Writing the Persuasive/Argumentative Essay DAY 1

A persuasive essay involves arguing a position using reasons and evidence. When you write a persuasive essay, your goal is for your readers to agree with you, and, as a result change their attitudes or behavior in some way. A persuasive essay is a call to action, and your goal will be to reach your audience on a deeper, more emotional level.

Understanding The Assignment Figure out exactly what the question is asking. Go through the question and underline each specific idea. When you know exactly what the question requires you to do, you’ll be more efficient when you begin to search for evidence.

Develop A Purpose For Writing If you want to change your reader’s mind about a subject, your purpose is to persuade. This purpose is not the argument of your essay. Rather, it should tell your readers why your argument is interesting or important. A statement of purpose usually appears in your introduction, before your thesis statement.

Develop a Position Before you can create a thesis statement, you have to have a position—an opinion or judgment of your subject. Knowing where you stand on an issue is vital before you can construct your thesis. A thesis should always be more specific than a position and should appeal to readers.

As you begin your position, you may find that you don’t actually know where you stand on a subject. Ask yourself some questions to zero in on your positions: What are some possible positions? Turn to research. What are the strengths and weaknesses of these positions? What evidence is given to support these positions?

Identify Your Audience Before you begin writing, identify and evaluate your audience. For a persuasive essay: Who do you want to persuade? What group is it possible to persuade? What do you want them to do? Who among your possible readers can themselves influence opinion and behavior? Avoid defining your audience superficially, such as by age, race, gender.

Evaluate Your Audience Spend some time figuring out where your audience stands on a subject by answering some questions: What experience might your audience have had with this topic? What opinions or preconceptions might you audience have about your subject? What are their beliefs and values? How do these affect their perception of the subject? How does your topic relate to the larger world?

Put It All Together Next, figure out which positions you’re able to address and which readers you have the best chance of reaching. Be aware of positions—both your own and audience’s.

Writing Your Argumentative Essay DAY 2

Develop A Thesis Statement A thesis statement notifies your reader of your original idea regarding a topic. Your thesis should not be obvious or vague. To find your thesis statement, consider both your purpose for writing and your position on the topic in general. Then decide what specific element of your topic you want to explore.

Develop Your Thesis Statement Your thesis statement should be specific and controversial and should present your position clearly and simply. In a persuasive essay, you want to reach your audience on a deeper, more emotional level. You should make sure your thesis appeals to your readers on more than just a rational level. You should get them to think—but also to feel. A thesis for a persuasive essay should try to get the readers to agree and act.

Placement of the Thesis Statement In general, a thesis statement should be the last sentence of the first paragraph of your essay. Positioning it here gives a few advantages: you have time to present some background information and let readers know why the topic is important. It steers the rest of your essay in a clear direction.

Find Reasons To Support Your Thesis To make a case for your thesis, you must come up with reasons why your argument makes sense. Think about: 1. the audience’s values and beliefs 5. comparisons 2. traditions and customs 6. definitions 3. expert opinions 7. likelihood 4. statistics 8. cause/effect

Find Evidence to Support Your Reasons You should have at least one piece of evidence for each reason you give. When searching for evidence, stay organized. Keep track of quotations, paraphrases, statistics, etc. Include title of your sources and page numbers. Begin your work cited page!

Forms of Appeal There are four ways to appeal to your audience to get their support: 1. logical appeal-may be use to lesser extent in persuasive essays. 2. ethical appeal-establish your own good character and expertise in order to persuade readers to listen to you. 3. emotional appeal-should supplement, not replace, an argument 4. appeal through style-construct a strong argument by carefully choosing words and putting sentences together deliberately.

Writing Your Essay It is always useful to outline your essay first. If you run into problems while planning your paper or writing an outline, you’ll know you should do additional research or thinking before you write.

Introduction The first paragraph is the most important! It should include: 1. background material and context 2. purpose for writing and thesis Get right into your subject!

Body Paragraphs Use the body paragraphs to your reasons and evidence and to develop your argument. Each paragraph should begin with a topic sentence that develops your thesis statement and should include evidence that supports that topic sentence. Besides just presenting the evidence, you should also include analysis sentences that explain why the evidence supports your argument.

Body Paragraphs Avoid having every body paragraph play the same role. Body paragraphs can be use to: 1. introduce the opposing side of your argument 2. explore the opposite side to reach a conclusion 3. explore a reason further

Body Paragraphs Use transitions to guide your readers through your body paragraphs. Present information within your paragraph in a logical sequence. Useful transitions include: furthermore, however, in contrast, for example, as a result, soon after… Avoid weak transitions like also, or and..

Conclusion Your conclusion should explain the significance of your thesis in a larger context. Do NOT simply summarize the essay or repeat your thesis statement. Techniques to use: 1. Ask yourself: Why is my topic important? How does it connect to issues beyond this essay? What can readers take away from my argument and apply to their lives in different ways? 2. Cite a relevant quotation. 3. Explain a term 4. Show how your argument relates to the world at large.

Using Sources Direct Quotations: Use a direct quote when the language is unique and vivid. Exact wording is necessary to maintain technical accuracy. The speaker is an important authority. Plagiarism: You paraphrase whenever you put a source’s ideas into your own words. However, if you fail to use citations to indicate ideas your got from someone else, you are effectively claiming those ideas as your own, whether you intended to or not.

Things to Remember When Using Sources Use signal phrases to introduce a quotation. That is, don’t put a quote into the text at doesn’t begin with a brief introduction such as As one critic notes… Use ellipses and brackets to indicate deviations from the original source. Use block quotes when quoting more than four line of text.

Textbook Pages to Help You Pages 442-449 Writing an argumentative essay Pages 222-223 Identify Persuasive Techniques Page R21 Using Parenthetical Citations MLA style Your rubric is on page 449.