Section I: The Skill 1 Reading Question Types

Every rhetorical situation question points outside the sentence because the sentence is never the subject. The passage is a tool built to do something to somebody, and the stem asks you to name that something. There are six components examiners draw stems from: the writer, the audience, the exigence that provoked the piece, the purpose it serves, the context around it, and the message itself. A single passage can generate three different stems, one for each of several components, and each has a different correct kind of answer even though the text underneath never changes.

Exigence stems ask what problem or moment forced the writing to exist, so the right answer is a cause sitting before the first word. Purpose stems ask what the passage is trying to accomplish in or on the reader, so the right answer is an action verb: to redirect, to justify, to undercut. A stem that asks for 'the primary rhetorical purpose in the second paragraph' is never answered by paraphrasing that paragraph's content. It is answered by naming the work that paragraph does to the larger argument, which is why a vivid detail like a row of clerks is usually a means toward a bigger target, not the target itself.

Audience stems shift the question again. Instead of what the writer wants, they ask what the writer assumes the reader already knows or feels, and that answer comes from what the passage leaves unexplained. A flood narrative that states a measurement in feet but never explains the grief behind it is trusting its audience to supply that grief. Recognizing which of the six components a stem is reaching for, before you touch the answer choices, is what keeps exigence, purpose, and audience questions from blurring into one guess.