Write the rhetorical analysis with the clock running: AP English Language Lesson

Write the rhetorical analysis with the clock running

Use the opening minutes to decide what the writer is trying to accomplish and how the passage moves, then draft with a few choices you can explain, and study a model response.

Use the opening minutes to decide what the writer is trying to accomplish and how the passage moves toward it. Once you have a small number of choices you can explain with evidence, start writing. Extra labels do not compensate for thin commentary.

A first read that produces a plan

The drill below is intentionally shorter than an official rhetorical-analysis passage. Use it to practice the same reading and planning decisions under a tighter format. Read for situation, identify an analytical endpoint, and track how the passage moves before drafting. For this shortened drill, spend no more than five minutes reading and planning before you begin drafting.

Revision demonstration

Even a response that scores well can be improved. Below is a version of the third paragraph's final sentence with a realistic weakness, followed by one targeted revision.

Before

This repeated structure is a good example of anaphora and really makes the passage more persuasive and powerful for the reader.

After

The repeated, escalating negation that follows, "not we, the white male citizens; nor yet, we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people," performs the constitutional interpretation itself as a rhetorical structure, ruling out narrower readings one at a time before asserting the inclusive one.

The weaker version names a device, "anaphora", and then reaches immediately for vague effect words, "persuasive and powerful", without explaining what the repetition specifically accomplishes in this passage. This is exactly the label-then-vague-effect pattern Chapter 27 warns against: the sentence could be attached to nearly any passage using repetition. The revision replaces the label and vague effect with a specific account of what the structure does, enacting the interpretive move Anthony is making rather than just naming that a device is present, which is the difference between commentary that could belong to any passage and commentary that belongs only to this one.

Practice set

Susan B. Anthony, "Is It a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to Vote?" (excerpt)

Friends and Fellow-citizens: I stand before you to-night, under indictment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last Presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote. It shall be my work this evening to prove to you that in thus voting, I not only committed no crime, but instead simply exercised my citizen's rights, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the National Constitution, beyond the power of any State to deny.
The preamble of the Federal Constitution says: "We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet, we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.
And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people, women as well as men. And it is a downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican government, the ballot.
Susan B. Anthony, "Is It a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to Vote?" 1873, delivered during the months before her June trial for illegal voting

Susan B. Anthony, "Is It a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to Vote?" 1873, delivered during the months before her June trial for illegal voting

Timed practice. This passage is shorter than an official rhetorical analysis passage. Spend no more than five minutes reading and planning, then draft.

Prompt: Read the passage carefully. Then write an essay that analyzes the rhetorical choices Susan B. Anthony makes to develop her argument.

In your response you should do the following: respond to the prompt with a thesis that analyzes the writer's rhetorical choices; select and use specific and relevant evidence to support your line of reasoning; explain how the evidence supports your line of reasoning; demonstrate an understanding of the rhetorical situation; use appropriate grammar and punctuation in communicating your argument.