A principal who has decided to ban phones at lunch can announce the rule in her first sentence. She can also open with last Tuesday's cafeteria: a table of eight friends, every one of them looking at a screen, and a substitute teacher who walked the whole room without hearing a conversation. Both letters contain the same rule. The one that starts with the scene is built on a guess about the readers: that a family who hears "ban" first will spend the rest of the letter arguing with it.
Where the claim sits shows what the writer expects
Topic 1.1 covered the six parts of the rhetorical situation, and Unit 2 covered how arguments meet an audience's beliefs and values. An argument's structure is evidence of both: where the claim sits and which method of development carries it show who the writer thinks is reading and what the writer wants from them. An argument can run in two basic orders.
Claim first. The writer states the position, then spends the rest of the text justifying it. Readers know from the start what every paragraph is for, so they can read each piece of evidence as support. This order suits readers who are neutral or already sympathetic, readers who are busy and want the point (a report to a board, a memo), and occasions where a position is expected (an editorial, a debate).
Reasoning first, claim last. The writer leads readers through a story, a set of facts, or a chain of causes, and the position arrives at the end, sometimes as a request. This order suits readers who would resist the claim if they heard it first, readers who don't yet believe there is a problem, and occasions where announcing a position up front would sound presumptuous. The reason it works is psychological. A reader who disagrees and hears the claim first reads every later sentence as an opponent, looking for the flaw. A reader who meets the evidence first may reach the conclusion a sentence before the writer states it, and a conclusion you reached yourself is hard to argue with. The cost is real too: an impatient reader may quit before the point arrives, and a turn that comes too suddenly can feel like a trick.
Many arguments sit between the two. A writer may open with a question and answer it only at the end, or state a modest version of the claim early and a stronger one once the evidence is in.
So when the claim comes late, ask what the writer feared these readers would do if it came first. When it comes first, ask what made it safe. Topic 3.5 covers tracing the line of reasoning itself, step by step. The question here is why the writer chose that route for these readers.
Methods of development as answers to the audience
A method of development is a familiar pattern a writer uses to build and organize reasoning, one that lets readers follow where the argument is going. The AP course names five typical ones. Each one supplies something the writer believes the readers are missing, so the method a writer chooses is a clue to who the writer thinks is reading.
| Method | What the writer supplies | What it suggests about the readers | Typical purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Narration | A real experience told in sequence, plus the writer's reflection on what it meant | They haven't lived it, or abstract reasons won't move them | Make the stakes felt; show the writer speaks from experience |
| Cause-effect | A cause and its consequences, or several causes and the result they produce together | They don't see the connection, or they underrate the consequences | Warn, explain where a problem comes from, predict |
| Comparison-contrast | Two cases set side by side | They know one case well, or they assume two things are alike that aren't | Judge the unfamiliar by the familiar; break a false likeness |
| Definition | A fixed meaning for a disputed or misunderstood term | They use the word differently, or the whole dispute turns on it | Settle the term so the conclusion follows |
| Description | Specific, sensory details of a place, object, or person | They can't see it themselves | Make something absent present; set up a judgment of it |
Two details matter on the exam. First, narration in an argument is more than a story. The writer tells what happened and then reflects on why it matters, and that reflection is where the story turns into a claim. A passage that tells a story and stops is offering an anecdote as evidence; a passage that tells it and then says what it taught the writer is using narration as a method. Second, cause-effect runs in either direction. A writer can start with one cause and trace its effects ("when the mill closed, the diner lost its lunch crowd, then its night cook, then its lease") or start with an effect and work back through its causes.
Writers combine methods. A comparison can serve a definition; a narration can contain a chain of causes. When a question asks about "the passage's development," look for the method that organizes the whole; when it asks about one paragraph, name what that paragraph does.
The assumptions behind these choices are also how you answer "the author assumes the reader" questions. A writer who stops to explain that a baker's "final proof" is the dough's last rise assumes readers outside the trade. A writer who compares a new tax to one the town already pays assumes readers who remember that tax and accepted it. What a writer explains, compares to, describes, and leaves unexplained is a map of who the writer thinks the readers are.
Purpose, part by part
Many Unit 3 reading questions point at a piece of the text: "The primary purpose of the second paragraph is to," "The speaker mentions the neighboring county primarily to," "It can be inferred that the author assumes the audience." A method that holds up:
- Settle the situation of the whole text first. The italic introduction on the exam names the writer's role, the occasion, and often the audience; use it.
- Find where the part sits in the line of reasoning: before or after the claim, and inside which method.
- Ask what these readers would lack if the part were deleted. That missing thing is the part's purpose.
A part's purpose serves the whole text's purpose but is narrower. If a speech asks voters to approve a tax, its second paragraph might exist "to establish what the current situation costs the listeners," and an answer choice that says "to argue for the tax" is too broad for a question about that paragraph. The reverse error happens on whole-passage questions: a choice that describes one paragraph's job is too narrow for the passage.
Worked examples
The following passage is from an opinion piece that a retired woodshop teacher wrote for a town newspaper while the school board was considering cutting the high school's shop program.
Most people who hear "shop class" picture a ninth grader sanding a birdhouse while the serious students are down the hall doing algebra. That is not what happens in Room 112. Shop, as we teach it, is the one class where a wrong answer costs something you can hold. A student who cuts a shelf bracket a quarter inch short finds out in front of everyone, and she finds out from the shelf, not from me. She learns to read a drawing, convert fractions in her head, and plan four steps ahead, because the wood will not forgive step five. Call it what you like. I call it applied geometry with consequences, and the board is about to cut it to save the cost of one teacher.
Identify the method of development that organizes the passage, and explain what it shows about the writer's view of the audience and purpose.
Show solution
The method is definition. The writer sets out to fix what "shop class" means. She opens with the common meaning (birdhouses, a break from real academics), rejects it ("That is not what happens in Room 112"), and builds a new one from specifics: measuring, reading drawings, mental arithmetic, planning ahead. The passage ends by renaming the class "applied geometry with consequences." The contrast between the two pictures serves the definition, so contrast is a tool here, while definition is what organizes the passage.
What it shows about the audience. She assumes her readers, the town's newspaper readers and voters, hold the birdhouse picture. The first sentence is their view, stated in their terms, and the rest of the passage replaces it. If she thought readers already valued shop, she would have spent the space on the budget instead.
What it shows about the purpose. Her purpose is to stop the cut, but the claim appears only in the last clause, after the definition is done. That order is the point. A reader who thinks shop is a hobby hears "don't cut shop" and shrugs. A reader who now thinks of shop as geometry with real stakes hears "the board is about to cut it" as a loss to the school's academics. The definition changes what the cut means, and so changes how the reader will judge it.
Why this is the move. Naming the method is only the first step, and on the exam a bare label earns nothing. The answer has to connect the method to a specific belief the writer expects these readers to hold and show how the method changes it.
The following is from remarks given by a city's parks director at the reopening of a neighborhood swimming pool that had been closed for two years for repairs. In the audience were families from the neighborhood and the city council members who had voted to pay for the work.
I learned to swim in this pool the summer I was nine. My mother worked the early shift at the cannery, so she signed me up for the free lessons and told me to be at the gate at eight. On the first morning I held the wall and would not let go, and a lifeguard named Doreen, who was sixteen, sat on the edge and talked to me about her dog until I forgot I was afraid. By August I could swim the length underwater. I have thought about Doreen for thirty years, and what I think now is that the city did not just build a pool here. It put a sixteen-year-old with a whistle on the edge of the water every morning, for free, for any kid whose mother had to be somewhere else. That is what we reopened today.
Write a body paragraph for a rhetorical analysis essay explaining how the director's use of narration serves her purpose.
Show solution
A model paragraph.
The director tells the story of her own first swimming lesson to show both audiences what the repaired pool is for, and she lets the story carry that point before she names it. Details like her mother's "early shift at the cannery" and the free lessons at eight o'clock place her among the families in the crowd, many of whom presumably rely on the same free programs, so the memory reads as theirs as much as hers. The small, specific scene of a sixteen-year-old lifeguard talking "about her dog until I forgot I was afraid" turns the pool from a structure into a service, which matters because the council members present paid for the structure and might count it as a finished repair. Only after the story does she reflect on it, deciding that the city "put a sixteen-year-old with a whistle on the edge of the water every morning." Saving that claim for the end suits a celebration: a reopening ceremony is no place for an argument announced in the first sentence, but by the time she reaches "That is what we reopened today," both the families and the council have watched the claim prove itself in a child's summer.
Why it works. The paragraph opens with a claim about a choice and its purpose, not a summary of the story. Each piece of quoted evidence is followed by commentary that ties it to a specific part of the situation: the families (shared circumstances), the council (what they funded and how they might see it), and the occasion (a ceremony). It also explains the order of the remarks, story first and claim last, as a choice in its own right. Essays earn their evidence-and-commentary points this way, by explaining how each choice works on this audience; naming "narration" and quoting it would not be enough.
The following passage is excerpted from a speech delivered in 1912 by a county road commissioner to farmers gathered in a township hall. The next month, voters in the township would decide whether to pay a new tax to pave the road to the market town.
Last April, Henry Voss started for town with sixty dozen eggs and a wagon he had greased the night before. A mile past the creek his wheels went down to the hubs. He spent the afternoon with a borrowed team and a pry bar, and when he got the wagon out, a third of the eggs were broken and the market had closed. Most of you have had that afternoon. Some of you have had it more than once a spring.
Count what that mud costs. A man who loses a market day loses the price of what he carried, and he loses it again on everything that spoils before the road dries. The buyers know the road as well as you do. They know that in March and April you must sell to whoever will drive out to you, and they set their prices accordingly. Your mud is worth money to someone, and it is not you.
In the next county they paved their market road four years ago. Their farmers sell in April at the same price they get in June. I did not believe it either until I went and asked.
I know what the levy will cost you, because I will pay it too, on eighty acres no better drained than yours. I ask you to weigh it against one April afternoon, multiplied by every wagon in this township, and to vote for the road.
Question 1. The speaker waits until the final paragraph to ask for the audience's vote most likely because he
- (A) expects many listeners to resist a new tax and wants them to reckon the cost of the mud before they hear the request
- (B) is uncertain whether a paved road would benefit the township's farmers
- (C) believes his listeners already support the levy and need only a reminder to vote
- (D) wants to avoid mentioning the cost of the levy at all
Question 2. The account of Henry Voss's trip in the first paragraph primarily serves to
- (A) establish the speaker's expertise in building roads
- (B) present an experience the speaker expects most of his listeners to recognize as their own
- (C) introduce the speech's main subject, the falling price of eggs
- (D) criticize Voss for setting out for town during the spring thaw
Question 3. In the final paragraph, the speaker mentions his own eighty acres primarily to
- (A) suggest that his land is more valuable than his listeners' land
- (B) concede that paving the road will not improve the drainage of the farms
- (C) answer a likely objection that the man asking for the tax will not have to pay it
- (D) shift the speech's focus from the road to farming methods
Show solution
1. (A). Everything before the request builds the case that mud already costs the listeners money: a lost market day (paragraph 1), spoiled goods and low spring prices (paragraph 2), and a nearby county where paving ended the problem (paragraph 3). He also says "I know what the levy will cost you," which shows he expects the cost to be the listeners' first objection. Asking for the vote at the start would have put that objection in front of every fact. (B) is contradicted by paragraph 3, where he reports going to check the other county's results. (C) gets the reasoning backward: an audience that already agreed would be the one to tell first. (D) is false, since he names the levy's cost directly.
2. (B). The sentence right after the story, "Most of you have had that afternoon," tells you its job: the speaker picked an ordinary, local loss his listeners have lived through, so the argument starts from their experience instead of his. (C) is the tempting choice because eggs fill the story, but the eggs are a detail of the loss; the speech is about the road. (A) fails because the story is about Voss's wagon, not the speaker's knowledge, and (D) misreads the tone: nothing blames Voss.
3. (C). A farmer hearing a county official ask for a tax might reasonably wonder whether the official will pay it. The speaker answers that before anyone asks, and he adds "no better drained than yours" to place himself in the same position as the audience. This is the writer part of the situation at work: he builds trust by sharing the cost. (A) reverses the point, since he says his land is no better. (B) and (D) describe things the paragraph doesn't do.
The method behind all three. The introduction told you the audience (farmers) and the purpose (win a tax vote) before the speech began. With that in hand, each question became "what does this part do for farmers who don't want a new tax?"
Where students lose points
On the exam
Multiple-choice reading sets ask about the purpose of a passage or of one paragraph, what prompted a text, what the writer assumes about the audience, and what a reference or story "primarily serves to" do. The italic introduction before each passage names the writer's role and occasion and is part of your evidence. In the rhetorical analysis essay, the prompt describes the writer, audience, and occasion for you; your job is to explain how the writer's choices, including the order of the argument and its methods of development, work on that audience for that purpose. Topic 3.5 covers recognizing the line of reasoning and methods of development in more detail.
Check yourself
Question 1
In an essay opposing a proposed teen curfew, a writer spends her first paragraph explaining how the city ordinance defines "loitering" and showing that the definition covers waiting at a bus stop. This choice most strongly suggests the writer assumes her readers
- A
already oppose the curfew and need to be told when the vote will happen
- B
picture loitering as idle trouble-making and haven't considered what the ordinance's wording actually covers
- C
are lawyers who know the city's ordinances in detail
- D
are teenagers who have been stopped for loitering
Show answer
B
A writer defines a term when she expects readers to understand it differently, and the bus-stop example only surprises someone who assumes loitering means misbehaving. Choice C is tempting because the paragraph is about legal wording, but readers who already knew the ordinance would need no explanation of it.
- A
Question 2
A writer expects most of her readers to oppose her position. Explain why she might present her reasoning before stating her claim, and name one risk of that order.
Show answer
Readers who disagree and meet the claim first tend to read everything after it looking for flaws. If they meet the evidence first, they may draw the conclusion themselves before she states it, which makes it harder for them to reject. The risk is that impatient readers may stop before the claim arrives, or that a sudden turn to the claim at the end may feel like a trick.
Reasoning first is a choice about audience: it delays the claim for readers who would resist it. Its cost is the same delay, which can lose readers or feel manipulative.
Question 3
A student speaks to her city council to ask for a crosswalk at a busy corner near her school. In her second paragraph she describes a crosswalk the council installed near a senior center two years earlier, after similar complaints, and reports that there have been no accidents there since. This paragraph primarily serves to
- A
show that the student has studied traffic engineering
- B
argue that the senior center needs more safety improvements
- C
give the council a case it has already judged, so that the same reasoning leads to the same decision here
- D
criticize the council for taking two years to act
Show answer
C
Comparison-contrast works by reasoning from a familiar case, and this case is one the council itself decided, so the comparison asks them to be consistent. Choice B reads the comparison as being about the senior center, but the earlier crosswalk is there only to support the new one.
- A
Question 4
A magazine article about competitive birdwatching pauses to explain that a birder's "life list" is the record of every species the person has ever seen. What does this choice suggest about the article's intended audience, and why would the writer include it?
Show answer
It suggests the writer expects general readers who are not birders and wouldn't know the term. The explanation lets those readers follow the rest of the article, where the life list presumably matters, without having to look anything up.
What a writer stops to explain marks the line between what the writer thinks readers know and what they don't. Birders wouldn't need the definition, so its presence points to outsiders.