Find one tension in the rhetorical situation, follow it through a whole essay, explain why this exact moment matters, and tell the difference between real sophistication and one clever sentence or big words at the end.
Goal: find one tension in the rhetorical situation, follow it through a whole essay, explain why this exact moment matters, and tell the difference between real sophistication and one clever sentence or big words at the end.
Time: three sittings of about 30 minutes, one 15-minute return day, and one timed essay when you have about 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Help: you can do this on your own or with family. You do not need a tutor. The Forms score your answers, the answer key explains every choice, and this module shows you how to score the Sophistication row on your own essay.
How it works: start at the top and work down in order. When you reach a line that says Stop here, you are done for that day.
Get these ready:
Why it is built this way: the Sophistication row is worth one point out of six, so it is the smallest row. Many students lose it because they try to earn it with big words or one clever sentence at the end. This module shows you a plainer way: find one real tension in the situation, then let it show up in sentences you were already going to write. You will practice finding it, following it through an essay, and spotting the difference between real thinking and decoration.
| When | What to do | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Sitting 1 | Try First Check, then Part 1 and Part 2, then Game 1 | 30 minutes |
| Sitting 2, two or three days later | Replay Game 1, then Part 3, Part 4, and Game 2 | 30 minutes |
| Sitting 3, about a week after Sitting 1 | Replay Game 2, then Game 3, Part 5, and the Exit Check | 30 minutes |
| Return day, one to two weeks after Sitting 3 | Replay one game, then retake the Exit Check | 15 minutes |
| When you have about 1 hour and 15 minutes | Part 6: a whole essay in 45 minutes, then score it | 75 minutes |
Do these in order:
A family member does not need to know the answers. They can read the tension sentence out loud and ask, "Could this sentence be about a different speech?" If the answer is yes, the sentence is too broad. They should not write the tension for you or score the essay for you. The score is useful only when you do the scoring.
Open the Try First Check. Answer all 5 questions before you read anything below. Mark how sure you are on each one. It is fine to miss some, because trying first helps you remember the answers later.
Trouble with the box? Open it in its own tab.
When you submit, choose View score and read why each answer is right or wrong. Write your score on the My Scores tab of your tracker.
Got 5 out of 5? Skip Part 1 and go to Part 2.
Every AP Lang essay is scored from 0 to 6 on three rows. The Sophistication row is the last one. It is worth 1 point. The words in the table are our own, written for practice. You can also read the official scoring rubrics from College Board. In Module 1 you used this same table to score your first essay.
| Row | Score | Check yourself |
|---|---|---|
| Thesis | 0 or 1 | 1 if your thesis states what the speaker is trying to do and the choices used to do it. 0 if it repeats the prompt, only summarizes, or lists devices with no purpose. |
| Evidence and Commentary | 0 to 4 | 0: no usable evidence, or you only repeat the passage. 1: your evidence is general, and your explanation mostly retells it. 2: some quotes are specific, but the explanation is thin. 3: every claim has specific quotes, and you explain how some of the choices work. 4: every claim has specific quotes, you explain how each choice helps the speaker's purpose, and your paragraphs build on each other. |
| Sophistication | 0 or 1 | 1 if you explain a tension the speaker has to manage, a surprising fact about who is speaking, or why this exact moment matters, and that thinking runs through the essay. 0 if not. |
This score is practice feedback on one essay. It is not an official AP score, and it does not predict your exam score.
Read the Sophistication row again. It names three kinds of thinking, and any one of them can earn the point if it runs through the essay.
The one test to remember: could your sentence be moved to an essay on a different speech and still make sense? If yes, it is too broad. A real tension belongs to this speaker, this audience, and this moment.
You already read the situation with SOAPSTone. The tension is in three of its letters: the Speaker, the Occasion, and the Audience. Ask these three questions, and write short answers on paper.
Then write one sentence in one of these shapes:
Here is the situation read for Smith and for Reagan. The Smith passage is printed below. The Reagan speech is in the Passage Packet from Module 2.
| Passage | The tension (one sentence) | Why this exact moment matters | A fact about the speaker that helps explain the choices |
|---|---|---|---|
| Smith, 1950 | Smith must criticize her colleagues strongly without joining the attacks she condemns. | In June 1950, Senator McCarthy, from her own party, had been accusing people of being Communists, often without proof, and she chose to answer on the Senate floor. | She was the only woman in the Senate, and she was criticizing a senator from her own party. |
| Reagan, 1986 | Reagan must mourn the crew with the nation while keeping the nation's support for the space program. | He had planned to report on the state of the Union that night, and schoolchildren had watched a teacher's flight end live. | The speech he gave was not the one he planned. He set aside a speech about the nation's business to speak about grief. |
Speaker: Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, a Republican and the only woman in the Senate at the time. Date and place: June 1, 1950, on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Background: Senator Joseph McCarthy, from Smith's own party, had been accusing people of being Communists, often without proof. In this speech Smith criticizes those attacks without naming him.
[1] Mr. President, I would like to speak briefly and simply about a serious national condition. It is a national feeling of fear and frustration . . . .
[2] I speak as briefly as possible because too much harm has already been done with irresponsible words of bitterness and selfish political opportunism. I speak as simply as possible because the issue is too great to be obscured by eloquence. I speak simply and briefly in the hope that my words will be taken to heart.
[3] Mr. President, I speak as a Republican. I speak as a woman. I speak as a United States senator. I speak as an American.
[4] The United States Senate has long enjoyed worldwide respect as the greatest deliberative body in the world. But recently that deliberative character has too often been debased to the level of a forum of hate and character assassination sheltered by the shield of congressional immunity.
[5] I think that it is high time for the United States Senate and its members to do some real soul searching and to weigh our consciences as to the manner in which we are performing our duty to the people of America and the manner in which we are using or abusing our individual powers and privileges.
Source: Margaret Chase Smith, Declaration of Conscience, June 1, 1950, Congressional Record, 81st Congress, 2nd session, as printed by the U.S. Senate. This excerpt leaves out parts of the speech. Paragraph numbers are for this excerpt only.
Now do Kennedy yourself. Open the Passage Packet from Module 2 and read the Kennedy context and excerpt. Write your three answers on paper (Speaker, Occasion, Audience), then write one tension sentence. Check it with the three checks above. When you are done, open the answer key, Part 2, to compare.
Goal: tell a real tension from a topic, a purpose, or a plain fact. Set a timer for 2 minutes. Write T if the sentence names two things that pull against each other. Write N if it names a topic, a purpose, or a fact.
Replay Game 1 and try to beat your score.
Finding a tension is half of the work. The other half is using it. The row asks for thinking that runs through the essay, so the same idea has to show up in more than one place. This table shows where to put it, using a Smith essay you already scored in Module 5.
| Where | What to do there | Smith example |
|---|---|---|
| Introduction, sentence 1 | Plant the tension inside the situation. | In 1950, Senator Margaret Chase Smith faced colleagues who had let a fellow senator's accusations go unanswered, and she had to criticize them without joining the attacks she condemned. |
| Introduction, sentence 2 (thesis) | Name the choices as ways to manage it. | She urges the Senate to change its conduct by claiming her standing as one of its members, setting its reputation against its behavior, and asking for self-examination in plain, restrained words. |
| Body paragraph 1, the Name step of CHAIN | Say how this choice helps the speaker handle the tension. | Because she names no one, this standing lets her object to the Senate's conduct while staying inside the courtesy she asks others to keep. |
| Body paragraph 2, the Name step | Do it again with the next choice. | The label is harsh, yet she aims it at the institution and not at any one person, so she can press the point without becoming the kind of speaker she describes. |
| Body paragraph 3, the Name step | Do it again with the third choice. | Her own plain manner of speaking "briefly and simply" shows the restraint she wants to see. |
| Close | Return to the tension and say what it shows about this moment. Do not make a lesson for all times. | The gap between the hate she describes and the calm way she describes it is the speech's argument: the Senate can change, and she shows how. |
A sentence about the moment must answer this question: what was happening on this day that made the speaker's choices matter? Test it by swapping the date. If your sentence is still true with a different date, it is not about this moment.
You will use this passage again in Part 5. Read it once now.
Speaker: President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Date and place: March 4, 1933, Washington, D.C., his first inaugural address, spoken outdoors to a large crowd and broadcast on radio. Background: the Great Depression had lasted more than three years. Many banks had closed, millions of Americans were out of work, and many families had lost their savings.
President Hoover, Mr. Chief Justice, My Friends:
[1] This is a day of national consecration. And, I am certain that on this day my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impels. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.
[2] In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunk to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; and the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.
[3] More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.
[4] And yet, our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and have abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.
[5] Yes, the money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths.
Source: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933. The American Presidency Project, UC Santa Barbara. Public domain (U.S. government work). This excerpt leaves out parts of the speech. Paragraph numbers are for this excerpt only. The original uses long dashes, shown here as two hyphens.
Write on paper: (1) one tension sentence for this speech, in one of the three shapes from Part 2, and (2) one sentence that says why this exact moment matters. Do not look at the essays in Part 5 yet. Open the answer key, Part 3, to compare.
Open the Practice Set and answer the questions there. The Form asks how sure you are on each one, scores your answers, and explains every choice.
Trouble with the box? Open it in its own tab.
If you prefer paper, answer below, mark each one 1 (guess), 2 (maybe), or 3 (sure), and check them in the answer key.
Question 1. Which tension fits Smith's situation in 1950?
A) She must criticize her colleagues strongly without using the personal attacks she condemns.
B) She must explain how the Senate works.
C) She must give a short speech.
D) She is a senator speaking to senators.
Question 2. Which statement gives a surprising fact about who is speaking that helps explain Smith's choices?
A) Smith was born in Maine.
B) Smith was the only woman in the Senate, and she was criticizing a senator from her own party, so she had to earn a hearing before she could be dismissed.
C) Smith gave her speech on June 1, 1950.
D) Smith served in the Senate for many years.
Question 3. Which statement best explains why this exact moment matters in Reagan's address?
A) Reagan was in his second term.
B) Reagan spoke on television.
C) Reagan had planned a State of the Union address for that night and set it aside, so the nation could see that mourning came first, and he still needed to keep support for the program.
D) Reagan ends with a line from a poem.
Question 4. An essay on Kennedy explains in its introduction that he must make a costly goal sound like an honor. Two body paragraphs return to that idea when they explain "We choose to go to the moon" and "a banner of freedom and peace." The last sentence returns to it once more. What does the essay earn on the Sophistication row?
A) 0, because the vocabulary is plain
B) 0, because Kennedy's speech does not have a tension
C) 1, because the essay has a conclusion
D) 1, because the tension is in the introduction, in two body paragraphs, and at the end
Question 5. An essay explains every choice in Reagan's address well. Its last sentence is: Reagan's speech shows how a nation grieves together in times of loss. There is no tension or reason this moment matters anywhere else in the essay. What does it earn on the Sophistication row?
A) 1, because the sentence is thoughtful
B) 1, because the rest of the essay is strong
C) 0, because it is one broad sentence at the end and does not run through the essay
D) 0, because a conclusion cannot earn the point
Question 6. A student's tension for an essay on Smith is: she must criticize without joining the attacks she condemns. Which conclusion follows through on it?
A) In conclusion, Smith gave a powerful speech that changed the Senate.
B) Smith's plain, restrained words are part of her argument: by criticizing the Senate without attacking anyone, she shows the conduct she asks for.
C) Smith teaches us that all people should treat each other with respect.
D) Smith's discourse exemplifies a quintessential paradigm of rhetorical efficacy.
Question 7. A student replaces the sentence Reagan is sad with Reagan's lugubrious demeanor permeates the address. What does this change earn on the Sophistication row?
A) The point, because the vocabulary is more advanced
B) The point, if the student uses long words in every paragraph
C) It earns a 1 on Evidence and Commentary instead
D) Nothing, because the idea is the same and only the words are longer
Question 8. Which is the strongest tension for an essay on Kennedy's speech at Rice?
A) He must ask a crowd that doubts the cost to choose a hard goal, and make the difficulty the reason to choose it.
B) He must give a speech in a stadium.
C) He must be both a president and a speaker.
D) He must talk about history and the moon.
Read the explanation for every choice, including the ones you got right. You can find them in your Form results and in the answer key.
Write your score on the My Scores tab. For each question you missed or rated 1 or 2, add a row to the My Mistakes tab.
Goal: tell real sophistication from decoration. Set a timer for 2 minutes. Write R (real) if the sentence names a tension or a moment that belongs to this speech and ties it to the speaker's choices. Write C (clever) if it is a broad lesson that could end an essay on any speech. Write B (big words) if long words cover an idea that is plain or missing. Play again at your next sitting.
Replay Game 2 and try to beat your score.
Goal: decide whether a tension runs through an essay. Set a timer for 2 minutes. Each line shows where a student's essay uses its tension. Write Y if the tension appears in the introduction, in at least two body paragraphs, and near the end. Write N if it does not. Play again at your next sitting.
Here are two essays on the Roosevelt passage in Part 3. We wrote them for practice. They are not College Board samples. Each one is shorter than an exam essay, so score the paragraphs as if they were the whole essay. Both essays are good. Only one earns the Sophistication point.
The prompt: On March 4, 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt took the oath of office as President in the fourth year of the Great Depression. Many banks had closed, millions of Americans were out of work, and many families had lost their savings. The passage is an excerpt from his first inaugural address. Read the passage carefully. Write an essay that analyzes the rhetorical choices Roosevelt makes to persuade Americans to face the crisis with confidence and shared effort.
[1] On March 4, 1933, with banks closed and millions of Americans out of work, Franklin D. Roosevelt took the oath of office and had to ask a nation that had just lost its faith in its bankers to put its faith in a new leader. Roosevelt asks Americans to face the crisis with confidence and shared effort by promising to speak "the whole truth," by moving the blame to those who failed, and by turning that failure into a task that every listener can share.
[2] Roosevelt first earns trust by promising to say how bad things are. He tells listeners that "This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly," and then he lists the damage plainly: "Values have shrunk to fantastic levels" and "the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone." After the failures of the nation's bankers, a leader who names the losses that listeners already feel sounds like someone who can be believed. His line "Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment" goes further, because it rejects the easy cheer people had heard before and so makes his later hope harder to dismiss. This choice serves his purpose directly: he cannot ask for confidence until listeners trust that he will not lie to them.
[3] With that trust begun, Roosevelt moves the blame to where listeners can see it. He says "our distress comes from no failure of substance" and "We are stricken by no plague of locusts," which tells Americans that the land and its people are sound. Then he names those who failed: "the unscrupulous money changers," who "stand indicted in the court of public opinion." By using the language of a trial, he lets listeners act as the jury, so their anger has somewhere to go that does not turn on their neighbors or on the country itself. This builds on the first paragraph: because he has told the truth about the damage, the blame he assigns sounds like a finding and not an attack. A nation that knows what failed can agree on what to repair.
[4] Roosevelt ends this part of the speech by turning the failure into an invitation. "Yes, the money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization," he says, and then he adds, "We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths." The image of a temple turns a business failure into a moral one and asks every listener, not only bankers, to help rebuild. He does not ask Americans to trust the old system again. He asks them to trust a new purpose, which is the one thing the failed bankers could not offer.
[5] The speech works because it answers one problem in every part. On the first day of his presidency, with trust at its lowest, Roosevelt had to earn belief before he could ask for anything. He began with the truth, placed the blame on those who had failed, and ended with a task that everyone could share. Had he begun with comfort, listeners who had lost their savings would have heard one more promise like the ones that had already failed them.
[1] On March 4, 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt gave his first inaugural address during the Great Depression. Roosevelt urges Americans to face the crisis with confidence and shared effort by speaking frankly about the damage, by showing that the country's resources are still sound, and by blaming those who failed.
[2] Roosevelt begins by speaking frankly about the damage. He says "Values have shrunk to fantastic levels" and "the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone." These plain statements show listeners that he sees their losses, which makes them feel understood. This helps his purpose, because people who feel understood are more willing to listen to what he asks of them. He adds that "Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment," which tells listeners that he will not pretend, and so makes the confidence he asks for later sound honest.
[3] Next, Roosevelt shows that the country is still strong. He says "our distress comes from no failure of substance" and "We are stricken by no plague of locusts." The comparison to a plague reminds listeners that nature has not turned against them, and "Plenty is at our doorstep" shows that food and goods still exist. This lifts the audience's spirits and gives them a reason to hope, which supports his purpose of asking for confidence. He then blames "the unscrupulous money changers," who "stand indicted in the court of public opinion," so listeners know whom to hold responsible. This builds on his frankness, since he can point to a cause only after he has shown that he will name hard facts.
[4] In conclusion, Roosevelt's first inaugural address is a powerful speech that gives hope to a struggling nation. Ultimately, his rhetoric transcends its moment, illuminating the eternal truth that the human spirit, unshackled from the tyranny of fear, can surmount any adversity.
| Essay | Sophistication (0 or 1) | The tension, in one sentence | Where it appears |
|---|---|---|---|
| X | |||
| Y |
Open the Exit Check. Answer all 5 questions without your notes. When you submit, choose View score and read why each answer is right or wrong. Write your score on the My Scores tab of your tracker. Add any question you missed to the My Mistakes tab.
Trouble with the box? Open it in its own tab.
4 or 5 right: you are ready for your return day. 3 or fewer right: replay Game 1 and reread Part 2 before your return day.
Set your return date. Pick a date one to two weeks from today. Write it on the Next Step tab of your tracker and on your calendar.
4 or 5 right: go to Part 6, and then to Module 7. 3 or fewer right: open the help for the questions you missed, then retake the Exit Check in a few days.
Do this when you have about 1 hour and 15 minutes. You will write one full rhetorical analysis essay in 45 minutes, find and follow one tension in it, score it on all three rows, compare it with our model, and log it on your tracker. A low score on this row is useful, because it tells you what to work on. The passage is from a speech by Susan B. Anthony. It is in the public domain, and it is printed below. Do not open the answer key until step 7.
Speaker: Susan B. Anthony, a leader of the women's suffrage movement. Date and place: 1873, in towns of New York State. Background: on November 5, 1872, Anthony voted in a presidential election in Rochester, New York, at a time when women could not legally vote. She was arrested and charged with voting illegally. Before her trial in June 1873, she gave this speech to audiences that included men who could be called to serve on a jury.
In November 1872, Susan B. Anthony voted in an election in Rochester, New York, when women could not legally vote, and she was arrested and charged with a crime. Before her trial in 1873, she gave a speech in New York towns to audiences that included men who could be called to serve on a jury. The passage is an excerpt from that speech. Read the passage carefully. Write an essay that analyzes the rhetorical choices Anthony makes to persuade her audience that women are citizens with the right to vote.
In your response, you should:
Original practice prompt written for Future-Focused Writing in the AP rhetorical analysis format.
[1] Here is no shadow of government authority over rights, no exclusion of any class of men from their full and equal enjoyment. Here is pronounced the right of all men, and, "consequently," as the Quaker preacher said, "of all women," to a voice in the government. And here, in this very first paragraph of the Declaration, is the assertion of the natural right of all to the ballot; for how can the "consent of the governed" be given if the right to vote be denied?
[2] It was we the people--not we white male citizens--nor yet we male citizens--but we the whole people, who formed this Union; and we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them--not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people, women as well as men. And it is downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican government.
[3] To women this government is not a democracy; it is not a republic; it is an odious aristocracy--a hateful oligarchy of sex!! ... What, I ask you, is the distinctive difference between an inhabitant of a monarchical and those of a republican form of government? Save that in the monarchical the people are subjects--helpless, powerless--bound to obey laws made by superiors, while in the republican the people are citizens, all clothed with equal power to make and unmake both their laws and law-makers.
[4] In all the penalties and burdens of the government (except the military) women are reckoned as citizens equally with men. Also in all the privileges and immunities, save those of the jury box and ballot box, the two fundamental privileges on which rest all others. The United States government not only taxes, fines, imprisons, and hangs women, but it allows them to pre-empt lands, register ships, and take out passports and naturalization papers.
[5] And it is on this line that we propose to fight our battle for the ballot--all peaceably, but nevertheless persistently through to complete triumph, when all United States citizens shall be recognized as equals before the law.
Source: Susan B. Anthony, "Is It a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to Vote?" 1873. First printed in An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony (1874). Public domain (published before 1929). The text was checked against the transcript at Voices of Democracy, University of Maryland (voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu). This excerpt leaves out parts of the speech. Paragraph numbers are for this excerpt only. The original uses dashes, shown here as two hyphens.
This score is practice feedback on one essay. It is not an official AP score, and it does not predict your exam score. Our model is not a College Board sample. To compare with College Board's own samples, repeat Module 5, Part 5, any time.
Want more practice? Write another essay on the clock in a week. Choose a College Board Question 2 that you have not written on before, and score it the same way.
Next step: open the Next Step tab of your tracker, then open the help for your top sticking point. Then go to Module 7.
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