AP Lang — exigence, purpose and audience

Every text on the AP English Language and Composition Exam is written from somewhere, for someone, about something that made it worth writing. The course framework calls this the rhetorical situation: the exigence, purpose, audience, writer, context and message of a text. Reading questions ask you to identify these components and explain how a writer's choices respond to them; writing questions and the three essays ask you to make choices of your own that fit a situation. This material trains both sides.

The quiz has twelve questions built on short original scenarios and on one historical occasion. Several items separate terms that students often blur. After a pedestrian is struck at an unmarked crosswalk, a council member's opinion piece has an exigence (the accident), a purpose (getting a signal installed) and an audience (the newspaper's readers), and the answer choices are built from exactly those confusions. Other items show how audience changes a writer's decisions: a hydrologist rewriting a study for farmers, a writer appealing to duck hunters about wetland protection, a notice for readers who are still learning English, and a student speaking to employers about school start times. One question asks which piece of historical context explains a 1918 letter urging readers to avoid crowds, and another asks what exigence the Independence Day occasion created for Frederick Douglass's speech of July 1852. The last group turns to your own writing: how to open an argument so that readers see why the issue matters now, and how a detail from your own experience builds credibility with a reader.

Each explanation names the component of the rhetorical situation that each wrong choice actually describes, so you learn the distinctions rather than just the right answer.

The flashcards give working definitions of the six components of the rhetorical situation, the difference between exigence and purpose, how an audience's beliefs, values and needs shape vocabulary, evidence and appeals, and how to establish exigence in the opening of your own essay.

The material offers a multiple-choice quiz and flashcards. It is independent practice based on the published course framework and is not produced or endorsed by the College Board.

  • Identify the exigence, purpose, audience, context and message of a text
  • Distinguish the exigence that prompts a text from the purpose it pursues
  • Explain how a writer adapts vocabulary, evidence and appeals to an audience's beliefs, values and needs
  • Use historical context to understand an older text
  • Establish exigence and credibility in your own argument

Practice material written by Zestly, based on the College Board's AP English Language and Composition Course and Exam Description (skill categories 1 and 2: rhetorical situation, reading and writing; essential knowledge on exigence, purpose, audience and context). Scenarios are original.

Sample question

A city council member publishes an opinion piece in the local newspaper one week after a pedestrian was struck at an unmarked crosswalk near a middle school. The piece asks the council to install a traffic signal at the crosswalk before school reopens in the fall. What is the exigence of the opinion piece?

See the answer

The accident at the unmarked crosswalk near the school

Exigence is the situation or event that prompts a writer to write at a particular moment. Here that is the recent accident at the crosswalk. The newspaper's readers are the audience, the request for a signal is the purpose, and the council member's wish to look active is a speculative motive the scenario never states.

← English Language and Composition

↑ AP