yeah as welcome back to coach all rights in today's video we're going to be talking about how to earn the thesis point for AP Lang question 2 so basically how do we write a defensible thesis for a rhetorical analysis essay for an introductory paragraph think about it like an inverted triangle there are three parts the hook the context and the thesis now technically speaking you can actually combine the context and the thesis into the same sentence but the idea here is to start from the most broad and then narrow down to the most specific the
context portion of the introductory paragraph you can actually combine that with the thesis itself and so the context portion is just when you identify the specific passage that you're talking about so if it is an essay or an article you're gonna be looking at the title author genre and tone and then if it's a speech or letter you're gonna be looking for the speaker occasion or exigence and the audience you would include tone here as well if possible the final portion of an introductory paragraph is the thesis now I should mention that according to the
College Board's rubric the thesis can happen anywhere in the essay it does not have to be in the intro or even in the conclusion however I find that students who put the thesis in the beginning of their essay tend to write a stronger paper because they have more of a direction I do however recommend restating your thesis in your conclusion just worded a little bit differently that way you have it in the beginning and the end so you can be more likely to earn the thesis point because you are more likely to have set a
defensible claim as you read and annotate the passage you're going to be looking for either strategies or choices these are things that the author does in order to develop his or her argument it could be anything from juxtaposition to an appeal to emotion perhaps the use of flattery or even criticism so as you decide what you want to talk about in your essay these choices or strategies need to be present in your thesis a defensible thesis also needs to mention author's purpose so if the choices and strategies are what the author does then the purpose
is why the author does it why does he or she use these strategies or make these choices and why did he or she write this piece to begin with in order to be defensible a rhetorical analysis thesis should address strategies and purpose however if you want to make it a little bit more complex you can add another layer which is to consider the on the audience now this is not mandatory nor is it always appropriate to do so however sometimes students want to strengthen their thesis and this is one way to do that so think
about why the author made the choices that he or she did that's purpose but also sometimes we have to realize that speakers tailor their choices to their audience so what is the effect of these strategies is it trying to get the audience to think a certain way to act a certain way there should be an effect of these strategies because if they chose these strategies for a reason they're trying to elicit a particular response let's take a look at an example where we have the context and the thesis in the same sentence so we're gonna
lead in with the context so here we have the author's full name because the first time that you reference the author you want to use his or her full name and then after that you refer to them by their last name and then we've got passionate article so passionate is describing article here so we have that as our tone and then lastly we have the name of the article America needs it's nerds and notice that because it's an article we put it in quotation marks and the punctuation goes inside the quotation marks this is the
actual thesis portion so this is the part that is defensible so we need to have strategies and purpose notice that we're using the verb form of strategies here so instead of definition we have defines and instead of juxtaposition we have contrast works just fine also the prompt asked about how the author used certain strategies to develop his argument so we have that phrase in here to make sure that we're answering the prompt however we don't just stop with the word argument or message we want to actually specify what the argument or message is for clarification
purposes to make your thesis even stronger you can add on another layer and that is basically the effect on the reader or the audience so this can be done by adding a dependent clause to the end of your sentence or by simply starting a new sentence and just analyzing the effect that way now that we understand the different parts of a defensible thesis statement for a rhetorical analysis essay let's just go over a very quick checklist here so first of all you need to identify the strategies or choices and the purpose you also need to
make sure that you're not just restating the prompt you need to add specifics and if possible change the verb for instance instead of saying develop his argument you could say furthers his argument you want to make sure that you're not just restating the prompt word forward because that's not defensible that's the information that's already provided they want your interpretation of the passage and then lastly you want to make sure that you're answering the prompt now that might seem really obvious but sometimes students actually forget what they're supposed to be looking for because they're so wrapped
up in just finding strategies and purpose and they don't realize they're looking at perhaps an introduction of something or a conclusion of something and so you need to really think about what you're being asked and there you have it guys those are my best tips for coming up with a defensible thesis for AP lank you to the rhetorical analysis question if you are interested in finding out more tips on how to pass the AP leg exam please don't forget to click Subscribe and also turn your notifications on because I'm going to be posting more content
every week on this channel until next time guys happy writing
