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THE PERSUASIVE ESSAY – PREWRITING. Choose an issue.
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Choose an issue • A good topic for a persuasive essay is an issue that brings up strong feelings in you and in others. Think about situations or events that make feel angry, sad or enthusiastic etc. Once you have come up with a few possible issues for your persuasive, ask yourself the following questions:
Is the issue important to me? If the issue is one that matters deeply to you, it will be easier to persuade your readers to care about it. • Do I have an opinion on the issue? Just being able to say you do or do not like a situation is not enough. You have to describe in detail how things would be different or better if you had the power to something about the issue.
Do people have different opinions on the issue? If everyone agrees with your views on the issue there is no one to persuade. Pick an issue about which people disagree. • Is my opinion supportable? Will you be able to gather enough facts and examples to make a case that your audience will consider seriously? Will you be able to respond effectively to any opposing arguments (objections to your opinions).
Write an Opinion Statement • When you write a persuasive essay, your first job is to create a preliminary opinion statement (also called a thesis statement). This statement should clearly your issue and your opinion on it.
Consider your Purpose, Audience, and Tone - As the writer of a persuasive essay, your purpose is to persuade your readers. Most specifically, you want to convince them to think differently or to follow the course o action you suggest. To persuade your readers effectively, you must understand them well. To get a better understanding of your audience, ask yourself the following questions:
What will my readers already know about the issue? Consider how much background information you will have to provide in order for your readers to understand your position on the issue. • What will make my readers care about the issue? Think about how the topic affects the lives of your readers.
What will they want to know more about? Consider aspects of the issue about which readers might want to know more information.
Your choice and arrangement of words determines your tone – your attitude and feelings about your issue. Choose your words to suit your audience and your purpose for writing (in this case, persuasion). If your readers are put off by your tone, they may not take your opinion seriously. In persuasive essay, your tone should be serious and as carefully considered as your opinion.
Gather Support for your Opinion • Getting your facts together – You must support your opinion in a persuasive essay, or you won’t convince readers. To be convincing you must use logical appeals, which include reasons and evidence.
Opinion (THESIS) Statement Reason Reason • Reason Evidence • Evidence Evidence Evidence Evidence Evidence Reasons - These are logical statements that answer the question Why?
FINDING YOUR REASONS • Use the following strategies to help you think of supporting reasons for your opinion.
Step 1 –What are the advantages of agreeing with my opinion? Think of ways that agreeing with your opinion will help the people in your audience – for example, by making them healthier or happier. Advantage of recycling: It helps to make people healthier by reducing the waste that ends up in ground water.
Step 2 – What are the disadvantages of agreeing with my opinion? Think of ways that agreeing with your opinion might make things more difficult for the people in your audience – for example, by requiring them to sacrifice time or money. Disadvantage of recycling: It takes too much time for the people to separate recyclable materials from the rest of the garbage they throw out.
Step 3 – Turn your responses about advantages and disadvantages into reasons that support your opinion. An advantage becomes a reason when you simply state the advantage. A disadvantage becomes a reason when you refute (prove wrong through argument) the disadvantage as you would an opposing argument. Advantage as a reason: Recycling helps to make people healthier by reducing the waste that ends up in ground water. Disadvantage as a reason: The small amount of personal time each of us takes to recycle can save all of us time by reducing the amount of garbage that we, as a society, must take time to process.
EVIDENCE Evidence includes the facts, statistics, expert opinions, anecdotes and examples that support your reasons.
The chart below shows the reasons and the evidence to support each reason: OPINION: People really need to throw away less by recycling more
Emotional Impact: An emotional appeal is support that targets readers’ feelings and emotions. Persuasive writers appeal to their readers’ feelings and emotions by using examples, anecdotes, and, most commonly, words with strong connotations. • Examples pack emotional power because they show impact of your issue on a specific place, situation, or person. Look at the general statement and the specific example below.
General Statement • Runoff from land fills pollutes creeks. • Specific Example • Dog Run Creek, once a favorite community swimming and fishing spot, is now a lifeless, weed-choked gully marked with large signs warning the unwary not to swim in or eat fish from the cloudy water.
The specific example might have a strong impact on a reader who calls to his mind his or her own favorite creek and who might, therefore, be alarmed at the idea of landfill runoff polluting this creek. • Anecdotes are brief stories that illustrate a point. They can affect readers’ emotions by showing how your issue affects people like them. Look at the following anecdote about the use of trees for paper products.
Anecdote: Ed Chafee recently visited his old hometown. He looked forward to seeing some familiar faces, but most of all he wanted once again to wander through the forests he had loved as a boy. When he got there, the forests were gone, replaced by evenly spaced saplings. The entire forest had been turned into paper towels.
Words with strong connotations (loaded language) can also affect readers’ emotions. Words such as grimy, rotten, fresh and clear can make your reader feel disgusted by or attracted to what you are describing. In the chart below, notice how the italicized words add emotional impact to the original sentences.
ORGANIZE YOUR SUPPORT • Get your information in order - Before writing, you should decide how to order the reasons for your opinion logically. Keep in mind that the parts of your essay that readers will remember the most – the high-profile parts – are at the end of the essay and at the beginning. Therefore, one way to show a logical progression of your reasons is to put your strongest reason last,
where it is most likely to be remembered by your readers and your second strongest reason first – in the beginning of the essay. Place remaining reasons in the middle of the essay. • To determine the strength of your reasons, think about the impact each will have on your readers. The strongest reason the most impact. For example;
OPINION: People really need to throw away less by recycling more. • Reasons: • 2 Much of the garbage that is now tossed out should be recycled. • 3Recycling more of our garbage can save precious resources.
1 Recycling more can reduce the mountains of garbage produced – and reduce the costs associated with all the landfills where the garbage is dumped.
FRAMEWORK • Introduction • Open with an attention-getter. • Give background information. • Present your opinion/thesis statement. • Body • Provide reasons and support • Refute opposing arguments
Conclusion • Restate your opinion • Include a call to action
Do something Good for the Earth • INTRODUCTION (attention grabber / background) Garbage! It smells bad and looks disgusting. Most people prefer not to think about thrash more than once a day and that is only when they take it out. People in the United States should be thinking about garbage more, however, because they throw away 40 percent of all the garbage in the world. People really need to throw away less by recycling more. (thesis statement)
BODY: Reason 1 (Evidence – facts and statistics) Much of the garbage that is now tossed out could be recycled. Of the 200 million tons of garbage that US citizens produce yearly, about 42 percent is paper (from trees), 8 percent is glass, 9 percent is metal (from ore, a natural resource), 7 percent is plastic (from petroleum, a natural resource, 8 percent is rubber (mostly from rain forests), 8 percent is food waste, and 18 percent is yard waste. Government officials estimate that 60 percent of all thrash could be recycled. Environmentalists suggest a much higher figure – as much as 70 to 90 percent.
Reason 2 (Emotional appeal – connotative words) Recycling more of our garbage can also save precious resources. Every week, for example, fifty thousand trees are sacrificed to produce Sunday newspapers in the United States. By recycling newspapers, we can rescue trees from destruction. We can also save water and energy by recycling. Recycling paper instead of making paper from trees reduces the amount of water used to make the paper by 60 percent and the amount of energy by 70 percent. Aluminum cans show the biggest savings from recycling. To produce a can from recycled aluminum takes 95 percent less energy than from ore.
Reason 3 (Evidence – facts) Opposing arguments/response to opposing arguments. Recycling more can reduce the mountains of garbage produced – and reduce the costs associated with all the landfills where the garbage is dumped. Garbage , unfortunately, does not just disappear like magic after it is hauled away. It usually goes into landfills – many of which have created toxic pollution problems and monumental cleanup costs. People often object to recycling by saying that it costs too much. What they need to understand is that recycling actually saves money by reducing waste and by eliminating the costs that go along with solid-waste disposal and landfill cleanup.
CONCLUSION: Restatement of opinion/ summary of reasons / Emotional appeal / Call to action Much of what is thrown away now can be recycled – and recycling is the best way to preserve natural resources and to reduce the costs of processing all the garbage. Anyone who loves the earth can help make it a better place by recycling. Garbage makes our shared home, this planet, less livable for the people of today and for the children of tomorrow. People have caused this garbage crisis and only people can solve it. Do you care enough to do your part by recycling?
