What This Exam Covers
The English Composition CLEP tests writing skills taught in a first-year college composition course. It focuses on sentence-level grammar and mechanics in the multiple-choice section, testing your ability to identify errors, improve sentences, and revise passages. This is a skills-based exam — you need to recognize correct and incorrect grammar and usage in context, not just recite rules.
Exam at a Glance
| Questions | 90 multiple choice |
| Time | 90 minutes |
| Passing score | 50 (most schools) |
| College credits | 6 semester hours (typical) |
| Exam fee | $97 |
What's on the English Composition CLEP*?
| Category | Weight | Topics |
|---|---|---|
| Identifying Sentence Errors | ~35% | Subject-verb agreement, verb tense consistency, pronoun reference and agreement, parallel structure, dangling modifiers, coordination and subordination errors |
| Improving Sentences | ~35% | Sentence clarity, redundancy, wordiness, awkward construction, sentence combining, maintaining consistent style |
| Restructuring Sentences and Revising Work | ~30% | Revising for organization, coherence, and development; recognizing effective transitions; improving paragraph-level structure; sentence variety |
Source: For a full breakdown of what is on the exam, see the College Board English Composition CLEP page.
How hard is the English Composition CLEP*?
This is one of the more accessible CLEPs for students who read and write regularly. If you have a good intuitive sense of English grammar, many questions will feel natural. If formal grammar rules are unfamiliar, the sentence structure and agreement questions can trip you up. The multiple-choice-only format (no essay) makes this a somewhat lighter version of the College Composition exam. Plan for 2 to 4 weeks of focused prep regardless of your background.
How to study for the English Composition CLEP*
- Work through the InstantCert flashcards to build a solid foundation in grammar rules and sentence-level errors — subject-verb agreement, pronoun reference, parallel structure, and dangling modifiers are the most commonly tested areas.
- Use the College Board's free English Composition practice questions to practice recognizing errors in context as the exam presents them.
- Purdue OWL is the best free reference for grammar rules. Their sections on sentence structure, agreement, and punctuation are exactly what this exam tests. Purdue OWL Grammar is here.
What score do you need to pass?
A score of 50 is the standard passing threshold at most schools. Some require 60. English Composition CLEP is worth 6 semester hours at many institutions — two full semesters of English credit. Confirm with your school how the credit applies, as some programs require the actual composition sequence regardless of CLEP credit.
Fail and the attempt does NOT appear on your transcript. You can retake after 3 months.
Can you pass English Composition CLEP* with just flashcards?
Yes. This exam is well-matched to flashcard preparation — the grammar rules and error patterns are learnable, and the flashcards cover them well. Students who both study the rules and practice identifying errors in example sentences outperform those who only memorize definitions. Our 94% pass rate reflects how effectively focused preparation translates to exam results.
Happy testing!
About the CLEP* Exam
The English Composition (with or without Essay) CLEP exam is designed to test writing skills that a student would typically learn in a first-year college composition course. InstantCert's course prepares you for the multiple choice portion of the exam, focusing on sentence-level composition skills; students taking the version that includes an essay will need to prepare for the essay-writing portion using other resources.
Topics Covered in this Course
Basic Grammar
Parts of speech
Independent / dependent clauses
Incomplete sentences and run-on sentences
Combining sentences
Identifying Sentence Errors, Improving Sentences, and Restructuring Sentences
Sentence boundaries
Clarity of expression
Agreement: subject-verb; verb tense; pronoun reference, shift, number
Syntax: parallelism, coordination, subordination, dangling modifiers
Sentence variety
Customer Test Results for this Exam
279 users submitted test results since January, 2006.
261 of those users reported a passing score (94%).
Below are ten of the most recent user-submitted test results. These are unfiltered, real results that were submitted by InstantCert students:
[test_results test_id=‘3’ num_results=“10” /]
Live, unfiltered results posted by InstantCert students
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