teaching persuasive essay writing high school

teaching persuasive essay writing high school

Teaching Persuasive Essay Writing in High School

1. The Importance of Persuasive Essay Writing

Think about possible objections to your thesis and take them into account in writing. An effective way to form a strong argument is to consider objections to your claim, carefully examine them, and then attempt to refute them. This may be difficult to do if you feel very strongly about your position. It may be a good idea to use brainstorming before proceeding. In a brainstorming session, individuals get together and discuss ideas on a particular topic. Free writing can also help you find possible objections to your claim.

Write your essay on a topic that interests you. If you can write about a topic you care about, that will come through in your essay and make it more persuasive. By caring about your topic, you will also put forth the effort to persuade your readers. In this demo, you will write a persuasive essay. Remember, its purpose is to convince.

A persuasive essay tries to convince the reader to agree with the writer’s opinion on a subject. In your persuasive essay, you do three things: present your position on a discussable issue, anticipate possible objections, and overcome them with logic and evidence to support your claim. Try to convince your readers that your opinion is likely to be the right one. Here are nine tips on how to write an effective persuasive essay.

2. Developing Strong Thesis Statements

A three-activity lesson teaching students what thesis statements are and how to use them effectively in writing Document Based Questions (DBQs) and other history essays. This is probably the most important lesson I give my students during the school year. The key here is that once students understand what a thesis statement really is, and how it is properly implemented in an essay, all the following problems diminish. My experience with senior students is that they tend to express the problems in their writing subtly and are very resistant to changing their writing habits. This can be rather frustrating, but if we can get them to understand that writing changes as you do it and that writing about history is not just memorizing names and dates, we have taken a great first step. This lesson will not take a whole 50-minute period, most likely you can do this in about 30 minutes.

3. Structuring Persuasive Essays effectively

The body is usually made up of three paragraphs. Each one serves to further explain your thesis and also to refute the opposing standpoint. An easy way to remember the basic format of a persuasive essay is to think of a “5-paragraph essay”. This is a classic way to utilize the 5-paragraph essay in that it is very simple but expands the dimensions of the 3-paragraph essay.

The introduction should also serve to grab the reader’s attention. Make sure you create a hook. What is something that would draw someone into the essay? Do not simply state your thesis. The issue is introduced, and background information is often needed. Finally, at the end of the introduction, you will state your thesis (which is also covered in another section).

The structure is sequential. The introduction should catch the reader’s attention, set up the issue, and lead into your thesis. The body is where all of the ideas are, and a great deal of evidence is given. This is the heart of the essay. Finally, the conclusion restates the issue and the importance of your view and the thesis.

4. Incorporating Persuasive Techniques and Evidence

Model for students how to include persuasive techniques and to integrate quotations effectively into the body paragraphs. Begin by developing knowledge of the terms before expecting students to include them in their essays. In this unit, the meaning of logos, ethos, and pathos was discussed in an introduction to persuasive techniques. Afterwards, students were to identify an example in a print advertisement from a magazine and make note of the specific magazine page on which they found the example. This was an easy yet effective way to learn the terms when a field trip to the computer lab to research commercials would have been too difficult to organize. Searching for an exact example of the persuasive technique bestowed a sense of ownership and excitement for the student when he brought it into class to share with his peers. This was evident from the many questions: What tool in Microsoft Word can I put this picture into a document with? Is it due at the end of the hour for a grade? Whether rhetorical or relevant, students were concerned about the upcoming assignment – to create a multimedia presentation that explains and provides an example of one persuasive technique as found in an advertisement. The requirements were that the examples must be school appropriate and the advertisement could not have come from a political source. This assignment gave students another intermittent yet reinforcing opportunity to work on their own and to share with their peers. In contrast, when learning how to integrate quotations students were concerned with fulfilling an individual task. A compilation of recent student comments about the difficulty of using evidence from a source shows a very strong personal reflection for the following assignment: Welcome to my room for essay writing boot camp. I’ll be your drill sergeant. Step one, find your quote! Step two, sneak your quote on to the stretcher and carry it back to safety behind your lines. Mu! Step three, tell me why they said that? And step four, drop and give me a 4-8 sentence analysis! This captured an illustration of a passionate teacher and student involvement in a difficult task for which the room needed to be somewhat of a boot camp during the writing process. Step one was done in class the following day when I brought an old newspaper and instructed students to look for an advertisement. This assignment went well. Step two was a tough transition yet a helpful concept from the adage put flesh on the bones. There is a proper and an improper way to interweave quotes that can be an agonizing task for many students. Step three was an easier transition yet did not occur. In the final class of the unit students completed an assignment with quotes from a source about Jane Addams. They made an attempt at writing an analysis, and still today it is quite evident that this is the most difficult portion of the learning process. While Jane Adams Stepping Stones is quite hypothetical in nature, students left with a sense of what it might be like to provide tutoring services for those in need, and learning AHA Tutoring Services is a potential assignment to replace hypothetical with a real need at the school. Step four occurred with great intensity and during much revision, as is desired. Practice was a violent 2 on 2 battle royal with activity rules, 4-8 sentence injuries were treated with a Band-Aid brand adhesive bandage, and the battle to solidify a quote became an X-game with high altitude jump stunts for prior to final assessment in the Weavrun Trials. The Netscape event recorder was down. These memories and quotes were not easy, yet this was a successful yet time-consuming practice of a lifelong skill. Today, when asked how to interweave quotes and analyze evidence I still refer to these past methods and announce that it is a rough and gritty job, chock-full of manly courage, much like D-Day.

5. Refining Persuasive Writing Skills

The final task, taking two class periods of about 25-30 minutes, is to have students find homework/after school activities they do not like or feel are important. The students must then construct a well-reasoned argument for or against the activity and present it to the class. After all arguments have been heard, the class will jointly decide the fate of the activities in question. This activity has led to great success in the past and has been a fun way to end a unit on persuasive writing.

Now, explain to students that just this past weekend you attended a high school debate tournament. During one round of competition, a team of two advanced through the event without saying a single word about the topic. Explain to students that the winning team triumphed by simply out-speaking their opponents yet making no real logical assertions. Ask students what they thought of this. Almost unanimously, students agree that while they enjoy a good win, the triumph was of poor nature. When asked why, students respond that using argument and evidence is the best way to support a claim. So inform students that the following week’s unit will focus on argumentation and persuasive speeches while continuing to be mindful of proper evidence and logic.

Drawing on the past week’s work with evidence, facts, statistics, and citations, remind students of the definition of pathos, logos, and ethos. Have students note on their essays where these appeals are used, and where they could increase their appeal. (You might also have students do this with a colored writing utensil — e.g. red for pathos, blue for logos, green for ethos.)