This guide organizes advice from past students who got 4s and 5s on their exams. We hope it gives you some new ideas and tools for your study sessions. But remember, everyone's different—what works for one student might not work for you. If you've got a study method that's doing the trick, stick with it. Think of this as extra help, not a must-do overhaul.

📌 Overview

• Students are asked to read a passage and write an essay about how the author’s rhetorical choices enhance the meaning of the text.
• 18.3% of Exam Score
• Spend about 40 min.
• Scored on a 6 point rubric
  • Presents thesis (1)
  • Provides evidence and commentary (4)
  • Demonstrates sophistication (1)

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💭 General Advice

Tips on mindset, strategy, structure, time management, and any other high level things to know

• You’ll want to focus on the RHETORIC of this passage, not the actual information that it presents. That’s your synthesis essay. (But what does rhetoric mean?)
• Rhetoric refers to the way the author is presenting information, so that’s what you’re analyzing. You aren’t necessarily focused on what the author is saying, but rather the way they say it, and specifically what appeals they’re making.
• This exam is all about application. Start reading nonfiction daily and casually pointing out theses, evidence, and complexities in each source. Reading every day can also be a way to build background for the sophistication point!
• Rhetoric is most commonly composed of ethos, pathos, and logos which may or may not coincide occasionally. It’s important to consider their intersectionality when discerning their prominence in a rhetorical device.
• Pay close attention to malignant rhetorical devices especially when analyzing speeches made by notorious dictators- these include, but are not limited, to emotional manipulation and authoritarian appeal.
• You may not have used the word “rhetorical” before this class. Don’t let that word get in your way. Remember that it is just an adjective, like the word “red.” You might not remember during the test what the word “rhetorical” means, but you know the meaning of the word it is modifying - choices, appeals, situation, etc. Focus on the meaning of the word after “rhetorical.”

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🕐 Before you Write

What should a student do in the first few minutes, before they start writing?

• Chill out - organize your thoughts. The best thing about writing is that as long as you can prove it, every answer is “right”.
• Remember that you have about 40 minutes (recommended) to write this essay. Give yourself a reasonable amount of time to read the passage a few times to grasp the author’s rhetorical appeals. You have to look beyond the surface for this essay, so one read-through is not good enough. Take five minutes to read it a couple times, and another five to start identifying quotes for appeals you want to examine to support your thesis. After that, you’ll still have half an hour to write a solid few paragraphs.
• Remember that you do not have to write the essays in the same order that they appear in the test!

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🤓 Reading the Sources

• While you’re reading, there are a couple specific things you need to be looking for as you go. Remember, you don’t have a lot of time, so the more familiar you are with these elements of rhetoric, the easier it will be to identify them when test day arrives. Once you know these vocab words, you can find quotes to support them and start explaining the author’s rhetoric appeals.
• Context: you’re probably already familiar with this from other classes (AP World? APUSH?) You want to identify what the broader situation of this passage is and explain it as if the person reading it has no clue what’s going on. This isn’t always explicitly stated in the text, but you can use quotes as evidence to support your own understanding of the context.
• Exigence: this is a fancy word for urgency. Why does the author need to tell us this right now? Why not in two weeks? Why not ten years ago? The best example you could find of exigence is when the author is saying ACT NOW! You’re identifying this passage’s relevance to the current moment.
• Message: this is essentially your theme, but unlike a theme in a fictional story, you want your message to be specific to the article, not a general statement about life. This is when you take the whole passage and summarize it into a neat sentence or two that sums up the big ideas without getting too much into details.
• Purpose: if your message is your “what”, then your purpose is your “why”. It isn’t as simple as persuade, inform, or entertain, though. Rhetoric is always aiming to persuade, whether by using pathos, ethos, or logos, but you need to be specific. WHY is the author telling us this, and in this specific way?
• Rhetor: this goes hand in hand with purpose, but it’s less about the author’s purpose but more about the author themself. Who is writing this (not their name, but who are they personally?) What motivations do they have? What bias is present? Dig into where this passage is coming from. Does the author’s culture or country of origin have an impact on their argument? Their age? Their gender? Their political beliefs?
• Audience: this is generally self-explanatory, but again, you have to be specific. You can’t just say “anyone who wants to read it”. Was the passage published in a magazine aimed at one group? Was it a speech delivered to an audience of supporters or naysayers? Don’t just identify who might be reading it. Identify who the author INTENDED to read it.
• Be sure to read the statement before the passage. It is there to help you understand the the passage.

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💡 Tips for Earning Each Point

Thesis/Claim

• You can score 1 point for having this in your essay!
• The best theses are broad. Think big picture - what is the point of the piece? What is the narrator trying to tell you? Hint: this will appear in the intro or conclusion paragraphs
• Remember, you’re not taking a stance on the actual content of the passage, you’re taking a stance on the author’s rhetoric!! This will make sense when you read the prompt, because you won’t be able to answer it by just stating facts from the text, you have to examine appeals.
• Plan your thesis out before you start writing the essay. The thesis is the foundation of your easy, so you want to have a strong thesis statement.

Evidence and Commentary

• You can score up to 4 points for having this in your essay!
• The most important aspect here is evidence. You need quotations from the text if you want to develop commentary on anything - you can’t just start writing things from your brain, that comes later. Try to choose at least three or four lines that could support your claim (remember, limited time!) or however many you think would be appropriate for your body paragraphs.
• After you’ve identified some quotes, you need to make sure you can explain how they’re relevant to your claim. This is where the commentary comes in, and where you start using those vocab words for rhetorical appeal that you found when you read the text a few times. Dig deep into how the author is appealing to their audience. Do they use a lot of pathos (emotion)? Are they heavy on ethos appeals (establishing trust)? Are they just listing facts to use logos (logic)?
• Remember that the essay is assessing your ability to write, not your ability to copy. Rather than copying large quotes from the passage, select the most important words and embed them in your own writing.
• Do not assume that the connection between your evidence and claim are obvious. Your argument comes from clearly explaining that connection.

Complexity/Sophistication

• You can score up to 1 point for having this in your essay!
• The complexity point is about understanding plus application! One trick you can use is finding a theme in the source and applying it to an event/situation (connecting an idea to the greater world).
• The sophistication point is nice to have, but the thesis point and the evidence/commentary points are vital.