Rhetorical Skills are tested on the ACT® English, the SAT® Writing, and the new digital SAT® Reading and Writing sections.
Rhetoric—not that meaningless drivel spewed by politicians, but persuasive language used in writing or speaking—is tested in a few different ways on the ACT® and SAT® tests. While these question types may vary in formatting and approach, rhetoric questions all require the test taker to understand the author’s purpose; from their word choices and text structure to their point of view and persuasion techniques.
Let’s take a look at how rhetoric questions appear and how rhetorical skills are tested on the ACT® English, the SAT® Writing, and the new digital SAT® Reading and Writing sections.
Rhetoric questions on the ACT® English section all pertain to text style and organization.
Test takers need to know how to spot redundancy and wordiness, choose appropriate transitions and conclusions, determine relevance through adding or removing information, organize sentences and paragraphs, and identify the writer’s goal in every passage.
ACT® rhetoric questions are fairly simple to recognize because they’re very straightforward and frequently tell the test taker exactly what to do.
The English section of the ACT® tests rhetoric through the analysis of:
Rhetoric is tested throughout the SAT® Writing test. Test takers are required to understand development and relevance; know when to add, remove, or revise information; how to organize a passage through sentence or paragraph order, be familiar with text structure, and make sense of word and phrase choices for effective language use.
The Writing section of the SAT® tests rhetoric through the analysis of:
From what we know about the new digital SAT® Reading and Writing section, some question types and skills have been removed such as adding, removing, or revising information; development; introductions and conclusions; and sentence and paragraph order.
That said, students will continue to be tested on rhetorical skills through the Expression of Ideas domain.
The new digital SAT®’s Expression of Ideas domain tests two very specific skills: Transitions and Rhetorical Synthesis.
Transition questions have remained relatively the same; however, these question types are all asked with the question: “Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?” Students must choose the most fitting logical transition word(s) for the text provided.
For the Rhetorical Synthesis question types, test takers are provided with a set of notes taken on a specific subject. All of the notes provided are relative to the subject matter, but not exactly relevant to the goal specified in the question.
To successfully answer Rhetorical Synthesis questions, test takers need to focus on what, specifically, is being asked in the question. After understanding the main goal, they can look over the notes provided, find the relevant information, and weed out the excess.
Since these questions types are entirely novel, here’s a comprehensive example of how these question types appear on the digital SAT®:
Example: While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:
The student wants to emphasize the extent of Mayme Agnew Clayton’s collection of significantly important African American historical and cultural materials. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?
A) Mayme Agnew Clayton worked as a law librarian for UCLA, and helped devise UCLA’s African American Studies Center Library.
B) After retiring as librarian for UCLA, Mayme Agnew Clayton started her own private collection of African American historical and cultural materials, comprising over 30,000 rare and out-of-print books by Harlem Renaissance authors.
C) Mayme Agnew Clayton’s private collection of African American materials contains an estimated 3.5 million historical and cultural items, including over 30,000 rare and out-of-print books collected single-handedly by Clayton.
D) Founder and leader of the Western States Black Research and Education Center (WSBREC), Mayme Agnew Clayton helped curate the largest private collection of African American historical and cultural materials (i.e., objects, documents, and memorabilia) in the world.
The goal of the question is to “emphasize the extent of Mayme Agnew Clayton’s collection.” The only answer choice that uses information relevant to the “extent” of the collection is choice C. All other answer choices use excess details irrelevant to the “extent” of the collection.
1. Read the entire question. The language used in the question will help the test taker know exactly what they’re supposed to do. Is it a style or organization question? Are they being asked to reorder sentences, identify the primary purpose of a paragraph, or are they determining relevance? The question prompt will specify what the goal is.
2. Search the surrounding sentences. Many of the texts will use parallelism and context clues to help perceptive test takers find the correct answer choice. Students should always locate the part of the passage in question, then search the words or sentences that come before and after for hints.
3. Understand how different words, phrases, and sentences interact with one another. This is especially important for organization questions. Before a test taker can decide if or where a sentence or paragraph should be added/deleted/moved, they first need to consider the relevancy, potential redundancy, and the primary purpose of the information in question.
4. Watch out for wordiness and redundancy. Test takers need to be on the lookout for sentences that use repetitive language or could be trimmed to be more concise. Students will often encounter these tricky questions when asked whether or not they should revise, add, or remove information. The best answers utilize the economy of words—using fewer words to say more.
5. Determine the writer’s goal. What is the primary purpose of the text? Knowing the main objective of the text as a whole will help test takers deduce the purpose of the smaller parts of the passage (like words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs) better.
For example, If they know that the author’s goal is to persuade readers to help combat environmental pollution, then they’ll know that the suggested sentence about paper straws tasting like spit balls is really not relevant to the text.
Test takers need to ascertain the writer’s:
Helping students to better understand rhetoric questions will only lend more support to their comprehension of a writer’s purpose, persuasive language use, and effective organization of text. No matter the question type, students with a solid grasp on rhetorical skills will excel on the ACT® English, the SAT® Writing, and the new digital SAT® Reading and Writing sections.
Like all English Language skills, practice is the key. Make sure that your clients are getting sufficient practice with rhetorical skill questions both with sentences, short texts, and longer passages, too.
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