This is something you will use to help guide you in your writing and to check back with to make sure you are answering that question along the way.
Collaborate with a partner and share your questions. Describe your topic and point of view and ask your partner if that question connects to that topic and point of view. Working with the topic you have identified, use the research skills you learned in previous chapters to locate approximately five potentially useful print or electronic sources of information about the topic. Organize your list of resources into primary and secondary sources.
What makes them either primary or secondary? Pick one primary source and one secondary source and write a sentence or two summarizing the information that each provide s. What type of primary source did you choose?
Who wrote it, and why? Do you think this source provides accurate information, or is it biased in some way? Where did the information in the secondary source come from? Was the author citing an initial study, piece of literature, or work of art? Where could you find the primary source? With the topic from Self — Practice Exercise Note that after reading Section How to B e Really Convincing Sometimes it can be very challenging to convince someone of your ideas and that your point of view is valid.
If your reader has strong contrary views or has had emotional experiences in the past connected to that topic, your job in persuading will be more challenging. However, if you consider your audience and tone as discussed in Section It will also help you make recognize how much and what kind of background information you need to provide your reader with context for your discussion. Look back at the two persuasive essay examples in Section With a partner, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each example.
Look at the credibility, tone, appropriateness to audience, and completeness of the ideas presented. Collaboration: W ith your partner, discuss how you could make each of these arguments stronger. As you read in Chapter 10, Section When you do this, you are presenting a well-rounded and complete discussion to your reader that shows you have critically thought about the topic and have been selective in choosing your points.
As a result, there is a higher probably that you will convince your reader. The process of looking at multiple sides of a topic is called dialectics. Dialectics is the act of using logical reasoning to combine, juxtapose, or synthesize opposing ideas to arrive at a strong conclusion. The Components of Dialectics To begin the dialectic process, you first need to come up with an idea of what topic will be discussed; this is the thesis behind the discussion. Once you have determined your thesis, through various methods the easiest being discussion with someone else , you will explore opposing sides to the topic, eventually discovering at least one antithesis.
Combining those two perspectives, you can then make your own conclusions. Maybe this process will result in you standing by the original thesis, or maybe the antithesis is incredibly convincing and you will switch sides of the argument, or maybe you still believe the original thesis but accept there are other conditions that have credibility as well. This end result is called the synthesis : the blending of ideas.
Essentially, the process would look like this:. Considering both your thesis and the discovered antithetical perspectives will help you to arrive at a wider view of a topic: one that has more credibility.
Looking back to the persuasive essay samples you read in Section How did they justify their opinions? Consider how integrating dialectics into each of those arguments to a greater degree would have strengthened their points of view, ultimately making their arguments more convincing.
First complete the side of the table with ideas supporting the point of view you described in question 1. Then, challenge yourself to come up with ideas you may need to do a little bit of research that would support the other side of the discussion.
Collaboration: D iscuss your answers with a partner. Do you both have the same ideas, or can you add to your list based on what your partner has come up with. After coming up with and considering the other perspective, has your point of view changed at all? Do you still stick by your same point of view percent?
Or do you concede that there are valid points from the other perspective? Using both the scratch outline and the working thesis you created in Self — Practice Exercise Once you have created that table with your thesis given, share your table and thesis with a classmate.
Collaborate : Conduct a dialectic discussion on your topic and possible for and against the working thesis you presented. Add any points to your original table. Remember to be aware of the process of synthesis you have gone through.
Did your original point of view change at all? Is there anything you can make concessions on being valid? This may impact your thesis. Using one or two of the opposing ideas your partner helped you come up with, revise your scratch outline from Self — Practice Exercise For this section, you will need to refer back to Section The persuasive essay begins with an engaging introduction that presents the general topic.
A careful analysis of your notes will help you re-evaluate your working thesis and determine whether you need to revise it. Remember that your working thesis was the starting point—not necessarily the end point—of your research. You should revise your working thesis if your ideas changed based on what you read.
Even if your sources generally confirmed your preliminary thinking on the topic, it is still a good idea to tweak the wording of your thesis to incorporate the specific details you learned from research. Jorge realized that his working thesis oversimplified the issues. He still believed that the media was exaggerating the benefits of low-carb diets. However, his research led him to conclude that these diets did have some advantages.
Avoid forming a thesis based on a negative claim. That is, the thesis statement should focus on how the hourly minimum wage is low or insufficient. On a sheet of paper, use your working thesis and the revised outline from Self — Practice Exercise Essentially, you are expanding your outline to include more source information. By now, your thinking on your topic is taking shape. You have a sense of what major ideas to address in your paper, what points you can easily support, and what questions or subtopics might need a little more thought.
In short, you have begun the process of synthesizing information—that is, of putting the pieces together into a coherent whole. It is normal to find this part of the process a little difficult. Some questions or concepts may still be unclear to you. You may not yet know how you will tie all of your research together. Synthesizing information is a complex, demanding mental task, and even experienced researchers struggle with it at times. A little uncertainty is often a good sign! It means you are challenging yourself to work thoughtfully with your topic instead of simply restating the same information.
You have already considered how your notes fit with your working thesis. Now, take your synthesis a step further. Organize your notes with headings that correspond to points and subpoints you came up with through dialectics and compiled in your outline, which you presented to your instructor.
As you proceed, you might identify some more important subtopics that were not part of your original plan, or you might decide that some points are not relevant to your paper. Categorize information carefully and continue to think critically about the material. Ask yourself whether the sources are reliable and whether the connections between ideas are clear. Remember, your ideas and conclusions will shape the paper. They are the glue that holds the rest of the content together. As you work, begin jotting down the big ideas you will use to connect the dots for your reader.
If you are not sure where to begin, try answering your major research question and subquestions. Add and answer new questions as appropriate. You might record these big ideas on sticky notes or type and highlight them within an electronic document. Jorge looked back on the list of research questions that he had written down earlier.
He changed a few to match his new thesis, and he began a rough outline for his paper. Avoid abstraction. Use specific references and comprehensible data. Imagine you are a busy person reading your article.
Who cares? Personal experience can provide a compelling story and draw the reader in. How is your argument relevant? Solutions can be humble and tentative, but make an effort to address the problem you articulate.
It is the first introduction to the argument. It should be clear and catchy. It may be the reason readers choose to read or not to read your article. Strong titles often include verbs. Topic is your primary concern. The subject of your article should be relevant, thoughtful, and true to you. The Atlantic-Community. Skip to main content. In a persuasive essay or argument essay, the student strives to convince the reader of the merits of their opinion or stance on a particular issue. To convince the reader of a point of view, or to take a specific action, the student must utilize a number of persuasive techniques to form a coherent and logical argument.
Persuasive texts are simple in structure. You simply need to clearly state your opinion around a specific topic and then repeatedly reinforce your opinions with external facts or evidence. Please view our planning tool below for a detailed explanation. Teach your students to write excellent persuasive essays and influential writing skills using proven writing strategies and engaging content.
A complete PAGE unit of work on persuasive texts for teachers and students. No preparation is required. In the introduction, the student will, naturally, introduce the topic. Controversial issues make for great topics in this writing genre. While these subjects may not be the best topics of conversation for the dinner table at Thanksgiving, they can be perfect when deciding on a topic for persuasive writing. Obviously, the age and abilities of the students should be considered, as well as cultural taboos, when selecting a topic for the essay.
But, the point holds, the more controversial, the better. This will often be posed as a question, for example, if the essay is on the merits of a vegetarian lifestyle it may be called something like: To Eat Meat or Not?
There are a number of methods of doing this, known as hooks. Students may decide to open their essay with an anecdote, a joke, a quotation, or a relevant statistic related to the topic under discussion.
In this section of the introduction, students will provide the reader with some background to the topic. This will place the issue in context and briefly weigh up some of the different opinions on the subject. After surveying the topic in the first part of the introduction, it is now time for the student writer to express their own opinion and briefly preview the points they will make later in the essay. The number of paragraphs that will form this section of the essay will depend on the number of points the writer chooses to make to support their opinion.
Normally three main points will be sufficient for beginning writers to coordinate. For more advanced students, they can simply increase the number of paragraphs based on the complexity of their arguments, but the overall structure will largely remained intact. Be sure to check out our own complete guide to writing perfect paragraphs here.
The TEEL acronym is a useful way for students to remember how to structure their paragraphs. Read below for deeper understanding. The topic sentence states the central point of the paragraph. This will be in the form of one of the reasons in support of the thesis statement made in the introduction.
These sentences will build on the topic sentence by illustrating the point further, often by making it more specific. This evidence may take the form of statistics, quotations, or anecdotal evidence.
The final part of the paragraph links back to the initial statement of the topic sentence, while also forming a bridge to the next point to be made. This part of the paragraph provides some personal analysis and interpretation of how the student arrived at their conclusions and also connects together the essay as a cohesive whole. The conclusion weaves together the main points of the persuasive essay. It does not normally introduce any new arguments or evidence but rather reviews the arguments made already and restates them by summing them up in a unique way.
It is important at this stage to tie everything back to the initial thesis statement. Ending an essay well can be challenging, but, especially for persuasive essays, it is essential to end strongly.
0コメント