The main workshop post for these ETA exercises is here: AP Exam: Section II — ETA Workshop.
The full practice assignment for Section II is here: AP Exam: Section II — Workshop.
Section II, Question 2 — ETA Workshop
Rhetorical analysis: Students read a non-fiction text and analyze how the writer’s language choices contribute to his or her purpose and intended meaning for the text.
You can find these materials on the College Board’s website. I am organizing them for you so we can discuss the exemplary essays interstitially.
Start by reading the prompt carefully. Read the passage, taking brief notes as you go. Compare those notes to the Overview, which will highlight critical elements of the passage, prompt, and the best responses.
Then, for each prompt, look only at the highest-scoring essay. You can learn from the other ones, certainly, but it is a more efficient use of your time to deconstruct the essays that earn an 8 or 9. Each element of effective writing you would emulate in a timed setting is best demonstrated by those highest-scoring essays.
The 2018 exam is introduced below. The preceding years are presented in a list.
2018 Exam: Question 2 Prompt
The College Board’s Overview identifies one of the chief reasons to apply an ETA reading to this prompt: “This year’s task differed from previous iterations in that it was significantly lengthier; however, its language was very accessible to students.” It’s a long piece, but if you know what you’re doing, that ends up helping you.
The most important reason to start with 2018, however, is this sentence in the Overview: “While elements of style certainly merit consideration, they are not the first ingredient on which rhetors focus when developing strategies to persuade audiences: Style is the third canon of rhetoric, not the first or even the second.”
You probably don’t know what “rhetor” means (it’s the person engaging in rhetoric, and the term used by the folks who write and score your AP exam) nor exactly what is meant by the “canon[s] of rhetoric.” It’s information you have learned in a different context, however, making this the best place to apply an ETA perspective.
You can look at what these graders mean by “canons of rhetoric” in any of a dozen places. I suggest this one, because it’s a little more straightforward; the best source for this sort of thing, however, is the Forest of Rhetoric at BYU. Regardless of the source, what matters on Question 2 is that you understand what graders are looking for you to do: consider the relationship between the writer/speaker and the audience; consider appeals to logic and ethos that could persuade that audience; consider what details are included (and which are excluded); and consider the arrangement of the piece as it relates to the audience. Style (e.g., repetition, parallelism, figurative language) should be considered after the big stuff, so to speak.
Here’s how the College Board summarizes all that in the 2018 Overview:
To understand these choices and how they work, a student must first consider the rhetor’s relationship to the audience, as well as how this relationship necessitates both what this specific rhetor should include in — and exclude from — the speech to this specific audience. Additionally, a student must consider how the rhetor arranges the speech for the particular audience in the specific circumstances of the speech.
Because of its length, this passage invites you to consider those first two canons before any stylistic strategies.
2018 Exam: Question 2 Scoring Guide
Now that you’ve read all that, here’s why 2018 is so instructive in terms of test prep: The highest-scoring essay provided by the College Board focuses on style, specifically parallelism and diction, more than those first two canons. That’s important. It’s possible to do well with strategies like anaphora, if you connect those strategies to the audience, rhetorical context, etc.
It’s also possible to do well despite errors, as the scoring commentary notes. The essay earning an 8 needs “a more complete opening paragraph and some more clearly defined paragraph breaks,” but its analysis is accurate and apt. When you deconstruct this one to emulate its effectiveness, you must focus on that.
Other Places for ETA Work
2017 Exam: Question 2 Prompt | Useful because, as the College Board notes, it “challenged students to think about how Luce managed her difficult task (of being asked to speak about problems with the press) with her audience of fellow journalists, the very people she would be criticizing.” The analysis has to grapple with audience and context specifically, as the essay earning an 8 does.
2016 Exam: Question 2 Prompt | This one, like the 2018 prompt, invites a greater focus on audience and arrangement over style. It’s also an example of how important the prompt itself is. Often, the prompt will give you necessary information about the context of the piece. In this case, as the College Board notes in their Overview, most of the necessary information is in the prompt. The only thing not given, in terms of context/audience/speaker, is “the laudatory nature of Thatcher’s work.”
2015 Exam: Question 2 Prompt | Again, the College Board designed this prompt to force students to look at rhetoric “not merely as words on the page but as words in action, words intended to have a social impact.” Even the use of “choices” (over “strategies” or “devices”) is meant to focus on “the primacy of authorial agency and communicative purpose.” This is what makes Question 2 more authentic than you thought: the attempt to connect you to real people persuading others in real contexts.
Q&A: Interstitial ETA Work
Start with whatever directions you are given through Google Classroom. That’s where you’ll find any formal work associated with this prompt. It’s up to you, however, to utilize this opportunity to prepare for the exam. Ask questions in the comment section below. Invite your peers and teacher into a discussion of how these high-scoring essays work and how you can emulate them.