2021 Live Review 2 | AP English Language and Composition | How to Break Down Prompts

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

The 2021 AP English Language and Composition review focuses on breaking down prompts effectively. The session covers strategies to understand and respond to synthesis, rhetorical analysis, and argument prompts, emphasizing the importance of identifying key elements like ideas, rhetorical situations, and context. The video incorporates interactive elements to practice these skills and encourages students to make prompts work for them, ultimately aiming to improve thesis formulation and prompt adherence. Practical examples are provided to demonstrate how to dissect prompts into actionable components for effective essay writing.

Highlights

Breaking down prompts into manageable parts is key to success! ✨
Focus on identifying key ideas and elements of rhetorical situations. 🎯
Use 'what' questions to guide your reading and thesis creation. 🤔
Understand the context and exigence in prompts for a stronger argument. 🌍
Interactive elements make learning engaging and effective. 🎉

Key Takeaways

Learn to make prompts work for you in the AP English exam! 📚
Discover the magic of dissecting synthesis prompts into ideas for a stronger thesis. 💡
Identify rhetorical elements in analysis prompts to enhance your essays. ✍️
Discover how to argue your position effectively in argument prompts. 🎯
Interactive practice helps solidify these skills—embrace the challenge! 🤓

Overview

In the AP English Language and Composition exam, understanding how to effectively break down prompts is crucial. This video guides you through the process with clear examples focused on synthesis, rhetorical analysis, and argument prompts. By identifying key elements of each prompt, you can streamline your essay-writing process and improve your response quality.

The session highlights the importance of identifying ideas within synthesis prompts to formulate a better thesis. For rhetorical analysis, students are encouraged to focus on elements such as the audience, speaker, and context to understand the purpose of the text better. Argument prompts require recognizing the context and forming a position based on the prompt's given information.

Interactive practice sessions allow learners to apply these strategies actively. By engaging with these exercises, students gain confidence in their ability to dissect prompts and construct effective responses. The session concludes with a reminder that making the prompt work for you is the ultimate goal, simplifying the AP exam process and boosting performance.

Chapters

00:00 - 10:00: Introduction and Logistics In the chapter titled 'Introduction and Logistics,' the host introduces themselves and mentions a colleague named Don who interacted with the participants the previous night. The host explains that they will be present for the current session but will not return until the following week. They intend to share their screen to outline the day's agenda and logistics.
10:00 - 30:00: How to Approach the Synthesis Prompt The chapter focuses on the methods of dissecting and understanding the synthesis prompt effectively. Before delving into the details, the speaker gives a reminder to online testers to utilize a specific top link provided on their screen. This link directs them to a program essential for practicing with the current year's online testing format.
30:00 - 45:00: Rhetorical Analysis Strategies The chapter begins with information on how to submit questions using a feedback form available in the video description. The speaker mentions they will address some of these submitted questions before diving into the main content of the chapter.
45:00 - 60:00: Argument Prompt Analysis In this chapter, the focus is on analyzing argument prompts, specifically the prompt about things being overrated. One example discussed is whether shoes can be considered overrated and if someone could argue that view. The conclusion is that there is no single way to argue such a point, and it is indeed possible to make a compelling argument on the topic, underscoring the flexibility in tackling argumentative prompts.
60:00 - 75:00: Review and Closing Remarks This chapter, titled 'Review and Closing Remarks', summarizes the main discussion points covered during a session. It emphasizes the importance of having enough evidence when writing an essay on any topic, such as shoes being overrated. The chapter further addresses feedback received from a forum, specifically about difficulties with multiple choice questions, while clarifying the focus areas of the AP Live syllabus.

2021 Live Review 2 | AP English Language and Composition | How to Break Down Prompts Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 I will be your host for today you guys got to meet my friend Don last night and I am thrilled that she was able to be able to work with you I'll be here today and then I won't be coming back until next week what I'm going to do here is I'm going to actually share my screen and we're going to talk about everything that we're going to cover with here um we're going to cover here for today so let me just share up this second screen and once again we're going to
00:30 - 01:00 talk about breaking down the problem so we're gonna we're gonna look into that but before we do what I would like to do is I'd like to remind you all that for online testers you're going to want to check out that top link right here that should be seen on your screen and I also want to remind you too for everybody else um well I should say for online testers that top link what that does is that gives you just the program that will allow you to actually um practice with the online testing program for this year so you want to
01:00 - 01:30 check that out if you have questions about online testing that's not entirely what we're doing here with the AP live but you can put it in the feedback form which is actually found in the description of the video down below so what that means is if you have questions for me or questions for Don to answer you can actually go into the description down below and find a feedback form and that will bring you to a Google form you can enter that and we'll actually try to address questions the next day and that's actually where I'm going to start here today because we did indeed get two questions yesterday that I will answer briefly before I get into what I want to
01:30 - 02:00 do with you all today and that is to actually look at how we can break down the prompts okay so one of the questions that uh was received yesterday uh Dom went over the prompt about the argument prompted about being overrated um and honestly the question that was received was you know is there a specific way that you would have to answer that question um to make it more argumentative and the question actually asked can we you know if a person thought shoes were overrated could the person argue that and the answer is absolutely yes there's no one way to answer the question you
02:00 - 02:30 just have to make sure that you can write a paper about it so if you were to actually talk about shoes being overrated just make sure that you have enough evidence to prove that shoes are overrated for an entire essay so that's one of the questions that we had here so I just wanted to address that another quick question that I'd like to address here from the feedback Forum from yesterday actually talks about struggling with multiple choice and uh multiple choices not one of the AP live things that we're going to focus on WE they have released a syllabus for that but the question itself actually revolved around you know eliminating
02:30 - 03:00 answers and whatnot so before I go in I'm just going to tell you some of the things that I've noticed super quickly about that um eliminating answers right when you're taking multiple choice exam the other the wrong answers are meant to distract you I have noticed that the the distractors typically come in uh Common forms and there are a couple characteristics that I want you to just think about as you take your next multiple choice practice test um or um you know multiple choice assignment one of the things that you want to look
03:00 - 03:30 for is a lead distractor which is the wrong answer that is trying to distract you from the right answer the most a lot of times does have a little bit of true information in it but it also contains false information so you want if you find an answer when you're like I know that that's true look for where it's also actually falls okay sometimes lead distractors also might have entirely true information but it's not true in the context of the actual question itself so you might be able to find some textual evidence for the answer but it's not related to the question stem that
03:30 - 04:00 you're actually answering so you want to try to not be distracted by that and another one is sometimes uh the lead distractor is almost like a more abstract form of the best answer which is much more concrete so an example would be you might get a um a question that says you know what's the most uh you know what's the effect of so-and-so's joke in the fifth paragraph and one of the answers might say something along the lines of oh to make uh the audience emotional and then the next answer might be in order
04:00 - 04:30 to get people to laugh notice one of them is a much more abstract version of the correct answer which would be to get people to laugh and that typically seems to be the pattern now that's not you know Dogma from the College Board that's just from my experience and looking at things as a teacher but I want to make sure that I just address those questions with you all uh before I got into my session because the feedback form is alive and well and we will take a little time to do that but with that being said we're going to actually now continue uh we're going to continue my presentation as we talk about answering the prompt um
04:30 - 05:00 and really what I want to talk about here today is the idea of what AP actually stands for so uh my friend Don who you met last night she actually tipped the tip the hand a little bit for today but when I asked my students what AP actually stands for sometimes they you know tell me it's Agony and pain with Freitas right other times I'm like no I think you guys think it stands for apathy and procrastination all right um I might have a couple people that think it stands for advanced placement
05:00 - 05:30 but honestly as you know Ms Knight said yesterday it stands for answer the prompt and the truth is is that if we know how to read The Prompt really well we will indeed be able to answer the prompt really well and so that's what we're going to do here today we're going to talk about how the prompt can actually be our most helpful tool um in getting us to be able to provide the best answer and we can get the prompt to do a lot of our work for us to make it easier to read in synthesis to
05:30 - 06:00 make it easier to produce a complex thesis to make it easier to read our rhetorical analysis essay and then write our rhetorical analysis essay and also to collect our thoughts in relation to responding to the argument prop so we're going to go through all of that one other thing that I want to just point out before I get into the in depth of what we're going to go into here today is that I am going to actually put some QR codes up on the screen so if you have a uh if you have a phone you could take a picture of that QR code and go to the polling site that I'm going to use now
06:00 - 06:30 there is a little bit of a delay from me presenting and from you polling so we're going to try to see if we can get this to be interactive and live and you know it might be a little trial and error here so I just ask that you all bear with me as we try this out okay but anyway let's talk about the prompt being your most helpful tool why is that the case well let's break it down into question one question two and question three so question one is our synthesis question okay and the prompt can be an
06:30 - 07:00 incredibly helpful tool in question one especially if we look at the introductory information that comes before the prompt and the reason why is because that's the best place to search for ideas that you're going to want to argue in your paper and it's going to also help you search for ideas that you can then create conversations between in relation to uh reading the sources themselves and I'll talk about that and I'll give you an example of that in just a few minutes okay and when we think about these ideas that show up in the intro to the synthesis prompt it's going to make my
07:00 - 07:30 planning of the essay come through a lot uh more strongly I guess for the lack of a better term for question two we want to find that the introductory information in the prompt is a great place to look for elements of the rhetorical situation because honestly if you don't understand the rhetorical situation particularly The Audience by the way but if you don't understand that rhetorical situation it's going to make it much harder to actually understand what you're reading and then provide commentary on what you're reading and how it was effective
07:30 - 08:00 also in the prompt itself sometimes there's either they tell you what part of the purpose of the piece is or they at least give you enough of a hint so that you can figure out what the purpose actually is for example if a prompt actually you know mentions it being a eulogy well what's the purpose of a eulogy to honor someone and then to make other people you know reflect on that person fondly so if it says eulogy right in there then sure enough I can now know what I'm reading for in what places is
08:00 - 08:30 this person honored so we want to know that that introductory information can really help us understand the task that is going to happen and it's going to make reading a lot easier now when it comes to question three which is our argument prompt right this particular kind of bit of introductory information that's often given provides two things for you right and that would be immediate exigence right so it might provide you with a um with a situation you have to immediately respond to but
08:30 - 09:00 it also might provide you with a position that somebody else has taken on the issue or multiple positions that someone has taken on the issue and then you can decide where do I fit in that that helps kind of be a springboard for your thoughts and every prompt has some introductory information and then after that information they always have a command and that's what we're going to use today as well to talk about how will this actually help me generate a better stronger essay if I can find the command of that prompt and then create questions for
09:00 - 09:30 myself to answer and that's what we really want to focus on here today because if we can generate questions from that command easy questions that's going to make us that's going to allow us to know that our thesis is going to answer that and we can then answer the prompt because if our question that we're answering comes from the prompt we will be answering the prompt which of course is what AP stands for so let's uh let's start looking at uh some examples here okay so what's going to happen is
09:30 - 10:00 I'm going to present I'm going to present some prompts in in his parts and I'm going to talk about what I do and then we're going to try to bring in some little interactivity in order to uh in order to get you all involved with practicing this on your own okay so let's look at question one first so we're gonna actually uh I wanna refer to the 2019 synthesis prompt and the prompt has two parts here okay it has the introduction and the command now they're not always separated like this okay sometimes they are but not always
10:00 - 10:30 um so what you want to do is you want to just recognize that although I'm showing you these prompts in separated forms sometimes they're together but they still have two parts the introduction and the command and now um we're going to actually work with both of these parts separately so let me go here all right when I look at the introductory part of the synthesis prompt this is where they start to contextualize things for us and what I want to encourage you to do is I want to encourage you to look at idea words that show up in the prompt ideas those are
10:30 - 11:00 things that are intangible right um you know things that you can't actually experience with your census we want to focus on those ideas so let's read our prompt here and then we're going to say okay what ideas show up or what's some language that points to an idea so I have in response to our society's increasing demand for energy large scale wind power has drawn attention from governments and consumers as a potential alternative to traditional materials that fuel our
11:00 - 11:30 power grids such as coal oil natural gas water or even newer sources such as nuclear or solar power yet the establishment of large-scale commercial-grade winds Farms is often the subject of controversy for a variety of reasons so I'm not going to the net I'm not going to the command of the prompt yet what we're commanded to do to answer right now we're looking at the introduction and we're going to say okay what's some language that relates to some ideas here okay that we can pull
11:30 - 12:00 out and I'm going to actually just bring this up right here this is the language that I circled right increasing demand relates to ideas energy relates to ideas government relates to ideas consumers relate to ideas alternative power relates to idea and traditional that we're traditional relates to the idea of tradition and then we have large-scale commercial grade elements here all of this language relates to ideas and you will see why we want to focus on ideas
12:00 - 12:30 in just a moment okay but when I look at the language that I have highlighted in these circles up here right if I look at the language of like demand and consumers right we're talking about economics okay that's the idea that we're looking at here so now we know that this I you know if we're talking about wind power we are talking about economics when I look at the word government well government itself is an idea right but what is government also imply in terms of an idea Authority okay
12:30 - 13:00 the word traditional is circled because that relates to the idea of tradition I circled alternative power and the reason why we talk about alternative power is because we're looking for sustainable practices here sustainable energy sources so I put sustainability as the idea and then I looked at the language that said large scale and commercial grade you know production that relates to industrialization okay and so now when we talk about large-scale energy production you know people have to help
13:00 - 13:30 produce that as well and set things up for that so we're talking about employment so what's really nice here is you'll notice that there are a lot of ideas that this prompt and intro information relates to now that can help us as readers because now when I start thinking about how I'm going to formulate my argument when I think about what I'm commanded to do I can now say Okay I want to formulate my argument around these ideas that are listed in blue down at the bottom here and like I said I'll give you an example of how we do that in just a few moments okay the
13:30 - 14:00 other thing too is that I might have a paper that or sorry I might read a source that relates to economics and sustainability and I might see that Source a relates to economics and sustainability and so does Source D and at that point I can realize those sources can actually converse with one another why because they're about the same ideas and then I just need to figure out do they complement one another do they not do they you know compete with one another do they contradict one another and then I can start formulating my ideas based on that
14:00 - 14:30 so the first thing we want to do when we get our synthesis prompt in order to break it down to make it work for us read the language uh read that intro star the intro part and say okay what language is either an idea itself or points to ideas and pick those out the next thing that we want to do is we want to find where our Command element is and we want to generate a question to answer now I want to point out that it's best if the question that we answer starts with what and I'm going to tell you why because if I ask you what your
14:30 - 15:00 favorite food is you're going to be able to tell me right away but if I ask you why it's your favorite food you're going to be thinking about it a little bit more and then if I say how do you know it's your favorite food you're going to be thinking about a little bit more why and how are much harder to answer than what so if we create what questions from our prompts we'll know immediately what we have to answer as our response and that's a great thing for us to do okay so I'm going to the next part of my synthesis prompt which is where we're commanded to write our paper and what's
15:00 - 15:30 going to happen here is I'm going to say okay I'm going to generate a question that starts with what and I have to answer that question in my thesis as an invite thesis clearly answers that question I can write the paper that answers the prompt so let's read this here it says carefully read the following six sources including the introductory information for each Source write an essay that synthesizes material from at least three of the sources and develops your position on the most important factors that an individual or agency should consider when deciding
15:30 - 16:00 whether to establish a wind farm okay so what do I do here well when I get a question like this or a prompt like this I need to find out exactly what I'm commanded to do in my paper and with synthesis it's going to start with the same word every time develops okay so I just highlighted that here in blue this is what I'm actually commanded to do develop your position on the most important factors that an individual or agency should consider when deciding whether to establish a wind farm good
16:00 - 16:30 now I'm going to turn this into a question that I have to answer with my thesis by asking what can't I know until I have read the sources and projected my argument okay and I'm just going to look at all the language and I'm going to say what can't what do I have to identify as my argument right I know that I'm talking about wind farms I know that I'm talking about deciding to establish wind farms I know that we're talking about what needs to be considered but I don't quite know yet I haven't pinpointed for myself
16:30 - 17:00 what the most important factors are in terms of that I have to consider when I decide to establish a wind farm or not if I'm an individual or if I'm an agency and so now I've created this question that you'll see right up here on the screen that says what are the most important factors that individual or agency should consider when deciding whether or not to establish wind farms if you actually answer that question in your thesis these are the factors right you will be well on task to answering that prompt
17:00 - 17:30 now when we think about this as well with what I did before with the intro element of the prompt itself notice what happens here what are the answers to this question what are the most important factors that we have to think about when establishing this we need to think about how this affects the economy what it does for governmental Authority what it does for a traditional for tradition what it does for sustainability what does it do for employment what does it do for industrialization I mean I'm not going to answer all of those elements as the most important factors but I because of
17:30 - 18:00 the ideas that I picked out before I can answer this question with those ideas oh it's important to figure out how the wind farm will affect the local economy and the greater sustainability because boom I've listed two factors there the local economy sustainable practices and I can say because um overall it's better for the environment and the people that surround it there is my thesis it answers the question it's got a nice unifying element at the end there
18:00 - 18:30 it's best for the community and I'm answering the prompt and I use the ideas that I generated from the beginning and I answered the question and so if we get our prompt to work with us like this we create that what question we find those ideas we're going to be in great shape now because this is live and I'd like to try to interact with you what I want to do here is I want to do some practice okay so what I'm going to do is I'm going to pull up a new prompt okay and this is a prompt about the library and what we're going to do is we're going to
18:30 - 19:00 actually I'm going to ask you to try to find some ideas in the introduction of the prompt okay so the prompts on the screen right now but I'm going to actually go to my next screen because here's the QR code I'm going to tell you what to do I want you to just go to that site right there with the QR code which is meant to meter and if you can't use the QR code just go to mentee.com and put in the code that's there and I want you all to vote uh based on the question that I'm going to actually ask you so right now we're going to look at the introductory information of this prompt
19:00 - 19:30 it's says as the internet age changes what and how people read there has been considerable debate about the future of public libraries while some commentators question whether libraries can stay relevant others see new possibilities for libraries in the changing dynamics of today's society so all I'm going to do here is I am going to um I'm going to think about this what are the ideas that seem to show up here okay
19:30 - 20:00 and what we want to to deal with here is we want to try to say okay what what is not an idea that the following prompt relates to okay so why don't you just log in there um and try to pull that up on uh on meant to meter okay so people can interact like that I'll pull up the data in a little bit okay but I have to actually go ahead because like I said there's a little bit of a delay we'll come back to this but we're going to move to our next question okay our next
20:00 - 20:30 question is developing that what question that we're looking for from our Command okay so some of you might be there and you might be voting for The ideas go on ahead and do that okay um and sure enough let's talk about our Command though so the command for this problem says carefully read the following six sources including your introductory information for each Source write an essay that synthesizes material from at least three of the sources and develops your position on oh it should say on the extent to which I had a I had a typo there I
20:30 - 21:00 apologize right uh and uh in which you develop your position on the roll if any that public libraries should serve in the future you'll have to forgive me for the typo here uh that that was that a lot of eyes looked at this and it got through forgive us please but anyway if we look at where it says develop your position right here okay this develop your position if any that the public library should serve in the future I'm going to ask that you go to this polling page and
21:00 - 21:30 tell me what is the question that we want to generate here okay so I'm going to give you time to do that and while you're doing that I'm going to go back to the ideas and we'll pull over the data that you guys actually suggested here all right so of all of the ideas okay which does this what's not an idea that the library prompt relates to okay and sure enough 58 of participants here said exploration is the idea that it does not relate to and that is absolutely correct okay
21:30 - 22:00 libraries are full of books right the libraries are going to be somewhat tied to education that's why you have them in your school even though they're called media centers now the word Society actually shows up in the prompt we talk about the role of libraries so we need to see this idea of adaptation in the internet age right what's the possibility of what comes through right our libraries right relevant all of this language here that's up here right now of all of them exploration is the one that is at least included in the prompt
22:00 - 22:30 I'd kind of have to force it to get exploration there so uh for all y'all out there that just uh worked with me I really appreciate that okay uh for for chiming in okay now what I'm going to do is I'm going to jump over um and I'm going to look at the the what question that we want to generate from the prompts that we have to answer here so we're going to switch my slide back to that's not what I wanted to do I wanted to get here [Music]
22:30 - 23:00 um this is what happens um there we go sorry I had to pull up the right slide um and we'll bring it back over okay the what question right we want to remember that the what question is the question that we're looking for and so with this one it is to what extent will libraries exist in the future that is not the what question we're looking for we can't ask to what extent when it's appropriate but this is not one of those times the next we have what changes should be made to
23:00 - 23:30 the public libraries okay um that's not actually taking the language from The Prompt itself we'll go back to that in just a minute okay this is a how question we don't want that to be our question here that's going to be one of those ones that's harder to answer and then really I'm glad that 91 percent of participants filled this in because this is indeed the correct answer what is the role of public libraries in the future that's what you have to answer with your thesis if your thesis can tell me what libraries need to do in the future even if you were to say libraries in the future need to be
23:30 - 24:00 social hubs of Education it's a simple thesis but it's going to answer the prompt and that's what you argue throughout your paper so that is excellent so we want to realize that the props can and will indeed answer um you know provide elements for us to answer these questions and in doing so that gives us a better opportunity to know that our thesis is on task okay and it just so happens that all of our prompts can do this so we're going to actually shift to rhetorical analysis
24:00 - 24:30 and what's nice about rhetorical analysis is this makes the rhetorical analysis task which most students struggle with the most much much much much easier if we do it this way if we break it down to introduction and whatnot but there we do have to change things for the rhetorical analysis so I'm going to review that with you here Okay so we've got the prompt and its parts for rhetorical analysis okay and we've got introductory information and we've got our Command now I would like to remind you all that the prompt for you know isn't always split up like this
24:30 - 25:00 but it does have these parts so just don't go into your AP exam thinking that it's going to be split very clearly for you it'll just look like a singular paragraph at times okay but anyway we've got the prompt in its parts and we're gonna uh my my intro uh here is going to be about um I think this was on the 2016 exam um and it says on June 11 2004 Margaret Thatcher the former Prime Minister of Great Britain delivered the following eulogy to the American people in honor
25:00 - 25:30 of former United States President Ronald Reagan um with whom she had worked closely another typo I can't even believe it oh my goodness um anyway just know even I'm not perfect okay it says read the passage carefully and then it says write an essay that analyzes the rhetorical choices that Thatcher makes to convey her message um so that's our full prompt here okay and what we're going to do is we are going to um come through here and we're going to
25:30 - 26:00 break this down okay when you break down the introductory information in the rhetorical analysis prompt okay what you want to do is you want to find elements of the rhetorical situation so what actually shows up in here right the audience is incredibly important and the reason why is because to provide rhetorical analysis commentary you need to put yourself in the shoes of the audience and you need to say okay if I were this type of audience this language would move me to understand this and do this because right so in here it tells
26:00 - 26:30 us our audience it's the American people okay we have our speaker we want to identify who that is it's Margaret Thatcher if you could identify any elements of that speaker's character or position or authority it's best to locate that and then we want to look for context and exigence in here so I've got my audience I've got my speaker I want to find my contacts and exigence okay and then sure enough we have some context that happened in 2004 it was on June 11th um and this was certainly well after
26:30 - 27:00 Ronald Reagan for those who know history this is you know um over about 15 years um passed when he actually served uh as president because he was president and you know throughout the 80s and whatnot so we're well past that um and we want to realize that Thatcher was invited to give the eulogy at Reagan's public funeral that also implies of course that Reagan had had passed um and then we want to say can we identify the subject here and of course because it's eulogy the subject what is she actually talking about it's Reagan's
27:00 - 27:30 life uh and his consequent death and the Legacy that comes with it and we know that because it's a eulogy and that's going to help us actually pick out elements of purpose now all of that comes straight from the prompt so that's great because when I'm reading if I know the purpose is to honor the deceased and kind of Honor this Legacy I just say good what's the language that shows that she's honoring this man's Legacy and why she would do that okay um so I could pull a lot of that information from The Prompt the next thing that I want to do is I want to go
27:30 - 28:00 to the command element there and I want to create a question that I can answer by reading the essay this is going to give me a question to answer not only in my thesis but also to actually read the essay so I want to find this question before I read this eulogy okay and what I'm going to do is I'm going to look for um the part of the um I'm going to look for the part of the prompt that tells me to do something and here it says analyzes the rhetorical choices that Thatcher makes to convey her
28:00 - 28:30 message just like with the synthesis prompt we always want to look for develops a position okay for this particular prompt we want to look for the word analyzes okay and so because of that um when we uh get a question two our Command here is analyzes and we're going to go to the very end and we're going to say what can't I know besides the rhetorical choices of course we have to find the rhetorical choices but what else can I know and if I look from analyzes to the end of the sentence here I don't know what her message is yet so
28:30 - 29:00 now I have a question that I have to answer when I read The Prompt luckily because of the work that I did before right I can guess what her message might be because she's talking about Reagan's life and death and this is a eulogy but I now know I need to make sure when I read The Prompt that's what I have to do okay and so now that's how you break down a rhetorical analysis prompt right uh but I you know it's my hope to you all that you don't include typos in your uh when you do things like that I'm so
29:00 - 29:30 sorry right how embarrassing but I'm only human I guess right um so now though we're gonna do the exact same thing that we uh looked at last time and we're going to try to practice this okay so we're gonna look at the introductory information and we're gonna try to say okay what are the elements of the rhetorical situation with the new prompt so our prompt this time is going to be about Florence Kelly here okay and with Florence Kelly um here it says she was a United States social worker and reformer who fought successfully for child labor laws and
29:30 - 30:00 approved conditions for working women she delivered the following speech before the convention of the national American women's suffrage association in Philadelphia on July 22nd 1905. and the prompt itself tells us to read the passage carefully and write an essay that analyzes the rhetorical choices Kelly makes to convey her message about child labor to her audience so what we're going to do is we're going to go back or should I say repeat the same process as last time we'll start here and we've got a question right at the
30:00 - 30:30 top of this page and it says which of the following is not part of the rhetorical situation um that shows up in the introduction of this prompt and that's the prompt that I just read so if you want to go to mentimeter here and actually uh type in some of those answers right uh which of the following of our possible answers here is not part of the rhetorical situation based on what is given in the introduction and we have just Florence Kelly part of the rhetorical situation the working conditions were poor uh
30:30 - 31:00 Speech uh at the National American women suffrage association Kelly was a social worker uh the Industrial Revolution or all of the above are part of the rhetorical situation so why don't you just chime in let's get some data to come in there as we wait for people to participate with that let's actually do the next part let's create that what question that we would want to answer uh while we read the paper and then also include the answer in our thesis so let's go over to this one this is
31:00 - 31:30 another question that you guys can respond to here then we have our Command read the passage carefully and then write an essay that analyzes the rhetorical choices that Kelly makes to convey her message about child labor to her audience and we want to know what's the question we want to generate that's going to help us read now the reason why we want to do this folks is just like I've got five children so here's my example for this we want to do this because if I were to say to my five kids go into the candy store pick up what you want they're going to see all that candy floating
31:30 - 32:00 around and they'll be like I want this this this this this this this and this right and they're going to change their mind especially if I say you can only pick out three types and there's 50 options but if I before we go in say hey what's your favorite type of candy good we're gonna go in that store and you pick out only that candy they're going to be much more willing to go in pick out their candy and although there's a bunch of other stuff around they're gonna just pick out that candy well this question is kind of like me saying to my children pick out your you know pick out your candy before you go in this question says what are you
32:00 - 32:30 actually reading for and if you can say what the answer to this question is by the time that you're done reading we can then do all of the rhetoric and it becomes super super simple okay so let's pull up some of the answers here that you guys had we'll talk about the rhetorical situation first okay and it says which of the following is not an immediate part of the rhetorical situation now interestingly enough this was my lead distractor the Industrial Revolution in fact all of this is part of the rhetorical situation I guess I
32:30 - 33:00 should have clarified my answer and say and said the tail end of the Industrial Revolution and particularly because you know the Industrial Revolution was really you know you know about a century before but the tail end of it up into World War one was definitely affecting things right here in 1905. now it doesn't say Industrial Revolution in the prompt but it does give us the date that this happened in 1905. so if you have a historical knowledge and you see a date you want to bring in your historical context there and that would have allowed us to see that yeah the
33:00 - 33:30 Industrial Revolution is indeed still pertinent even if it was the tail end and because of that we want to know that the rhetorical situation that's given to us is actually all of these parts that are right up here okay now when it comes to the conquer question uh the question that's going to allow us to conquer our reading here okay that what question don't forget we want to try to use the word what okay and it's interesting because most of you fell for it all right when we create
33:30 - 34:00 these what questions from the prompt when it comes to rhetorical analysis it's going to be way better if we create our what question to help us read The Prompt for thinking about the purpose in general and so what that means here is the one that has the the yellow on the page here what is Kelly's message about child labor that is the better question to ask here's why because the rhetorical choices are going to be in the paper no matter what but in order for me to
34:00 - 34:30 figure out those rhetorical choices I need to first know what her message about child labor is and so if I can find out that message I can then say good what three pieces of text got me to understand that her message is that child labor is atrocious and that women's voting rights could help stop it once I know that then I've answered that question and that's what I'm reading for what is her message I read it I get to the end and I'm like wow child labor is terrible and because of that uh sorry and women's voting rates could actually
34:30 - 35:00 help um you know put an end to it I can then say great what three pieces of text got me to that understanding and then my essay all it has to do is explain how those three pieces of text conveyed that message that how did it get me to that understanding or if I were actually in that audience and I were a woman you know fighting for voting rights how would that get me to that understanding and sure enough that's why the question here what is Kelly's message about child labor is the better question to ask than what
35:00 - 35:30 rhetorical choices convey Kelly's message because in order to figure out the rhetorical choices we got to figure out her message first okay um so that's why that one that one was a little tricky uh because if you actually look at the very end here you could actually say you know I don't know the rhetorical choices yet yes but you also don't know her message about child labor yet either and that one's more important because then we can just work backwards okay all right we've got question three here we're going to keep going through all right so we're going to uh pull that up
35:30 - 36:00 as we speak question three we're gonna look at it the same exact way as we've looked at these other questions um and here's an example of question three with the prompt and it's Parts okay this question comes from 2018 I'll just show you what I'm going to do here and this uh introduction and command for a um for an argument prompt once again is meant to help us find context and exigence for ourselves and perspectives that we can kind of use as springboards for our own ideas so this comes from 2018 it says enter book The Gift of this
36:00 - 36:30 from the C author and Aviator Ian Morrow Lindbergh writes we tend not to choose the unknown which might be a shock or a disappointment or simply a little difficult to cope with and yet it's the unknown with all its disappointments um and surprises that is the most enriching okay then it says write an essay that argues your position on the value of the unknown so there we have it here okay when I look at the context um for the prompt and I look at the
36:30 - 37:00 intro part I'm looking for context and positions I read it and I say okay what's my context what's my ex against what's what's the prompt I'm responding to what's kind of going on here that's pushing me to say something besides the fact I'm taking an AP exam and here's some of the background information that I have a famous author an aviator named airmar Lindbergh wrote about the Unknown super cool what's my other exigence here I need to develop an argument response for my exam okay what are the positions about the unknown that are presented in the prompt well people are often shocked
37:00 - 37:30 by it sometimes they're disappointed by it it's difficult to work with hey the unknown is surprising but it's those surprises that can also be enriching and therefore the unknown might be enriching now all this will get me to start thinking about my idea towards that okay and then I have my command which is write an essay that argues your position on the value of exploring the unknown so I've got all of this kind of context and perspective sorry and position to think about from The Prompt itself and I'm like do I
37:30 - 38:00 agree with that do I agree with some of that do I agree with none of that and now I need to start thinking about my position okay and I need to now look at this command and I need to say okay what's the verb that they're giving me to do in this essay and that's argue so in question three you're always looking for the word argue so in question one it's develop a position on in question two it's analyze and then in question three it's argue your position on okay and I need to say to myself okay argues your position on and I say okay what do I have to figure out in order to
38:00 - 38:30 create a question to answer for my thesis okay and I go to that word argues we highlight it there and I create this question what do I have to actually make a statement about what is the value of exploring the unknown if my thesis is there's value in exploring the unknown I have not answered the prompt I need to actually say what that value is and if I say the value of exploring the unknown is an increased self-identity then excellent we are in great shape that is
38:30 - 39:00 a thesis that you can then respond to in your paper okay so once again there are a couple typos in there I don't know how I got that mixed up um especially with my copy editing and whatnot please forgive me again but I might as well comment on it because um I want to just admit my faults here because they happen um but anyway uh let's actually practice this out here for you uh with the last kind of few minutes that we have left okay and so we're going to look at a
39:00 - 39:30 different prompt this is about from HL making this comes from the 2011 exam we want to identify context and agents and positions in our prompt here so let's look at the introductory element it says American essayist and social critic H.L Makin wrote the average man does not want to be free he simply wants to be safe then it says write an essay that argues your position on the extent to which menken's observation applies to contemporary Society okay so what we're going to do is we're
39:30 - 40:00 going to go to our next page and we're going to say okay which of the following is not part of the context or a position that is presented in the introductory information of this prompt so we have our introductory information again American essayist and social critic H.L menkin wrote the average man does not want to be free he simply wants to be safe and we've got our QR code here what are our possible answers right the early mid the early to mid 1900s were always full of turmoil H.O Makin
40:00 - 40:30 was a social critic mankind values Freedom over safety making statement May apply to contemporary Society you should have something to say about macon's position so what one of those is not actually part of the context or exodance or a position that's presented here so you can just scan in on that or you can go to mentee.com and use the code and let's see if we can get some answers in here okay and while you're kind of considering that I'm going to actually switch my slide over here uh just so
40:30 - 41:00 that we can collect some data on the delay and then come back so the next one here is um what is what are the best questions to generate from The Prompt that we have to answer in our thesis to make sure that our paper is heading in the right direction so we can answer the prompt so the command is write an essay that argues your position on the extent to which menken's observation applies to contemporary Society so we want to look at where it says argue is your position to the end of that sentence and then we
41:00 - 41:30 want to say okay what is it that I have to answer in my thesis our options are as follows how does making convey his observation why does this matter or what is Megan's observation and to what extent does this apply to contemporary Society or why does making make this observation and what does it mean in relation to my position so you can actually check that out and you can go to mentimeter and vote on that let's go back and look at the context
41:30 - 42:00 here up I'm going the wrong direction let's go back and look at the context here okay and we'll look at this question first where we have what is not part of the context we'll pull up our data here all right mankind so we're trying to say what's not part of the exigence or a position in the prompt itself um it is true actually so this one this red one here has 45 right mankind values Freedom over safety that is actually making's position itself so
42:00 - 42:30 that is not the right answer here the correct answer is that part of the exigence and context for us to write is not is knowing that the early mid to 1900s were full of always full of turmoil that actually has nothing to do with us being able to respond to this prompt I don't need to understand that in order to actually respond to this prompt um in fact the truth is look at what it says here the early to mid 1900s were always full of turmoil can we say always were they always full of turmoil No in
42:30 - 43:00 fact the moment that somebody had any element of a good life in the from 1900 to 1950 there's no turmoil in that person's life at that moment so we can't say the word always there and that's why this is actually the part that's not the context um these are all either elements of context or positions that show up in the prompt we want to be able to break that down but more importantly okay we want to know what are the questions that we want to answer in our thesis okay and we
43:00 - 43:30 get to our Command and we say okay what do I have to identify in my thesis and it looks like most of you are nailing this one for sure when we look at the prompt itself it doesn't tell us what Lincoln's observation is right there in the command so we need to make sure that in our thesis we identify what the observation is we don't have to tie it to Macon but we have to identify what it is we also need to make sure that we relate it to contemporary Society to what extent does this actually apply to contemporary society and we need to make sure that we articulate both of those in our thesis and if we do that we will know that we are indeed uh answering the
43:30 - 44:00 prompt which is exactly what we're trying to do all right so let's review this here okay this little chart that's on the screen right now tells us how you actually want to break down each product we for synthesis read the indirect information locate the words that deal with ideas develop your what question from the command and then know that you have to answer that what question when you write your uh when you write your thesis same thing happens with rhetorical analysis but we want to find elements of the rhetorical situation not ideas okay and we want to find the what
44:00 - 44:30 question that gets us to the bigger uh moment we cannot we know we have to look for rhetorical choices but we also want to realize we need to figure out what the message is of that person to the audience so whatever that prompt looks like we want to say okay what is Thatcher's message to the American people what is Florence Kelly's message about child labor and then we have argument three what's the context what's the exigence for me to write what are some positions I can build upon and what's the what question I have to answer from the actual prompt itself
44:30 - 45:00 okay so the easiest way to answer the prompt is by making the prompt work for you and so please make sure that you do so okay and honestly I won't be back until next week but I appreciate you all participating with me on mental meter we'll try to bring that in next week as well I'm super grateful and I really appreciate you all watching I look forward to hearing from you and uh and seeing you next week