Persuasive writing

Perhaps the most prevalent assignment in a writing course is the persuasive essay. I can almost guarantee that it will be designed into any writing course in one way or another. Argument and persuasion are the most important skills a writing teacher can impart to his or her students. Argument and persuasion are the most important skills a writer can have at his or her disposal.

In any kind of writing, with the exception of writing done solely for ourselves (like diaries), we have a reader. We have an audience. So no matter what the purpose of the writing is, whether it is to persuade, inform, or entertain, we have to take into account our audience. This is one skill writers, even published ones, often do not do well.

When you want to write well, when you want to communicate well, you must think not like a writer but like a reader. One of my mantras is to write like a reader and read like a writer. Don’t tell the reader what you want to tell them; tell them what you want them to know. If you are thinking like a reader as you write, you will better be able to communicate to the reader the information you want them to understand.

In no kind of writing is it more clear that you must consider your reader than persuasive writing. How do you persuade someone if you don’t know what will persuade them? You cannot just tell your audience something and expect that they will agree with you. You must show them your point of view and why it is the right one to take. Assert yourself, but always let the reader know you are thinking of them.

I have just thrown some abstract ideas out there, so I will break them down a little. Whenever you are teaching something, you have to understand more than how to do it well. You have to recognize every nuance of it so you can more accessibly explain each piece. That is what I try to do every day in my classroom; I must understand every strategy involved in writing if I am to successfully impart to my students how to do it.

I always say that in every kind of writing, you must present yourself as an expert. No reader will trust you if you do not seem to know what you are talking about. That is why you should never use “I think” or “I believe”; it gets in the way of effectively communicating your message. If you want your reader to trust you, you must assert your opinion as though it is truth.

However, no reader will trust you if they believe you to be stubborn and closed-minded. If they do not believe that you can understand their point of view, they will not be convinced by you. In order to do this effectively, you must counter their possible objections before they can voice them. Think of the counter arguments they may prepare. If possible, discuss it with someone else. If you can successfully argue against the objections a reader may pose, you will more likely persuade that reader. Here’s the reaction you want: “But what about…? Oh.”

At this point, the only thing your students now need is the strategies to include to persuade a reader. There are a few good ones here. But they will learn a lot better if they develop the strategies themselves. After all, one of the best ways to learn how to do something well is to make mistakes and learn from them. They will better understand why their writing was wrong to begin with and how to improve it.

Above all, the reason why persuasion is the most important skill to impart to students is that they will have to be able to do it all throughout their lives. If, as a writer, you understand how to persuade readers, then you will be much better when trying to convince anyone in any argument situation that your point of view is the right one. Will it always work? Of course not. But consider the strategies it takes to convince a reader. Those same strategies are still useful when speaking to one person.

Journaling

Go to any college and enter any basic writing course. What you will find in nearly every one is a requirement that students submit journals. Often, these journals have predefined subjects and due dates, though sometimes one or the other are more lax. It makes me wonder how the practice became so pervasive. I also require journals, though—as should not be a surprise—I require nothing like subjects nor due dates.

Journaling has the obvious benefit of requiring students to write. The basic premise is that if you give students the opportunity to write something that falls outside the domain of the big, scary writing assignment, you will get more natural writing. Plus it gives the instructor the chance to give grades on smaller assignments.

However, there are added benefits that instructors may not be thinking of when they design a course to include journals. Like I mention in my previous post, it is always beneficial to write every day. Even if you’re writing the most horrible crap you have ever written, you will still benefit from writing every day. What it does is gets you into the practice of writing, of thinking in prose, so that you are more able to act on it when you are writing for serious.

As is commonly noted, practice makes perfect. It’s simply a matter of muscle memory, really. Writing with the hand or with the keyboard over and over and over will make the act more natural as you do it more. Suddenly you begin to associate that feeling of a pen against the paper or your fingers on the keys with creating words, sentences, paragraphs.

I don’t require subjects. This is actually frustrating for my students. However, it opens them up to having to think of things themselves. It is not uncommon for instructors to offer very open assignments that students will not know how to approach. This will give them the opportunity to experience coming up with ideas to write about when they have no parameters at all. My hope is that they will come to develop the skills of taking confidence in making a choice as a student. Sometimes those choices will be wrong, but it is better to do something with confidence and be wrong than to do something halfway that might be right.

I also do not require due dates. The idea here is that it requires my students to take responsibility for their work. Certainly, they can put off doing any journals until the end of the semester when they are all finally due. However, they will come to find that cramming them at the end of the semester, when they have a final paper to turn in and final work for other classes, to be very difficult to accomplish. Those students who have been turning in journals all semester will see great rewards in finishing work early.

My goal as a teacher is to prepare students for what they will face in the future. I do my best to design assignments in a way that challenges them to develop new skills and new strategies to meet the demands they may encounter as they continue in their academic and professional careers.

If nothing else, journals give me the chance to comment on their writing outside of their major assignments, so they have a better chance of succeeding when they begin writing them.