A band director learns that the practice field is being repaved and rehearsals will move to the middle school's parking lot for three weeks. She has to write about it three times: to the students, to their parents, and to the middle-school principal whose lot she is borrowing. The fact is the same in all three messages, and almost nothing else is. Students need the time and what to bring, parents need the pickup spot, and the principal needs to hear that the band will be gone before her buses arrive and will leave the lot clean. Topic 1.1 taught you to reconstruct a writer's situation from a finished text. Writing runs that analysis forward: you start from the situation and let it decide what goes on the page.
Your situation, from the writer's seat
The six parts of the rhetorical situation from Topic 1.1 turn into six questions you answer before you draft. Each answer settles a different set of choices.
| Part | The question you ask yourself | What the answer decides |
|---|---|---|
| Exigence | Why does this need writing now? | What you open with; what you can assume the reader has already heard |
| Audience | Who will read it, what do they already know, what do they care about, and where do they differ from one another? | What you explain, what you skip, which evidence will count with them |
| Purpose | What should be different after they read it? | What you ask for, and so what every paragraph builds toward |
| Context | Where and when will it appear, and on what occasion? | Length, formality, and form: a text message, a letter to the editor, a speech at a ceremony |
| Writer | What position am I speaking from, and what authority does it give me or deny me? | How you present yourself; what you must prove and what readers will take on trust |
| Message | What one idea should the reader be able to repeat afterward? | What stays in and what gets cut |
The answers constrain each other. The audience decides which purposes are realistic: a letter to the school board can ask for a vote, while a letter to classmates can't, though it can ask them to come to the board meeting and speak. The writer's position decides how much proof the message needs: a pharmacist who says a medicine is safe gets credit in advance that a student writing the same sentence would have to earn with evidence.
What the situation decides
What to explain and what to assume. This is the audience's knowledge at work. Give newcomers too little background and they get lost; give insiders too much and they get bored or feel talked down to. A hiking club's newsletter can say "take the blue blazes to the ridge." A flyer for people who have never hiked needs "follow the blue paint marks on the trees (hikers call them blazes) up to the ridge," and the same gloss in the club newsletter would sound condescending. The test for any term or step is whether this reader could act on the sentence without asking a question.
Which evidence counts. Audiences trust different kinds of support. A city council deciding whether to pay for a crosswalk weighs cost, liability, and how many residents benefit, so a count of pedestrians at rush hour and the intersection's accident record belong up front. Neighbors deciding whether to sign a petition respond faster to the morning a driver nearly hit a child at that corner. Both pieces of evidence can appear in either text; the audience decides which one leads and how much room each gets. Unit 2 goes much further into how arguments appeal to an audience's beliefs, values, and needs.
How formal, how long, and in what form. Context sets expectations before you write a word. A letter to the editor has a word limit and a public readership; a toast at a retirement dinner is short, warm, and spoken aloud; an email to a facilities director is brief and businesslike. "Hey, the ramp by the gym is busted again lol" might be fine in a group chat and fails as a request to the person who controls the repair budget, because it tells her the writer doesn't take the problem seriously.
What to ask for, and where to say why. Purpose turns into a request, and a request works when it is specific and something this audience can actually do. "Please care about the creek" asks for nothing; "come to the cleanup on April 12, gloves provided" asks for one thing a reader can say yes to. The exigence usually belongs near the start, because it answers the reader's first question, which is why they are reading this now. Unit 4 covers introductions and conclusions in detail.
How you sound as the writer. Your position is a resource and sometimes a problem. A student writing to adults has firsthand knowledge they lack and no authority over them, so the student's best move is usually to state that experience briefly ("I've worked the concession stand at every home game for two seasons") and let it carry the facts. Mention your position only when it bears on the argument; a résumé in the first paragraph is not the same as credibility.
Revising a draft for a stated goal
The exam's multiple-choice writing questions give you a student's draft with numbered sentences and ask how to improve it. A stem can hand you a piece of the rhetorical situation in the question itself: "The writer wants to...," "The writer intends the passage for readers who...," "The writer learns that the passage will appear in...". That stem is the situation, and the right answer is the choice that does the stated job for the stated audience, not the choice that is most interesting or best written in general.
A method that holds up:
- Find the goal in the stem and state it narrowly: what the revision must do (explain a term, address a concern, appeal to a group, set up what follows) and for whom.
- Read the sentences around the spot in the draft, so you know what the reader has and hasn't been told at that point.
- Test each choice against the goal, not the topic. A wrong choice can be entirely on topic and still fail because it does a different job (adds an interesting fact when the goal was to explain), suits a different reader (uses insider terms for newcomers), or repeats what the draft already said.
Keep-or-delete questions ("Should the writer keep or delete sentence 9?") give four choices, each pairing a decision with a reason. More than one choice can carry the decision you settle on, so the decision alone doesn't pick the answer. Work out the reason first: does the sentence serve the purpose for this audience, and if not, what exactly is wrong with it? Then choose the answer whose reason is true of the passage.
Change-of-audience questions move the draft to a new reader or venue ("The writer decides to send the passage to the principal rather than publish it for students"). Ask what the new reader needs that the old one didn't, and what the draft contains that the new reader doesn't need or might take badly. The right revision changes the background, the request, or the register to fit the new reader, and leaves the message intact.
Worked examples
You are a junior who has worked the concession stand at your school's home football games for two seasons. The athletic boosters, a group of parent volunteers who run the stand, have announced that because the stand's old fryer is unsafe, they will stop selling hot food and sell only packaged snacks. Their next meeting is Thursday. From the stand's sales records you know that hot dogs and nachos brought in about $3,000 of last season's roughly $4,000 in sales, and that the profit pays for buses to away games. A hot-dog roller and a cheese warmer, which use no oil, would cost about $400 together.
Lay out your rhetorical situation, name the choices it leads to, and write the email.
Show solution
The situation. The exigence is the boosters' announcement, with a decision likely on Thursday. The audience is parent volunteers who share a concern for safety (the reason for their decision) and for the teams' budget, and who may differ on how much extra work they are willing to take on. The purpose is to get them to replace the fryer instead of ending hot food, and the immediate step is a few minutes on Thursday's agenda. The context is an email to a volunteer group a few days before a meeting, so it should be short and polite. The writer is a student with firsthand knowledge of the sales and no authority over the adults. The message is that hot food can be kept safely and cheaply, and it pays for the buses.
The choices that follow.
- Agree with the safety concern first. The boosters made their decision for that reason; opening with disagreement would put them on the defensive and miss the value you share with them.
- Lead with the numbers. A group that manages a budget responds to sales figures, and your position at the counter is what makes those figures credible coming from you.
- Ask for something small and specific: five minutes on Thursday, not a reversal by email.
The email.
Dear Boosters, I've worked the concession stand at every home game for the past two seasons, and I agree the old fryer has to go. Before we switch to packaged snacks only, I'd ask you to consider a hot-dog roller and a cheese warmer, which use no oil and cost about $400 together. Hot dogs and nachos brought in about $3,000 of last season's $4,000 in sales, and that money pays for our away-game buses. Could I have five minutes at Thursday's meeting to walk through the numbers? Thank you, Maya Chen, Class of 2028
Each sentence maps to a part of the situation: the first establishes the writer and the shared value, the second names the alternative so the decision isn't all-or-nothing, the third gives the evidence this audience weighs, and the fourth makes the purpose into a request they can grant. Nothing in it is there for any other reason.
A cycling club printed this notice in its members' newsletter:
Saturday's no-drop ride leaves Corbin Park at 8. Expect 25 miles at 14 to 16 mph, rolling terrain, one cat 4 climb on Hollis Road. Regroup at the top. Helmets mandatory; bring two bottles and a spare tube.
The club now wants to send it to the high school newspaper to invite students who have never been on a group ride. Revise it for that audience and explain each change.
Show solution
The revision.
Never ridden with a group? This Saturday's ride is built for you. It's a "no-drop" ride, which means nobody gets left behind: the group waits for the slowest rider. We leave Corbin Park at 8 a.m. and ride 25 miles, about an hour and forty minutes of pedaling plus the regroup stop, on rolling roads with one long hill on Hollis Road, where everyone waits at the top. Wear a helmet (it's required), and bring two full water bottles and a spare inner tube, so a flat tire doesn't end your ride.
Why each change.
- The newcomers' biggest worry is being too slow, so "no-drop," which the members knew as jargon, becomes the opening promise and gets a definition. The purpose has changed from informing members to recruiting beginners, and the first sentence now does that recruiting.
- "14 to 16 mph" means nothing to someone who has never checked their speed on a bike, so the pace becomes a duration a beginner can picture. At 14 to 16 mph, 25 miles takes 94 to 107 minutes of riding, so "about an hour and forty minutes, plus the regroup stop" is accurate, and a rounder "about two hours" would quietly promise something the club didn't say.
- "Cat 4 climb" is racing vocabulary for a hill's difficulty; "one long hill" tells a beginner what to expect without a term they would have to look up.
- The members' notice assumed readers knew what a spare tube is for. The revision says so in a clause, because a beginner who doesn't know why an item is on the list may leave it home.
- A beginner would also ask questions the original never answers: what kind of bike is fine, whether there is anywhere to refill a bottle, what happens if you don't own a spare tube. A reviser doesn't invent those answers. They go back to the club to confirm, and only then into the notice; making up a rule to fill a gap changes the message.
- The message is unchanged: same ride, same time, same route, same rules. Only what the reader needs to act on it is different.
The passage below is a draft written for the general readers of a county newspaper.
(1) Every second Saturday from April to October, a dozen volunteers wade into Alder Creek with nets, buckets, and clipboards. (2) They are counting macroinvertebrates. (3) The count matters because some of these animals can survive only in clean, well-oxygenated water, while others tolerate pollution. (4) When the sensitive species disappear from a stretch of creek, something upstream has usually changed. (5) Three summers ago, volunteers noticed that mayfly larvae had vanished below the Route 9 bridge. (6) The county traced the problem to a broken drainage pipe at a construction site and had it repaired within a month. (7) By the next spring, the mayflies were back.
(8) The program costs the county almost nothing. (9) Volunteers calculate an EPT index, which counts the Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, and Trichoptera taxa found in each sample. (10) The county supplies the nets and sorting trays, and a retired biology teacher trains each new volunteer in a single afternoon. (11) This year, however, the program has only eleven volunteers, down from twenty-six a decade ago, and two of its six sampling sites went unchecked last summer.
Question 1. The writer wants to add a sentence after sentence 2 to help readers who have never heard the term understand it. Which of the following sentences best accomplishes this goal?
- (A) Naturalists have studied these animals for centuries, and some species were first described in the 1700s.
- (B) These are animals without backbones that are big enough to see without a microscope, such as the young of mayflies, stoneflies, and caddisflies.
- (C) Volunteers record their counts on standard forms and send them to the county each month.
- (D) Many volunteers find the counting more enjoyable than they expected.
Question 2. The writer is considering deleting sentence 9. Should the writer keep or delete it?
- (A) Keep it, because its technical terms show readers that the program's methods are scientific.
- (B) Keep it, because readers need the index described in sentence 9 to understand the equipment and training in sentence 10.
- (C) Delete it, because its unexplained technical vocabulary interrupts a paragraph about what the program costs and offers general readers nothing they can use.
- (D) Delete it, because it contradicts sentence 3's point about pollution-sensitive animals.
Question 3. The writer wants to add a sentence at the end of the passage that would most effectively move readers to respond to the problem described in sentence 11. Which of the following sentences best accomplishes this goal?
- (A) Without more volunteers, the creek may soon have no one watching over it.
- (B) Anyone sixteen or older can join, no science background is needed, and the next training session is on May 3 at the Alder Creek Nature Center.
- (C) A decade ago, the program had so many volunteers that it considered adding sampling sites.
- (D) Several other counties run similar programs with paid staff.
Show solution
1. (B). The goal is a definition for newcomers, and (B) is the only choice that says what a macroinvertebrate is. It also prepares readers for the mayfly larvae in sentence 5, so they meet that example already knowing what kind of animal it is. (A) and (D) are on topic but do other jobs, history and the volunteers' feelings, and (C) describes the procedure without explaining the word. Here the trap is the choice that sounds informative: (A) adds facts, but a reader still couldn't picture what the volunteers are counting.
2. (C). Paragraph 2 makes one point: the program is cheap (sentence 8) because the county supplies only equipment and volunteers are trained quickly (sentence 10). Sentence 9 breaks that point, and its terms are never explained, so the newspaper's readers can't use them. (A) gives a reason that suits an audience of scientists, not this one. (B) invents a dependence: sentence 10 is about nets, trays, and a short training session, and reads just as clearly without sentence 9. How the counts reveal pollution is already explained, in plain words, in sentences 3 and 4. (D) is false: sentence 9 contradicts nothing.
3. (B). The problem in sentence 11 is too few volunteers, so the most effective ending turns readers into volunteers: it says who can join, removes the likeliest objection (readers who have just seen sentence 9's vocabulary might assume they need training in biology), and gives a date and place. (A) raises concern but asks for nothing a reader can do. (C) repeats the decline already in sentence 11. (D) points toward a different solution, paid staff, which works against recruiting.
Where students lose points
On the exam
The multiple-choice section includes questions on student drafts, with numbered sentences, that test this skill. Their stems state a writer's goal or a target audience ("The writer wants to...," "The writer intends the passage for...") and ask which addition, deletion, or revision best serves it. In the free-response section, each essay prompt sets up a situation you write within: in the argument essay you choose your own position, which makes stating it clearly and supporting it with evidence your purpose. In Unit 1 the writing work is paragraphs; Topic 1.4 covers building one around a claim and its evidence.
Check yourself
Question 1
A student wrote a guide to the school's new library catalog for freshmen. The librarian asks her to adapt it for teachers, who already use the catalog to reserve books for their classes. Which revision best fits the new audience?
- A
Add a paragraph on the history of library catalogs to make the guide more interesting
- B
Cut the step-by-step instructions for searching by title and expand the section on reserving books for a whole class
- C
Keep every section and add a friendly greeting addressed to teachers
- D
Replace the examples of books freshmen read with harder books, since teachers read at a higher level
Show answer
B
The teachers already know the basics and use the catalog for one task the freshmen never needed, so the revision cuts what they know and expands what they need. Choice C is tempting because it addresses the new readers, but it changes only the greeting and leaves the content aimed at beginners.
- A
Question 2
A student is writing to the city's parks director, asking for a second water fountain at a busy skate park. Name two decisions about what to put in the letter that follow from writing to this particular reader, and explain why each fits.
Show answer
First, lead with evidence the director weighs, such as how many people use the park on a summer afternoon and the fact that the one fountain often has a line or breaks down, because a director decides by need, cost, and use. Second, state the writer's position briefly (for example, a skater who is at the park most days), because that firsthand observation is what makes the counts credible from someone with no official role. A specific, doable request, such as asking the director to consider the fountain in next year's budget, also fits the audience.
Every choice should trace to a part of the situation: the audience decides which evidence counts, the writer's position decides what must be proved and how, and the purpose becomes a request this particular reader is able to grant.
Question 3
A draft for a neighborhood newsletter argues that residents should plant native wildflowers. The writer is considering deleting this sentence: "Native plants have evolved alongside local insects, which is why many bees can feed only on them." Which reason, if true of the draft, would best justify keeping it?
- A
It is the most scientific-sounding sentence in the draft.
- B
It gives readers the reason behind the draft's request, which the draft otherwise never explains.
- C
It shows that the writer has studied biology.
- D
It is short, so it doesn't make the draft much longer.
Show answer
B
A sentence earns its place by serving the purpose for this audience, and residents asked to plant wildflowers need to know why native ones matter. Choice C is tempting, but establishing the writer's background is not what this sentence does, and the draft's purpose is the request, not the writer's credentials.
- A
Question 4
A sophomore drafts a speech for the school's spring awards night asking families to donate used instruments to the music program. She opens with: "Per the district's 2024 budget memo, line 14 allocates no funds for instrument replacement." What part of the rhetorical situation does this opening misjudge, and how could she revise it?
Show answer
It misjudges the context and audience: a spoken speech to families at a celebration calls for plain, warm language and a reason they can picture, not a memo citation. She could open with what the shortage looks like, for example that three students share each school-owned clarinet, and then say that the district budget has no money to replace instruments.
The fact may be accurate and relevant, but the occasion (an awards night), the form (spoken aloud), and the listeners (families, not administrators) all call for a different way of delivering it. The message stays; the form changes.