Hey 2023 AP Lang students! I wanted to wish you good luck on your exam - I'm rooting for you! Many students last year asked me to make videos about the rhetorical devices/strategies you should know for the exam, so I made a series of 19 videos that offer explanations, effects, and examples of these strategies. To access these videos, click on this playlist: ru-vid.com/group/PL0B_uKjIILStKXhRBRWS6jHZLKp7Pguoq. For extra practice, do a rhetorical analysis of the speeches I referenced in these videos (links are in the descriptions). I also wanted to answer some commonly asked questions that I've received in the comments section here. If you have any questions that I didn't address here or in other comments, feel free to type your question in the comments :) Here are my top tips: 1. You can write two or three body paragraphs, the choice is up to you! I personally liked to write two body paragraphs in my rhetorical analysis essays because I preferred writing longer paragraphs that were more well-developed (also, I'm not a super fast writer). But three is just as fine! 2. You don't need to cite quotes formally with parenthetical citations or line numbers. If you're taking an excerpt directly from the passage, just make sure to put quotation marks around the excerpt. 3. Make sure to connect your claims to the rhetorical situation throughout the essay. According to the College Board, the rhetorical situation refers to the "exigence, purpose, audience, context, and message" of a passage. What I like to do is first discuss the rhetorical situation in my introductory paragraph and integrate it into the rest of the essay. This video explains how to analyze the rhetorical situation: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE--krPmSn61so.html 4. There is no required number of quotes or pieces of evidence to put in each paragraph. Just remember that whenever you do include evidence, you MUST offer commentary that analyzes it. 5. Don't worry about identifying as many rhetorical strategies as you can when reading the passage. Instead, zero in on a few strategies that you feel you can analyze in-depth.
It may help to ask: What emotions will the audience feel in response to a specific rhetorical strategy? Will the audience be inspired to take action as a result? What is the subtext, or implied meaning, of a quote? How does a specific strategy contribute to the speaker's credibility, message, or purpose? What role does tone play? How does the speaker position themself in relation to the audience (ex. as a critic, peer, sympathizer, persuader, etc.)?
So are the three paragraphs supposed to be dedicated to 3 different rhetorical strategies? Or are you supposed pick 3 broad rhetorical strategies and talk about even more rhetorical strategies in the body paragraphs?
@@prajnaguduru2710 You can do either of those two options! In this video, I chose to talk about multiple rhetorical devices within each paragraph because the passage was full of smaller devices, but you do not have to do this.
Do you personally think we should choose rhetorical devices from the passage we understand the most or choose rhetorical devices that are used most in the passage? I just feel like if I were to choose ones I understand more I wouldn't have much to discuss in my body paragraphs. And do each rhetorical device we use need to have the same function? I'm assuming not lol
Just a friendly reminder to everyone: The people who grade the essays generally think of your essay as a sort of rough draft. They clearly know you can't make a work of art in 50 minutes
@@lightspecialist it could still be a rough draft. You are roughly drafting your sophistication point. Later, when you refine it into a final draft, that is when you incorporate writing style and maybe change up the structure of your essay.
How are you guys preparing for the exam? The collegeboard videos are way too long and all I want to do is get a 5. I don't really care abt how this class will help me later in life I just want college credit.
Something that helped me approach rhetorical analysis essays was when I realized that very few prompts actually ask you to identify _literal rhetorical devices_ . This pretty much means you can identify only one or two rhetorical devices from the text, and then fill in the gaps by finding choices the writer makes that might not be considered actual rhetorical devices, but are still used as important rhetorical aspects in the prompt. I still recommend using more genuine devices than not, they tend to be more credible, but adding some of your own thoughts on the choices can show more creativity, plus it helps you B.S. just a little if you can't find enough rhetorical devices to flesh out a full essay. Hope this helps!
Absolutely! Looking for good choices of words and phrases and certain attitudes made by the author rather than literal rhetorical devices helped me get an A on so many essays.
could you explain what you mean by "finding choices the writer makes that might not be actual rhetorical devices"? like are these just random things that don't fit on the RA list? like the speaker spoke with a gentler tone when referring to whatever or the speaker decided to use reconstructive phrases?
@@sarennawood1332 Yeah, I think you have the general idea. Just stick to rhetorical choices that greatly impact the overall ethos, pathos, or logos of the prompt. Stay away from choices that are more specific and don't largely contribute. If you can exclusively use rhetorical devices, that's usually safer, so be sure to do this when you're hard pressed to find enough devices to fully flesh out an essay or when you have confidence in the choice you're writing about. Hope that helps!
i have my ap lang test in a few days !! to all the people in the same boat you got this !! and here’s my advice for conclusions, make your conclusion something you’d do a mic drop to if that makes sense
lananh LMAO girl you GOT THIS take a deep breath before you sit down and just remember it doesn’t affect your GPA and if you do badlt nothing happens, nothing. and youll do so great, i believe in you !!!
@@MsPeerEditor The prompt asks to analyze how rhetorical devices are used by Luce, would it be valid to say for a thesis: "In order to emphasize on the media's duty to tell the truth, Luce uses a humorous tone and the journalists' sense of honesty lighten the weight of her criticism." Then for the body paragraph topic sentence: "Luce uses humor to criticize the reporters in an endorsing way"? I'm really wondering how body paragraph topic sentences are supposed to function, do I just repeat the thesis? Thank you so much (even if you never get to answer this comment)
@@josephvibrochef9975 For the sample body paragraph topic sentence you wrote, I would try to add a little more detail explaining the effect of humor. Don't repeat the thesis! The topic sentence should focus on one of the strategies mentioned in the essay and provide a specific explanation of its significance. For example, you could describe in your topic sentence how Luce uses a humorous tone to demonstrate her own awareness of this peculiar situation (since she has been invited to speak in order to criticize the press), and she encourages her audience members to be equally aware of the challenges they face in terms of telling the truth.
Warning to people watching this video: I don’t know if it’s the same everywhere, but where I am, the scoring prompt has changed this year, make sure to keep this in mind
I watched college board's live streams and stuff on "attack" the prompt and passage, how to construct a "great" intro, how to develop a line of reasoning (body paragraphs basically), and how to construct a sophisticated conclusion. I feel somewhat confident after doing so. But you really walked us through it in one go. This helps a lot, thank you!
Hi 2024 AP Lang students, good luck on the exam! I enjoyed helping a lot of you through tutoring, DMs, and comments this year. After the exam, feel free to come back and let me know if you found my videos useful.
Just stumbled back on this video, just wanted to say I got a 5 on the exam and this was by far what i was most worried about! Thank you so much for helping me last minute!!
I'm watching this before I write my essay and it turns out it's by the same author! I'm not super confident in my writing but this video made things clear. Very informative video!
The only thing I remember from my rhetorical analysis lessons was that I shouldn't use the verb 'use' in my essay. This video was so eye-opening and removed a lot of my stress, bless you for uploading this !! This will definitely help me for my test in a few weeks :-) Thanks for the walk through!
You should be payed as opposed to our current teachers! 😭 this video was insanely helpful, I appreciate the time and effort to help our helpless souls, thank you!
Hey yall, AP scores just came out, and I want to say that because of this channel I got a 5. I watched all your videos the night before and walked in to the test having never done a practice test and rocked it. You are truly a go my friend. My advice to others cramming: memorize the formats for each of the essays and the rhetorical device words and you'll be fine.
English Teacher here! Honestly, you don’t always have to have fancy words like “anaphora.” Really, you can use layman’s terms as long as you are analyzing the rhetoric. As you can see from the video, she’s talking about humor and not using intense language. As long as you move to analysis over summarizing then you should be okay. Ask yourself “what is the author/speaker doing to reach their purpose. So, if the purpose is to chastise journalists, you may wish to do so with humor so they listen to you rather than being really rude and condescending.
@@AbPsHoCk I think that even if we have just one body paragraph with a LOT of deep analysis and rich writing, we could still get a pretty good score. That's what my teacher said lmao. I honestly usually just do two because of the time restraint. I wish I could do more but I try to just focus on beefing up my commentary for the two body paragraphs I have.
This is super helpful, especially when it comes to the annotations aspect of the exam, as I often struggle to find certain rhetorical devices in the given passage under a time crunch. Thanks so much for making this!
Ap tests are always so stressful. This video has given me more confidence and spirit before I take my AP test. Thank you for this amazing informative video!
Hi I just want to say AP Scores came out - i followed exactly what this channel said for all three essays and got a 5. Super super helpful - thank you so much!
im terrified like i forgot all the rhetorical devices ahhh edit: hey everyone! its may 20th, the big day! there's 2 hours left until we take the exam, good luck everyone!
You're also allowed to have notes...If you think it'll be helpful and won't take up too much of your time on the essay, you can make some notes of them.
I watched this last night (helped a lot btw) and this morning my ap comp teacher posted a think-aloud step by step for this EXACT same text... just a little thing I wanted to share lol.
Hi I came back just to comment that I watched this video a while back 20 minutes before taking my AP Lang final(because I learned nothing in quarantine) and it was super helpful😭😭😭 I ended up acing it thanks to you❤️
Honestly really wished I had seen this sooner as I learned more from your 12 minute video than 3 full quarters with my teacher. Thank you for the video
THANK YOU SO MUCH! I have been so lost when it comes to the rhetorical analysis essay, but something about the way you explained it made everything click. Question: is the acronym SOAPStone (speaker, occasion, audience, purpose, subject, tone) relevant to writing the actual essay? My teacher has put a lot of emphasis on recognizing those elements in passages but how do they pertain to the essay? Do they count as rhetorical devices?
I'm so happy you found this video helpful! SOAPStone is useful for getting an overview of the passage, and you should definitely reference elements such as speaker and purpose in your essay. However, those elements aren't really rhetorical devices by themselves (except for maybe tone).
Wow what a great and informative video. This basically answers everything I've been wondering about how to write a great rhetorical analysis essay. Thank you for this!
This helped me so much because of online learning my Ap lang teacher isn't teaching us like this, and this is really helpful to organize everything I need for the mock exam I'm having soon!!
