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Common Core ELAGrades 11–12Reading: Informational

RI.11-12.6: What Makes the Rhetoric Work

Also written as CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.11-12.6 · Cluster: Craft and Structure.

All 41 Grades 11–12 ELA Standards

The Official Wording

Determine an author's point of view or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is particularly effective, analyzing how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness or beauty of the text.

Common Core State Standards, Grades 11-12, Reading: Informational Text · Read it at the source · Checked October 14, 2026

What RI.11-12.6 Means in Plain English

Juniors and seniors read texts whose rhetoric works unusually well, name the author’s purpose, and explain how style and content together give the writing its power or beauty. An essay on the Voyager Golden Record argues that a message to strangers is really a portrait of ourselves.

Ninth and tenth grade (RI.9-10.6) analyzed how an author uses rhetoric to advance a point of view. Grades 11-12 ask why a particular text moves readers so strongly. This is the last band of the line, the rhetorical judgment that college and career readiness expects.

RI.11-12.6 I Can Statements

  • I can state an author’s purpose in a single precise sentence.
  • I can name the stylistic choices that give a passage its force.
  • I can explain how the content and the style work together.

RI.11-12.6 Worked Example

The weak answer lists devices like a checklist, and the strong one shows how each choice serves the author’s purpose.

Read the Story
In 1977, two spacecraft left Earth carrying the strangest letter ever mailed: a gold-plated record, with instructions for playing it engraved on its cover.It holds greetings in fifty-five languages. It holds rain, surf, laughter, a heartbeat, Bach and Chuck Berry.No one expects it to be found. The spacecraft will drift for tens of thousands of years before passing even near another star, and space is very large and very empty.So who was it for? Not for them. A letter you never expect to be answered is not really a letter. It is a confession.When we chose what to put on the record, we had to decide, for once, what we wanted to be remembered for, and we chose the music and the laughter. We left out the wars. Whether that was honesty or hope, the record is the best thing we ever said about ourselves to no one.
A short passage written for this page.
Question: What is the author’s purpose, and how do the style and content of the passage give it its power?
Not Yet“The author’s purpose is to inform readers about the Golden Record. The author uses repetition (‘It holds’), a metaphor (a letter) and short sentences to make the writing interesting.”The purpose is too thin, since the passage argues a point rather than reporting facts, and the devices are listed without saying what any of them does for that point.
Meets the Standard“The author wants readers to see the Golden Record as a portrait of humanity made for ourselves, not a message for aliens. The content builds that case: no one expects it to be found, so its real audience must be us. The style makes it land. Calling it ‘the strangest letter ever mailed’ sets up the metaphor the essay later overturns, when the letter becomes ‘a confession.’ The repeated ‘It holds’ piles up ordinary human sounds, so the reader feels what was chosen before learning what was left out. The fragment ‘Not for them.’ turns the essay in three words, and the closing paradox, saying the best thing about ourselves ‘to no one,’ leaves the reader with pride and doubt at once.”It states a precise purpose, then ties each stylistic choice to the content it carries and to its effect on the reader, explaining the power instead of naming the devices.
Question Stems to Use
What is the author trying to make readers believe or feel?Which sentence would you quote to show the passage’s power? Why that one?How does this choice of words or rhythm serve the author’s purpose?Where does the content do the persuading, and where does the style?What would be lost if this sentence were written plainly?

Common Mistakes with RI.11-12.6

Listing devices without effects

“The author uses repetition, metaphor and short sentences.”

Try this: Require every named device to be followed by what it does to the reader and how it serves the author’s purpose.

Settling for “to inform”

“The purpose is to inform readers about the record.”

Try this: Ask what the author wants readers to believe or feel by the end, and accept only a purpose the closing sentence supports.

Separating style from content

Two paragraphs, one on the facts of the record and one on the writing, that never meet

Try this: Have students rewrite a powerful sentence in flat language and explain exactly what meaning or feeling the plain version loses.

Where RI.11-12.6 Fits

Comes BeforeRI.9-10.6Analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance a point of view or purpose.
AlongsideSL.11-12.3Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, word choice, emphasis and tone.L.11-12.5Interpret figures of speech like paradox in context and explain their role in a text.
Comes NextW.11-12.4Write so that development, organization and style fit the task, purpose and audience.

Practice RI.11-12.6

Quick Check

  1. What is the author’s purpose?
  2. What does the repeated “It holds” add to the passage?
  3. Why is the last sentence a paradox, and what does it do?

RI.11-12.6: Other Names

RI.11-12.6CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.11-12.6

Common Core State Standards © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved. Official wording from the Common Core State Standards PDFs at corestandards.org, last checked October 14, 2026. The explanation, I can statements, example, mistakes and practice on this page are EMStudio’s own, written beside the official wording. They are not part of the standard.