How to Teach Persuasive Writing

Persuasion is the art of getting what you want. In technical terms, persuasive writing is writing that presents a case or gives an opinion and tries to convince the audience to agree. People write persuasively for many reasons; to entertain, to inform, to promote change, to argue for or against someone or something, to sell a product or idea, and many more. It is important to learn to write persuasively because it can be a vital part of reaching goals and dreams. Career goals often hinge on the persuasive skills that are used to influence a potential employer or buyer.

Students use persuasive skills to get their allowances increased and their curfews moved later. They put their persuasive skills to the test in personal relationships with peers and girlfriends and boyfriends. Those who are college bound usually understand that entrance tests that they may take for college will require them to have a good grasp of these types of writing skills. Beyond those things students often have a limited sense of the importance of persuasive writing.

The more students learn about the importance of persuasive writing, the more they understand the things that effective persuasive skills can do for them, not only with personal relationships, but with policies, goals, and agendas. When they start seeing the bigger picture, they begin to understand the power of their own voices and their ability to create change. That connection is truly exciting to witness.

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Persuasive writing is essential for students to learn. It is something they are all very familiar with because they use persuasive techniques every day. They persuade their parents to increase their allowance, their bother to let them take his car, their teachers that they need extra time on an assignment. They have the basic idea already; they just need to apply it to their writing.

A nice place to start is to begin a discussion about where they see persuasion in the world around them. Students are very good at recognizing persuasive techniques in advertisements, politics, and peer pressure- along with many other persuasive ideas and arguments. They like to talk about their favorite commercials, and this can develop into a discussion of what makes that particular commercial effective for promoting that product or idea. Does it make you want to buy something or do something? It's a nice jumping off point to get students interested in persuasive writing.

When we talk about commercials and advertisements, we go to YouTube and I share with them some humorous and effective commercials. They always like the Doritos' commercials. Most of the super bowl commercials are posted on YouTube and I take advantage of these as well. Always remember to screen the commercials first. You never know what some people might do with things they post on YouTube, so it's best to be safe.

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Most writers I teach find that the harderst part about persuasive writing is just getting started. Writer's block, uncertainty, or doubt, plague them and convince them that they will fail. So part of what I like to do is to give them loads of examples. I even encourage them to model their writing after the examples- steal the idea and make it their own! One fantastic free resource for persuasive writing introductions is "The Writing Teachers Strategy Guide" by Steve Peha at Teaching that Makes Sense: The Writing Teacher's Strategy Guide Steve has a whole site full of best practices for teaching writing, but this is one of my favorite resources because it has loads of specific examples for attention getting introductions and powerful endings. I highly recommend all of Steve's stuff. He is fantastic.

One of the most important parts of the introduction, after the attention getter, is the position statement- which is the thesis statement of the persuasive essay. I teach my students to outline the main points that they want to use to argue their position. Then, use those things like a list in a sentence to create the position statement. For example, if the topic is going green, and the main points are recycling, conserving water, and using fuel efficient vehicles, the statement might look like this: Recycling, conserving water, and using more fuel efficient cars are just a few of the ways that you can help keep our planet healthy. The position or thesis statement is then a basic outline of the three main ideas that will be addressed in the persuasive essay.

This is a fairly basic way to construct a position statement. With begining persuasive writers, it is sometimes best to keep it as simple as possible. Give them a formula that they can wash and repeat. Also, with the postion statement, I model, model, model. It may seem redundant, but there is often a lot of confustion that comes with writing a position statement. I show them examples, we write some together, and then they try it on their own.

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