MsEffie’s List of Essay Prompts for Advanced Placement - English Language Exams - Advanced Placement® English Language and Composition Exam prompts

Sep 20, 2026

Uploaded by Miles

A curated set of Advanced Placement English Language exam writing prompts, presented as separate classroom pages, covering years from 1982 through 2026. The material outlines essay instructions for Question 1 and Question 2, including a synthesis-policy note and an advisory trademark disclaimer. The prompts use provided reading passages and a gubernatorial veto text, asking students to summarize author claims or analyze the argument’s effectiveness through organization, diction, tone, and detail.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryExam

FormatPDF

Pages158

Reading Time6 h 38 min

AccessFree to download

MsEffie’s List of Essay Prompts

Disclaimer and usage notes

1982 Question 1 prompt

1982 Question 2 prompt

MsEffie’s List of Essay Prompts for Advanced Placement® English Language Exams, 1982-2026* The following prompts are printed on separate pages for better use in the classroom. Whenever possible, all three prompts are included. Beginning in 2007, College Board introduced the Synthesis Prompt for Question 1. Those are available elsewhere. None of the prompts are original to me, but are Advanced Placement® English Language and Composition Exam prompts. This is my best effort to comply with College Board’s use requirements. *Advanced Placement® is a trademark registered by the College Board, which is not affiliated with, and does not endorse, this website. 1982 Question 1 It has been said that “where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.”The writer of the passage below takes a different stand on the subject of human happiness. Read the passage carefully. Then, in a well-organized essay, summarize the reasons he gives for his opinion and explain why you do or do not agree with his opinion. Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure.… Now it is an unquestionable fact that those who are equally acquainted with, and equally capable of appreciating and enjoying, both, do give a most marked preference to the manner of existence which employs their higher faculties. Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals, for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast's pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs. They would not resign what they possess more than he for the most complete satisfaction of all the desires which they have in common with him. If they ever fancy they would, it is only in cases of unhappiness so extreme, that to escape from it they would exchange their lot for almost any other, however undesirable in their own eyes. A being of higher faculties requires more to make him happy, is capable probably of more acute suffering, and certainly accessible to it at more points, than one of an inferior type; but in spite of these liabilities, he can never really wish to sink into what he feels to be a lower grade of existence.… Whoever supposes that this preference takes place at a sacrifice of happiness-that the superior being, in anything like equal circumstances, is not happier than the inferiorconfounds the two very different ideas, of happiness, and content. It is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low, has the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed being will always feel that any happiness which he can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect. But he can learn to bear its imperfections, if they are at all bearable; and they will not make him envy the being whois indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but only because he feels not at all the good which those imperfections qualify. It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides. 1982 Question 2 Read carefully the following statement of veto. In a well-organized essay, analyze the strategies or devices (organization, diction, tone, use of detail) that make Governor Stevenson’s argument effective for his audience. Substantiate your observations with specific examples from the text. To the Honorable, the Members of the Senate of the Sixth-sixth General Assembly: I herewith return, with

FAQs

Why is the Senate Bill veto rejected in the Question 2 text?

The veto cites practical enforcement concerns and the belief that the policy should not treat a neighbor’s cat as a public nuisance, along with arguments about cat roaming, owners’ dilemmas, and cats’ usefulness against rodents.

Sep 20, 2026

Uploaded by Miles