AP English Language · Summary

Unit 1 summary

  1. Read the situation before the details: writer, audience, purpose, message, exigence and context.
  2. Name a purpose with a verb and a target: to persuade whom to do or believe what.
  3. Find the intended audience from who is addressed, what the writer assumes readers know, and what the text asks them to do.
  4. Exigence is what prompted the text now; purpose is what the text tries to do about it.
  5. Context explains choices: writers speak to what their audience is already worried about.
  6. Ethos, pathos and logos are labels. Analysis says which detail does what for which audience, and how that serves the purpose.