Quarterly, Spring 2025.

The following is excerpted from a personal essay published in a national magazine that features writing by high school students. The author was a senior at a public high school that adopted a phone-pouch policy during her junior year. (The author and publication are fictional, created for this 7ESL practice test.)

On the first day of the pouch policy, a boy in my history class tried to open his with a pair of scissors. By October he had stopped trying. By November, so had I.

I want to be honest about what changed, because the adults who talk about phone bans usually describe us either as addicts who needed rescuing or as victims of an unfair rule. Neither is quite right. The first month was miserable. I felt a phantom buzz in my pocket all day. Then something shifted. At lunch, I started sitting with people I had known since elementary school but hadn’t really talked to in years. I read an entire novel during study hall, which I had not done since middle school. I was, I admit, happier.

But the pouch also taught me something the school did not intend. It taught me that the adults did not trust us to make decisions, and that when they did not trust us, they did not bother to teach us. We never had a single lesson about why apps are so hard to put down or how to set limits for ourselves. The pouch did the work, so we never had to. When I unlocked it at 3:05, I scrolled harder than ever, as if to make up for lost time.

Next fall I will live in a college dorm, and no one will lock my phone in a pouch. I will have to decide, every hour, what my attention is worth. I wonder whether my school prepared me for that moment or simply postponed it.

If I could rewrite the policy, I would keep the quiet lunches. I would also give seniors a chance to earn their phones back during free periods, with real consequences if they misuse them. Freedom you never practice is freedom you never learn.

Source F (Holloway photo)
Holloway, Jess. Photograph. Harbor Valley Gazette, 2 Oct. 2024.

The following photograph accompanied a newspaper story about a suburban public high school that requires students to store their phones in locked wall cabinets from the first bell to the last. (The photographer and newspaper are fictional; the image was created for this 7ESL practice test.)

Image: Documentary-style color photograph of a high school hallway. A large gray metal cabinet of small numbered, lockable compartments, many with their doors standing open, is mounted on the wall beside a classroom door. A short line of teenagers with backpacks waits to use it: one student slides a phone into a compartment, the student behind her takes a last look at her own screen, and two boys behind them wait their turn, smiling and talking. A teacher wearing a lanyard and holding a clipboard and a ring of keys stands beside the cabinet, watching. Farther down the hallway, other students with backpacks walk past a bulletin board.

Question 2 — Rhetorical Analysis Essay

On April 10, 1899, Theodore Roosevelt, then the governor of New York, delivered the following speech to the Hamilton Club, a Republican men’s club in Chicago whose members were largely business and professional men. Roosevelt spoke less than a year after the United States’ victory in the Spanish-American War of 1898, at a time when Americans were debating what role their nation should play in the world. The passage below is an excerpt; portions of the speech, including a long section on foreign policy, have been omitted.

Read the passage carefully. Write an essay that analyzes the rhetorical choices Roosevelt makes to convey his message that a life of effort and struggle is more worthy than a life of ease.

• Respond to the prompt with a thesis that analyzes the writer’s rhetorical choices.
• Select and use evidence to support your line of reasoning.
• Explain how the evidence supports your line of reasoning.
• Demonstrate an understanding of the rhetorical situation.
• Use appropriate grammar and punctuation in communicating your argument.

from “The Strenuous Life”

¹ In speaking to you, men of the greatest city of the West, men of the State which gave to the country Lincoln and Grant, men who pre-eminently and distinctly embody all that is most American in the American character, I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.

² A life of slothful ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual. I ask only that what every self-respecting American demands from himself and from his sons shall be demanded of the American nation as a whole. Who among you would teach your boys that ease, that peace, is to be the first consideration in their eyes—to be the ultimate goal after which they strive? … You men of Chicago have made this city great, you men of Illinois have done your share, and more than your share, in making America great, because you neither preach nor practice such a doctrine. You work yourselves, and you bring up your sons to work. … We do not admire the man of timid peace. We admire the man who embodies victorious effort; the man who never wrongs his neighbor, who is prompt to help a friend, but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life. It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort. …

³ In the last analysis a healthy state can exist only when the men and women who make it up lead clean, vigorous, healthy lives; when the children are so trained that they shall endeavor, not to shirk difficulties, but to overcome them; not to seek ease, but to know how to wrest triumph from toil and risk. …

⁴ As it is with the individual, so it is with the nation. It is a base untruth to say that happy is the nation that has no history. Thrice happy is the nation that has a glorious history. Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. If, in 1861, the men who loved the Union had believed that peace was the end of all things, and war and strife the worst of all things, and had acted up to their belief, we would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, we would have saved hundreds of millions of dollars. … We could have avoided all this suffering simply by shrinking from strife. And if we had thus avoided it, we would have shown that we were weaklings, and that we were unfit to stand among the great nations of the earth. …

⁵ We of this generation do not have to face a task such as that our fathers faced, but we have our tasks, and woe to us if we fail to perform them! …

⁶ I preach to you, then, my countrymen, that our country calls not for the life of ease but for the life of strenuous endeavor. The twentieth century looms before us big with the fate of many nations. If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world. Let us therefore boldly face the life of strife, resolute to do our duty well and manfully; resolute to uphold righteousness by deed and by word; resolute to be both honest and brave, to serve high ideals, yet to use practical methods. Above all, let us shrink from no strife, moral or physical, within or without the nation, provided we are certain that the strife is justified, for it is only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness.

Question 3 — Argument Essay

In Walden (1854), the American writer Henry David Thoreau describes the two years he spent living in a small cabin he built near Walden Pond, outside Concord, Massachusetts. In the chapter “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For,” he writes:

“Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand …”

Thoreau’s call for simplicity has been quoted for more than 150 years, often by people who believe that modern life has become too complicated.

Write an essay that argues your position on the value of simplicity.

• Respond to the prompt with a thesis that presents a defensible position.
• Provide evidence to support your line of reasoning.
• Explain how the evidence supports your line of reasoning.
• Use appropriate grammar and punctuation in communicating your argument.

Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand … — Henry David Thoreau