entry 9: persuasive writing

"Persuasive writing presents an argument, and when it's effective, writers are convincing, swaying readers to take their viewpoints or to take action."
(Tompkins, 2012, p. 252)

This past week, I led the Teaching the Genre Expert Workshop on Persuasive Writing with my peers Makayla and Taylor. While preparing for this workshop, I feel that the most important thing I learned was how crucial it is to be aware of your audience, especially when writing a persuasive or argumentative piece.

The Three Appeals

Tompkins (2012) identifies three ways to persuade: an appeal based on reason, an appeal to character, and an appeal to emotion. These can also be identified as logos, ethos, and pathos. During our research, Taylor came across an article that discussed how to incorporate online media into instruction. We used this article to lead an activity during our workshop and we asked our peers to identify which of the three appeals their advertisement was trying to use to persuade their audience. This was a really interesting activity to watch unfold; as I was circling the room and listening in on our peers' conversations, it was interesting to hear them make arguments as to why certain advertisements were attempting to appeal to emotion (pathos) while others were using to logic to attempt to persuade (logos). I think this activity was a great way to show our peers how we could lead a similar activity in a classroom of young students. This form of persuasive writing fits into the persuasive posters that Tompkins (2012) discusses. I feel that this lesson could be modified to use with all grade levels which is really powerful.

Tompkins (2012) also identifies different types of persuasive writing: persuasive posters, persuasive letters, and persuasive essays. The article I came across discussed persuasive letter writing within a third and fourth grade class. Wollman-Bonilla (2004) emphasized the importance of making sure the writers knew they had an authentic audience that would actually be reading their letters. Through reading this article, I learned that when the students knew their audience would actually be reading their writing, they tried much harder to prove their argument. I would definitely consider leading a similar lesson in my future classroom. I think this is a great way to teach third and fourth graders about persuasive letter writing. In the article, the prompts the students had were to write a letter to their teacher to convince her to have a Christmas party in class even though they knew she didn't want to have one; to convince a friend or family member to buy them a Christmas present that they were pretty confident they weren't going to get; and to persuade their gym coach to allow them to roller skate in gym class (Wollman-Bonilla, 2004).

Persuasive Letter Template

I would consider using similar prompts within my classroom. For example, I could tell students to write me a letter arguing why they think we should have an extra 30 minutes of recess even though they know we have schoolwork to get through, or why I should stop giving them homework. For students that struggle with writing, I could also scaffold by providing them a persuasive letter writing template (pictured to the right). I think this could be a really engaging writing activity and teach students a lot about what makes a strong argumentative writing piece!

                                                           References

Wollman-Bonilla, J. E. (2004). Principled teaching to(wards) the test?: Persuasive writing in                  two classrooms. Language Arts, 81(6), 502-511.