<p>I ~cannot~ recommend “5 Steps to a 5” for AP English – at least, not the 2012-2013 edition, which is by Murphy and Rankin and published by McGraw-Hill, as the answer key for the comprehension section (multiple choice) is poor…</p>
<p>The key to doing well on the comprehension section is to think the way the exam makers think in order to arrive at the same opinions that they hold. Few answers are actually “correct” because few questions are in fact objective. However, the authors attempt to reason logically in the explanations that they give in the answer key and the result is catastrophic: incoherent arguments, jumps to conclusions, ungrounded and unnatural assumptions, inconsistencies and out right contradictions, the omission of certain information and thus “selective reasoning”, etc. Moreover, the very reasoning presented in order to justify the winning answer of one question leads to the rejection of the winning answer of another question. The authors themselves can perhaps score well on the comprehension sections, but for reasons that they don’t seem to understand and certainly not in following their own explanations, as presented in the answer key. The answer key then is best avoided because it nurtures arbitrary thinking, which can be harmful and certainly isn’t helpful. It’s far better then to use one of the books that focuses on thinking like the exam maker and thus teaches how to pick the winning answers.</p>