Guiding Students to Write Persuasive Texts
The following article is taken from PETAA Paper 178, Writing Persuasive Texts, written by Penny Hutton.
From talking to writing
Writing persuasive texts within the classroom should flow naturally from topics and issues that are relevant and of interest to the students. They should be preceded by focused learning activities during which students research the topic and gather evidence for the point of view they hold. Oral discussions should also precede writing so that students can try out their ideas, hear the views of others and refine their thinking.
A useful strategy is to record students during an oral discussion, then transcribe their interaction and use the transcription to demonstrate the movement from informal, spoken language to formal, written text.
Consider, for example, a senior primary class discussion on a council’s decision to demolish a heritage building to make way for a block of home units. The numbers below refer to order of individual speakers.
- They should protect it and not pull it down because it’s very old.
- Yes, it’s more than a hundred years old
- and it was one of the first houses built around here.
- Also, it’s in good condition so people can still live there
- or it could be used as a place where kids can go after school because we haven’t got much to do around here.
- If they want more units, they should choose another place to build them
- like along the main road.
Point out to students that the pronouns ‘they’ ‘it’ and ‘we’ and the demonstratives ‘here’ and ‘there’ can be well understood in the context of the classroom discussion, but need to be referenced or fully described for an audience that is removed from the immediate environment.
Jointly construct a text that conveys the same information as the students had volunteered in their oral discussion, but which would be understood by a distant audience, such as readers of the local newspaper.
Analysing the structure of persuasive texts
As has been mentioned previously, an expository text begins with a proposition that the writer will then argue for with supporting evidence and using language that aims to convince the reader to take up the same position. Each argument will form a separate paragraph with the final paragraph summarising the arguments and/or reinforcing the position taken. Teaching students about these structural features assists them to understand how to paragraph their writing.
Rhetorical features of persuasive texts
Writers employ a variety of techniques and language devices in order to make their writing more forceful. Some of these devices are in the next content descriptions below.
Language for expressing attitudes
Writers can express their attitude towards a proposition, person, action or situation in multiple ways.
Using emotive or affective language
This refers to the register of language that has been selected to ‘tug at the heart strings’ or otherwise invoke a strong emotional reaction. Nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs can all express both positive and negative attitudes and feelings.
For example, Residents are incensed … The devastating cyclone wreaked havoc … The winner’s jubilation …, … the last Theefyspray looked out from her lonely lair.
During shared reading sessions identify words that describe emotions, both positive and negative. Construct vocabulary lists of the words found, categorised by their word class, such as nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs.
Encourage students to add to the list with words they encounter in their own reading. The list can then be a resource for students’ writing. Have students ‘play’ with the vocabulary lists to construct effective noun and verb groups.
Affective language can be quite subjective, so as students progress through the years of schooling, they need to be taught how to express their personal points of view in ways that make their opinion appear to be ‘world view’ and objective. Techniques for doing this will be described later.
Using language to describe or evaluate the worth or quality of things and processes
These are the language choices that indicate the speaker or writer’s view of the merit of something or some action, for example, Council’s response was quite disappointing … The inefficient use of scarce water resources …, … it was one of the most highly evolved amphibians that ever lived.
Using language to judge or evaluate human behaviour
This refers to the language resources that enable the speaker or writer to judge the behaviour of another in terms of:
(i) their social esteem, for example Her ground-breaking and innovative research … The councilor’s competence was questioned… The hard-working ants …; and
(ii) their social sanction, in terms of morality and ethics, for example, The wicked witch … The operation was conducted covertly … They won’t understand the right ways.
When discussing these language features with younger students, it is not necessary to use terms such as ‘social sanction’ but rather to use everyday terms. For example, after reading a text such as Rose meets Mr Wintergarten by Bob Graham, ask students to identify some of the words that Bob Graham has used in the first part of the book to tell the reader what kind of person Mr Wintergarten was, for example, mean, horrible, growled.
Use of intensifiers
In addition to using specific words and phrases in order to convey a variety of emotions and opinions, we can also increase or decrease the strength of the message through the use of intensifiers. Consider these three statements: I am concerned. I am extremely concerned. I am just a little concerned.
Intensifiers can be:
- adverbs, for example, somewhat, certainly, really, definitely
- adjectives, for example, scarce, abundant, exquisite, obnoxious
- nouns, for example, stench, furore, annihilation, anguish
- verbs, for example, abhor, renounce, refute
Students can be supported to recognise the gradations of meaning by constructing vocabulary clines. These may describe a concept or attribute from positive to negative.
Modality
Modality refers to the language choices that allow a speaker or writer to express degrees of probability, usuality, certainty or obligation of something. It is the language that allows the speaker or writer to open up or close down the options for negotiation. Low modality language expresses tentativeness and allows for negotiation while high modality language expresses certainty and closes off negotiation.
Modality can be expressed through:
- action verbs, for example, as damage, destroy, annihilate
- modal verbs, for example, might, must; could, shall/will
- modal adverbs, for example definitely, possibly; supposedly, certainly
- modal nouns, for example, likelihood, possibility, certainty
- modal adjectives, for example, possible, apparent, obvious
Learning how to use modality appropriately will not only assist students to be more effective speakers and writers but is also essential for understanding how the texts they hear and read are positioning them to a particular view. English as another language learners (EAL) may require support in recognising how modality can be used subtly to alter meanings (or not so subtly sometimes).
Grammatical features of persuasive texts
For the detailed explanations of these grammatical features, please see the original PETAA Paper, written by Penny Hutton. Below is a summarised list:
Cohesion
- Pronouns and other referring words
- Text connectives
- Conjunctions
- Subordinating conjunctions