persuasive essay

the topic i want to write about is why school should be year round .For your next essay you will tackle the most difficult kind of writing of all: persuasion. Persuasive writing is much harder than what you have done so far because your relationship with your reader changes once again. Up to this point you have primarily been trying to deliver information to your reader, and success has been achieved if the reader simply understands you. Persuasion is different. The risk of failure is much greater since you are attempting to do something that is a lot harder than getting the reader to understand. Persuasive writing attempts to do only one of two things: 1.) To change the reader’s mind. This is hard enough. When is the last time you changed your mind about anything? Psychologists say that most people make up their minds about almost practically everything at the age of 9. Most of your beliefs have been firmly held for a long time. Changing them is not easy. 2.) To actually get the reader to physically do something—vote for a candidate, buy a product, etc. Changing someone’s mind is hard enough, but getting him/her to do something is even harder. Yet since we live in a democracy and advertising is an important part of our society, people are trying to convince you to vote or buy continually. Psychologists say that the average person completely ignores 99% of the persuasive appeals focused at them. Can you see how great the risk of failure is when you try to be persuasive? Audience Awareness There are only two possible audiences for a persuasive essay. Always keep in mind that there is no point in trying to convince someone of something if they already agree with you. This is sometimes called “preaching to the choir” and it is a waste of time. Therefore, there are only two possible audiences that you can persuade: 1.) People who are apathetic. The person may not have made up their mind about an issue, but it may be because they could care less about it. If you want your reader to save the whales you may have to get them to care about the whales first. 2.) People are hostile to your position. In other words, the person has already made up their mind and they disagree with you. Despite the great risks involved in persuasion, it is the most common form of writing in our culture. From sunup to sundown someone somewhere is trying to convince you of something. Learning how to write persuasively is a tremendous asset. Choosing an Essay Topic The prewriting for this essay begins with topic selection. You may choose any controversial topic to write about, but I suggest you select something new and something that is personally interesting to you. People have been writing about abortion and capital punishment for a long, long time without making much headway. This week you will also need to find an article, either in print or online that deals with your issue. Most students do this online, since it is also an easy way to look for topics. You will be using information from the article to make your own argument for the issue, so choose the article carefully. Follow the links below and you should be able to gather ideas for topics and find an article. If you would rather use a printed magazine or newspaper article that would okay. http://www.procon.org/ http://www.debate.org/big-issues/ https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate Persuasive Appeals Persuasion is normally accomplished by appealing to the reader’s reason, emotions, or ethics. Each of these appeals has strengths and weaknesses. Reason—Appeals to reason or logic are often quite effective. Readers like being given good reasons to do something. People in our culture also like numbers and are frequently impressed by statistics. Weaknesses: 1.) Appeals solely to reason may seem cold and lifeless. 2.) Appeals to reason involving lots of facts and figures may be boring or hard to understand. 3.) It is possible to lie with statistics. If I want to discourage women from entering a vocational training program in diesel mechanics I might say that 50% of the women in the last class failed, compared to only 25% for the men. If there were 2 women in the class and 4 men, then the same number of men and women failed, but the percentages look like men are better at diesel mechanics. Emotions—Our emotions are powerful motivators. Most people like to have an emotional connection to anything they do. If I believe in something, I want to believe in it passionately, and if I do you are much more likely to get me to do something. Weaknesses: 1.) Some people see emotional appeals as underhanded. You can’t come up with a good reason for me to buy your car, so instead you will try to make me feel that I will be smarter, sexier, happier if I drive it instead of another. 2.) Negative emotions do not last long. I may feel guilty or afraid or angry about something, but the feelings may not last long enough to get me to do anything. Ethics—Appeals to a sense of shared ethics are also highly effective. If you can get the reader to agree with you that something is wrong, then you are much more likely to get them to do something about making it right. Weakness: Americans no longer share much in the way of common ethics. You cannot assume that your reader’s morality is the same as your own. MLA Works Cited and Parenthetical Documentation For this essay you must borrow from an outside source (quote or paraphrase) in at least one place in your essay. The source must have an in-text citation, and you must create a Works Cited page with an entry for this source in MLA style. You may borrow as much as you want and use more than one source, but only one source and one borrowing is required for this paper. There are many online resources for MLA style. The easiest to use that I have found is Purdue OWL (the Purdue Univ. Online Writing Lab—Search for Purdue OWL MLA Style, or click on the links below). For a discussion of the works cited page, please click on: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/05/ For information about in-text citations, please click on: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/02/ Assignment You are not to begin writing the essay yet. We will tackle that next week. You are doing the prewriting now. This week you need only do the following: Find a controversial issue you would like to use as a topic (You will post this as a discussion). Find an article (online or print) on this issue. Review MLA style. You will borrow from the article when you write your persuasive essay and you need to be familiar with documenting sources in MLA format.

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