College Board logo
Quill logo

Official Pre-AP English Practice

Free Pre-AP® English writing practice aligned to the Pre-AP English High School Course Framework for the English 1 and English 2 courses with immediate feedback for students and progress reports for you.

Get started
Photograph of a teacher talking to a classroom of high school students
Illustration of a pencil drawing a line

Sentence-Level Writing Practice

Identify which sentence-level skills your students need to practice with a skills survey. Then, assign activities recommended for each student based on their responses so they can practice and improve their proficiency with those skills.

Pre-AP Writing Skills Surveys

Pre-AP Writing Skills Survey 1: Basic of Sentence Patterns

For Pre-AP English 1
For Pre-AP English 2
View

Students complete a 12 item survey their understanding of key writing skills, fundamental grammatical elements, and compound/complex sentence constructions. After students complete the survey, Quill will automatically recommend up to five activity packs for each student based on their needs. Each pack contains four to six activities that each take about 15 minutes to complete and provide scaffolded, sequenced practice on one of the five skills addressed in the survey.

Skills

Subject-verb agreement; pronoun-antecedent agreement; compound subjects, objects and predicates; coordinating conjunctions in compound sentences; subordinating conjunctions

Pre-AP Writing Skills Survey 2: Tools for Sentence Expansion

For Pre-AP English 1
For Pre-AP English 2
View

Students complete a 12 item survey their understanding of key writing skills, focusing on constructions for expanding sentences with description and detail. After students complete the survey, Quill will automatically recommend up to five activity packs for each student based on their needs. Each pack contains four to six activities that each take about 15 minutes to complete and provide scaffolded, sequenced practice on one of the five skills addressed in the survey.

Skills

Conjunctive adverbs; appositive phrases; relative clauses; participial phrases; parallel structure

ELL Writing Skills Surveys

If you have ELLs in your courses, you may want to consider assigning them an ELL Skills Surveys before assigning them a writing skills survey.

ELL Starter Skills Survey

View

ELL students complete a 22 item survey to gauge their mastery of foundational English grammar. This survey is most appropriate for students who are in the Entering or Emerging WIDA levels. After students complete the survey, Quill will automatically recommend up to five activity packs for each student based on their needs. Each pack contains a series of activities that each take about 15 minutes to complete and provide scaffolded, sequenced practice with one of the skills covered by the survey.

Skills

Simple verb conjugation; articles; simple subject-verb agreement; simple word order; singular and plural nouns; adjective placement

ELL Intermediate Skills Survey

View

ELL students complete a 23 item survey to gauge their mastery of English grammar. This survey is most appropriate for students who are in the Emerging or Developing WIDA levels. After students complete the survey, Quill will automatically recommend up to six activity packs for each student based on their needs. Each pack contains a series of activities that each take about 15 minutes to complete and provide scaffolded, sequenced practice with one of the skills covered by the survey.

Skills

Subject-verb agreement; singular possessive nouns; possessive pronouns; prepositions; future tense; articles; intermediate questions

ELL Advanced Skills Survey

View

ELL students complete a 23 item survey to gauge their mastery of English grammar, specifically in areas that are challenging for non-native English speakers. This survey is most appropriate for students who are in the Developing or Expanding WIDA levels. After students complete the survey, Quill will automatically recommend up to five activity packs for each student based on their needs. Each pack contains a series of activities that each take about 15 minutes to complete and provide scaffolded, sequenced practice with one of the skills covered by the survey.

Skills

Regular and irregular past tense; progressive tenses; phrasal verbs; choosing between prepositions; responding to questions; commonly confused words

A list of writing concepts: Subject-Verb Agreement, Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement, Compound Subjects, Objects, Predicates, and more.

Writing Practice Aligned to Course Frameworks

Each 12 item Pre-AP Writing Skills Survey covers five of the ten key grammar skills from the English 1 and English 2 course frameworks. Each survey helps identify which of the five skills your students need to practice most.

Personalized Recommendations

After your students complete a Pre-AP Writing Skills Survey, Quill will use the results to recommend a set of independent practice activities. You can choose to assign all the practice at once, or you can pick and choose the activities that best fit your instructional and students’ needs. As students complete the practice, they’ll receive instant feedback on their writing that guides them through the revising and editing process.

A recommended activity pack report showing four students being recommended a mixture of activities for relative clauses and parallel structure.
An illustration showing a student combining two sentences, getting feedback from Quill, and then getting a correct response.

Additional Practice

Some of your students may benefit from more opportunities to practice a skill after they have completed the activities recommended based on their writing skills survey results. In that case, you can assign a second set of independent practice activities: same skills, new content. Learn more about the additional activity packs.

Illustration of a book opened

Passage-Aligned Activities

20 custom sentence-combining activities, each one aligned to a unique Pre-AP English 1 text to give your students the opportunity to practice their sentence construction skills in context.

Passage-Aligned Activities

For Pre-AP English 1
An illustration of a bookshelf with the names of Lottery, Lamb to the Slaughter, 1984, The First Day, and Romeo and Juliet on the book spines.

Alignment to Pre-AP English 1 Content

Each sentence-combining activity is aligned to a different text from the four English 1 instructional units. As students combine sentences and build their writing skills, they also explore key text elements: historical and authorial context, plot, structure, and more. These activities model the kind of analytical thinking they would optimally reflect in their own writing.

Alignment to Pre-AP English High School Course Framework

In these sentence-combining items, students are free to use any grammatically correct method of combining the sentences they choose. However, each item is written to provide opportunities for students to practice the skills from the course framework. No matter which method students choose to use, they will receive instant, targeted feedback on up to five revisions to help them strengthen their sentence and build their writing skills.

An illustration showing a student combining two sentences, getting feedback from Quill, and then getting a correct response.
An illustration showing a teacher guide for Lamb to the Slaughter with an arrow pointing to a Quill activity with text from Lamb to the Slaughter being in the questions.

Opportunities Throughout the Course

At least one activity appears in each Learning Cycle of all four instructional units so that this sentence-combining practice can easily be incorporated into your instructional plans. Since these activities include details about the texts and analysis of key elements, they are best used to reinforce learning after students have read and discussed these texts in class.

Quill and College Board have partnered to provide students with meaningful practice of their sentence-level writing skills.

Message from College Board

Large left quote

Teaching writing is hard. Even harder can be attempting to pinpoint exactly when we learned how and why to write clearly. That's why the College Board has worked with Quill.org to ensure that this new, free, comprehensive offering helps students practice targeted sentence construction skills in their writing. Sustained practice and exposure to targeted skills is important to improvement and comfort.

Teaching writing may always be hard, but student practice in meaningful skills can make the learning that much clearer. Through this practice, students can begin to own the how and why of their writing.

Large right quote

Questions and Answers

Quill is a writing tool that provides over 600 writing, grammar, and proofreading activities designed to engage students in the writing process. Quill provides practice in many areas of sentence writing, from comma placement and subject-verb agreement to the use of conjunctions to convey complex relationships between ideas. In the Quill Connect tool, students practice writing different types of sentences using the evidence-based strategy of sentence combining. Students receive specific, targeted feedback on their writing that they can use to revise their work. Through these activities, students practice writing a variety of sophisticated sentences and practice conveying complex ideas in clear, succinct, and grammatically strong ways. Most activities are designed to be completed in 10-15 minutes so that you have the freedom to use them in the way that works best for your classroom.

As part of the customized Pre-AP + Quill Offering for English 1, there are two distinct skills surveys. Pre-AP Skills Survey 1 addresses the basics of sentence patterns, while Pre-AP Skills Survey 2 engages with tools for sentence expansion. The skills featured as part of each survey are derived directly from the elements of grammar called out by the Pre-AP English High School Course Framework.

You can use these skills surveys during the course to assess your students' needs and to generate a sequence of recommended activities that provides targeted writing practice on the skills addressed instructionally in the Learning Cycles. In each of these recommended practice activities, students receive immediate feedback on their writing that they can use to revise their responses up to five times. Through these rounds of feedback and revision, students practice key writing skills.

In addition to the skills surveys and recommended practice activities, there are also sentence combining activities aligned to texts that are part of each unit's instructional materials. These activities provide additional opportunities for students to practice their writing in context, combining sentences with a variety of skills and approaches that explore key ideas and themes from these texts.

In addition to the previously mentioned tools and resources, you will also see direct links to Quill.org activities throughout English 1 lessons where specific grammar skills are addressed. The links will take students to independent practice activities that align with the writing goals of that particular lesson.

As part of the customized Pre-AP + Quill Offering for English 2, there are two distinct skills surveys. Pre-AP Skills Survey 1 addresses the basics of sentence patterns, while Pre-AP Skills Survey 2 engages with tools for sentence expansion. The skills featured as part of each survey are derived directly from the elements of grammar called out by the Pre-AP English High School Course Framework.

You can use these skills surveys during the course to assess your students' needs and to generate a sequence of recommended activities that provides targeted writing practice on the skills addressed instructionally in the Learning Cycles. In each of these recommended practice activities, students receive immediate feedback on their writing that they can use to revise their responses up to five times. Through these rounds of feedback and revision, students practice key writing skills.

At this time, there are no sentence combining activities aligned to texts that are part of each unit's instructional materials in Pre-AP English 2.

It is recommended that you and your students create free accounts on Quill.org. Creating an account will give you access to the two skills surveys and recommended practice; creating an account also allows you to track your students' progress and view data reports. You can create an account by visiting the Quill sign-up page.

If you do not want to create an account, the links provided throughout the English 1 lessons will allow you and your students to complete activities on Quill without Quill accounts.

Please note that if you do not create an account, you will not be able to use the skills surveys, access the recommended skills practice, track student progress, or view data reports.

Quill's writing skills surveys can be used in lieu of Quill's general diagnostics. For example, an AP teacher would likely assign the AP Writing Skills Survey in lieu of the Advanced Diagnostic. Keep in mind, however, that teachers may want ELL students in Pre-AP, AP, or SpringBoard courses to begin with one of the ELL Diagnostics instead of a writing skills survey. This article explains the differences between Quill's various diagnostics and surveys in more depth.

Each Pre-AP recommended pack contains between 4 and 7 activities, each of which are designed to take between 10 and 15 minutes each. There are also additional practice packs for students who finish the Pre-AP recommended packs: same skills, new content. Learn how to find and assign those here.

You can assign all the recommended packs in one click, or you can pick and choose, revisiting the recommendations report to assign more packs as needed.

In general, we've found that students make progress when they are completing 2-4 activities on Quill per week. Since each Pre-AP recommended pack contains between 4 and 7 activities, teachers generally expect a recommended pack to be completed in 1-2 weeks. Of course, students may need more or less time depending on the amount of activities in the pack, their level of difficulty, and students' level of proficiency.

This article explains how you can use deadlines to help students pace themselves.

Quill has a variety of reports to help you track your students' performance and progress. In the Activity Summary report, you can quickly see which activities your students have completed, along with color-coded icons indicating proficiency. Quill has several other reports as well. This cheat sheet shows you which report to go to for particular information, and this video will walk you through 3 of Quill's student data reports.

If you create a free account on Quill.org, you will be able to assign additional activities from any of Quill's 5 tools:

  • Quill Connect

    Students combine multiple ideas into a single sentence using the evidence-based strategy of sentence combining. Students receive instant feedback. *Note*: All activities recommended based on survey results are in Quill Connect.

  • Quill Grammar

    Students practice basic grammar skills, from using correct capitalization to correcting commonly confused words.

  • Quill Proofreader

    Students practice editing skills by correcting errors in passages. Students receive personalized follow-up activities based on their results.

  • Quill Lessons

    Teachers lead whole-class writing instruction. Teachers control interactive slides that contain a mini-lesson and guided practice. Teachers can model writing strategies in real-time, present prompts to which students can respond, and then anonymously display student responses for discussion. Each Quill Lessons activity provides a lesson plan, writing prompts, discussion topics, and a follow-up independent practice activity. Teachers can also customize any lesson.

  • Quill Diagnostic

    Students complete an activity designed to help teachers determine which skills students need to work on. After students complete a Quill Diagnostic activity, Quill recommends writing activities for students based on their results. Note: The writing skills surveys can be used in lieu of general Quill diagnostics.

Unfortunately, at this time, there are no sentence combining activities aligned to texts in Pre-AP courses other than English I. If you would like to see activities like these for another course, please us know here!

We are here for you! The following resources are available:

Quill Instructional Coach: You can reach out directly to Sherry Lewkowicz, Quill's coach dedicated to supporting College Board teachers, at sherry@quill.org. Be sure to mention the course(s) you teach.

Teacher Center: The place to go for all things best practice and implementation!

Support: Having a technical issue? Email support@quill.org or use the chat in the lower right corner of Quill to connect with a member of the Quill support team.

Learn More About Quill Premium

Premium subscriptions for schools and districts interested in priority technical support, additional reporting, and support from Quill's professional learning team--plus an option for individual teachers

Explore Premium