examples of persuasive essay writing

examples of persuasive essay writing

The Importance of Persuasive Essay Writing

1. Introduction

The idea of writing a persuasive essay is to force the reader to consider your point of view. The end goal is to get the reader to believe in whatever you are advocating. It would be the same as trying to convince a lion to become a vegetarian. No matter what approach you take, the lion is not going to take to the concept kindly. Persuasive writing is an art. It either convinces the reader that your ideas are valid or makes them consider your point of view to be so ridiculous that no one would ever support it. Obviously, tides of laughter are not what you want people doing while reading your essay. This would provide temporary fulfillment though, due to the reader considering your point of view and then trying to find counterarguments to it. This in itself is a strong step for persuasive writing. You want your opponent to consider your ideas. If you can provide solid evidence for your cause and make the opposition believe that their ideas are weak, you have just made a convert.

2. Understanding Persuasive Writing

Understanding the audience is integral to this skill of writing. For an argument to be effective, the writer must take into consideration the position of those who do not agree with it and attempt to sway their position. It is a rare writing situation where the author can state that he or she is unequivocally right on an issue and that there are no conceivable arguments to the contrary. Therefore, persuasive writing carries with it a degree of tension, implicitly suggesting to the reader that there is a right way and a wrong way to think about the issue at hand. The more deeply ingrained the issue is to the reader’s own beliefs, the greater the writer’s need to identify with the reader’s position in order to change their future and past behavior. This identification can take various forms, from surface-level agreement in order to appease the reader, to deliberate attempts to change the reader’s belief about what the writer believes the reader should think.

Understanding persuasive writing and the implications of employing persuasive methods is critical to effective writing. Persuasive writing is writing where you try to convince the reader to adopt your position on an issue or point of view. Persuasive writing may be designed to convince the reader to take your position on a particular issue, to take action on an issue, or to take some action on an issue. It is an argument of sorts that paves the way for the effective employment of debating, arguing, and advocacy skills.

3. Techniques for Effective Persuasion

2) Make an emotional connection with your audience. Emotions can carry a point further than logic. If you can get your audience to feel emotionally attached to your topic, you can guide them into feeling the same way that you do about the topic. This could be good or bad depending on how you look at it, but it definitely is an effective tactic in changing people’s stances on things. There are many ways to make an emotional connection: use a personal anecdote, an example of an event in your life that led you to form your stance on the topic. People always like to know that there are others out there with the same ideas as themselves, this is why it can be effective to show the audience that a certain belief is prevalent in society. For example, you can ask your audience a series of rhetorical questions that will lead them to an epiphany about the topic, hoping to change their minds. Always keep your audience in mind when considering how to make an emotional connection. Different things are effective on different people.

1) Establish credibility. You need to convince your audience that you know what you are talking about. Whether you are an expert on the subject you are persuading or you are just a student, it is essential to sound like you know what you are talking about. You do not want to sound wishy-washy. You do not want to give your audience room for doubt. You always want to generate the impression that you are sure of your stance and are therefore more likely to be correct. To establish credibility, one must use outside sources for evidence. If you are arguing a case for a law to be changed, you might want to use statistics to prove your point. If you are suggesting a new campus policy, you might want to get testimonials from people on campus to prove its effectiveness.

4. Structuring a Persuasive Essay

In order to get your persuasive essay published, a method is followed. Determine the evidence that you will include. You want to be able to back up your point with data and statistics. You need to know what the percentage is. Ask, “What is the problem? And who is it a problem for?” This will help define the 2 sides of the argument. What do you want for your reader to have as an opinion or belief? This is your bias. Then determine the best way to change your reader’s opinion. What is the reader’s opinion? What are the contrasting views? And finally, what is the line of reasoning you want your reader to follow? Addressing these questions, there would be no misconception between you and the reader. Information must be relevant to the audience. This is where you decide if your point will be understood. Knowing the audience is important as well. Decide what the ideas are that you will be opposing. It’s a good idea to acknowledge that your opinion may not be the correct one. What are the weaknesses in the opposing views? And what evidence can you show to say that it is not the correct view. This will reinforce your readers new opinion. Now for the thesis statement. This is a statement of position. What do you want to say about the issue? This is the statement that you want your readers to believe is true and is the focus of your supporting evidence. Having discovered and tactics and strategies for preparing a persuasive essay, it leads us to the main writing eg a stages. A good essay is the result of hard work, and careful planning. An often chosen approach in drafting a persuasive essay is first laying out your opinion on the topic, and then backing it up with evidence. An alternate is the traditional 5 paragraph essay that we all know. It consists of the introduction, the body of the essay, and a conclusion. This approach is said to be the most effective.

5. Conclusion

Thirdly, it is perhaps more likely that the persuasive essay is assigned priority in subjects where teachers try to develop a well-rounded personality of an individual. It is because successful argumentation is applied intelligence at work. And intelligence, or thoughtful decision-making, is what we want from every mature person. But developing intelligence is hard labor, maybe a continuous process. And writing a persuasive essay and continuously practicing on a variety of topics will provide a platform to gauge one’s own intelligence, then the last one or somewhere about it, and then it will be a self-realization process where he is trying to improve himself.

Secondly, the almost lost art of personal relationship is reflected in persuasive essay writing because fundamental to every argument is the ability to say, “You are right, but my case is better,” and then to prove the assertion without losing temper, tearing up the opposition, or closing the opponent’s mouth. And this is the best possible way of getting things over to others’ minds. The same thing happens when a lawyer tries to win his case. He has to see that the judge is convinced with his argument, and if he is trying to win it by showing anger towards the opposing lawyer or by disrupting the opposition’s speech, he is doing no good to himself. He must talk to the point and win it in the best possible manner. This art of argument is vanishing deeply today, as people do not have the patience to listen to others. We may say that persuasive essay writing is one such attempt to check this lost art from the very beginning. And the student will be doing the same thing when he tries to write a persuasive essay on any topic for the teacher.

As we have already mentioned, persuasive essay writing is a time-consuming task. Not only that, but it is a creative task and it requires visualization of the situation. If the visualization is clear in our mind, then only we can put that situation on paper in a clear and understandable way. It is observed that in the first case, the requirement of persuasive essay writing comments on itself. For example, a lawyer fighting the case in the court is the same as a student arguing his case in the essay.