How to Study for the English CLEP Test
- 1). Practice essay organization. Review how to create a thesis and integrate it into your essay, and look over paragraph structure rules. These basic organizational elements often appear on the multiple-choice portion of the test, and you must demonstrate your understanding of proper essay structure when you compose your written response.
- 2). Review audience and purpose. When you compose your CLEP written response, you will be required to demonstrate an understanding of the impact that audience and purpose have on a piece of writing. Take some time to consider how you may compose a piece differently depending on the intended audience. Be prepared to compose your CLEP essay with a stated audience and purpose in mind.
- 3). Study syntax. Syntax, or the order in which words must be arranged to produce a proper sentence, is vital when composing your CLEP composition. Review the basic rules that govern syntax including clauses and modifiers because these elements often present problems for individuals composing complex sentences.
- 4). Explore basic sentence composition rules. If your written response contains basic composition errors such as subject-verb agreement problems or pronouns that lack antecedents, your score will drop precipitously. Review basic sentence areas in which you specifically struggle, and spend time reviewing your essay, looking for errors of this nature, on test day.
- 5). Review the difference between active and passive voice. Your CLEP exam will undoubtedly include questions about active and passive voice within the multiple-choice questions. Also, your written response will receive a higher score if you write in a predominantly active voice. Study the difference between these two sentence types, and put a concerted effort into using active voice whenever possible.
- 6). Explore sentence structure varieties. Strong writing consists of varied sentence structure. Practice varying your sentence structure, mixing sentences of all types throughout your composition. Remember to use a varied sentence structure on test day.