Latin Tutorial: 4. Format of Multiple-Choice Section

The multiple-choice section is the first section of the AP Latin Exam. It is one hour long and represents 50 percent of the student's overall AP Exam score. It consists of 50 questions to be answered in 60 minutes. Questions are based on four unadapted Latin passages that may be described as follows:

  • two syllabus-based passages (excerpts from the required syllabus readings for poetry from Vergil's Aeneid and for prose from Caesar's Gallic War.)
  • two sight passages (one poetry and one prose)

When creating multiple-choice questions for students, it is essential that you tie each question back to the learning objectives described in the AP Latin Curriculum Framework, available in the AP Latin Course and Exam Description. This will help ensure that students have the skills across all four categories necessary to their study of Latin language and literature: Reading and Comprehending, Translation, Contextualization, and Analysis of Texts. In this tutorial, the targeted learning objective(s) are clearly displayed after every sample multiple-choice question, just as they are in the AP Latin Practice Exam.

Please note that the difficulty level of the multiple-choice passages on the exam (as well as in this tutorial) may vary.