The College Board--the same company that brings you the SAT and AP exams--administers the College-Level Examination Program, CLEP, which offers exams in 34 subjects, including English Literature. Almost 3,000 American colleges offer credit for high CLEP scores or allow those with high scores to skip freshman-level classes.
So, the difference between a CLEP test and an AP (Advanced Placement) test: AP exams are open only to high school students who have taken an authorized AP course. But you can take a CLEP test at any time in your life (such as during the summer between college years), and you can study for them any way you want.
On the English Literature CLEP you have 90 minutes to answer about 95 multiple-choice questions about major British works of literature (there is a separate exam for American Literature), literary terms like "metaphor" and "personification," and literary forms like sonnets and ballads.
There is an optional essay question; check whether your college requires it. The essay section requires you to spend 35 to 40 minutes writing an essay in which you analyze a poem that is given to you. Then, you have another 50 to 55 minutes to write an essay in which you use a work of literature that you know well to support a statement that is given to you (you can choose from two options). The essays are graded by faculty members at your college.
Of the 95 required questions on the CLEP exam, more than half (60 to 65 percent) test your skills. Tested skills include your ability to identify a text's tone and mood, to perceive imagery when it is present, to understand the flow of logic in a piece of literary criticism and to analyze a text's form and stylistic elements.
About 35 to 40 percent of the CLEP English Literature questions don't test what you can do but rather what you know. You'll have to identify the authors of famous passages to show that you've read those works, and demonstrate knowledge of literary terms like "alliteration" and "irony." There might be questions asking you to identify the metrical patterns in lines of poetry, so you need to understand concepts like "iambic pentameter." You might be given a literary passage that refers to another great work of literature and be asked to identify the reference.
The CLEP English Literature exam assumes that you have read a wide variety of books, short stories and poems from a spectrum of time periods (starting with "Beowulf") and that you have a sense of how English writing has changed over the years.
The College Board provides a list of suggested readings to help you prepare. It recommends that you read more than one literature anthology (such as the "Norton Anthology of English Literature" and the "Oxford Anthology of English Literature"). If an anthology contains an excerpt from a novel, the Board suggests you read the entire novel.
For the essay section, the College Board provides a list of recommended writing handbooks and recommends that you write as many essays as possible to practice, and have a trusted peer or experienced teacher check your work and offer advice for improvement.