Oh my God! I have to write a persuasive article! Help!!!!! First of all, don't panic. You may think you don't know how to write a persuasive essay, but you do. You've spent your whole life convincing people – with varying degrees of success, of course. From your begging to stay up fifteen minutes longer before bedtime, to your begging, to your attempt to convince your girlfriend, uh, hmm... You'll be perfecting and honing this skill all your life. All you have to do now is transfer this skill to a written page. This article will teach you how to write a persuasive essay.
I've already mentioned that you've been practicing the art of verbal persuasion ever since you learned to speak. Written persuasion uses the same strategy and follows the same general rules:
#1 You have a target audience. This is the person who will be reading your paper.
#2 Listeners should be basically neutral about your idea or concept (it's too much effort to convince someone you know who is already against you to change his/her mind, and if someone has already agreed with you, then your job is done) .
#3 You will make a logical argument: what your audience should do, why they should do it, and what they will get out of it.
I can't stress this last point too much. You're not using a stick; you're dangling a juicy carrot. You won't be the one who eats the carrot, so don't think about how much this action will do you any good. If you succeed, how much you might benefit from the results is simply not important to how to write a persuasive essay. Yes, the potential benefits for you may be the whole reason you wrote it – but your audience won't care, so put it aside. (You can rub your hands and giggle if you want.) ）
So you might be thinking, yeah, but this is my teacher. She would read a whole bunch of articles and wouldn't spend a lot of time on me – I don't think I'd really change her mind about anything. The goal of an academically persuasive paper is to construct a persuasive argument. You have to pretend that your readers (your teachers) care about the topic, but don't have a strong opinion anyway.
In fact, when evaluating your article, your teacher will only consider one question: Will this article convince a neutral reader? At least it will cause a reaction like, "Well, interesting... He could be right"? In short, your teacher wants to see you know how to write a persuasive essay.
1. Extracurricular persuasion
Of course, you may also find yourself needing to know how to write a persuasive essay outside the classroom in any of the many situations. You might call on your classmates to take action for political or humanitarian causes — vote for the environment, save whales, and so on. You need people to have a reason to listen to you and "get out of the way" and join your cause. The flyer posted on the bulletin board should contain your best persuasive language.
2, advertising is persuasion - persuasion is advertising
All successful ads contain three elements of persuasion. Let's go back to that campus bulletin board and see if we can spot them. aha! This is a poster for next Friday night's concert offered by the school music scene. Let's see how it uses the three elements of persuasion:
#1 Target Audience. Posters do this by placing them on bulletin boards. It's not as simple as it sounds. The idea is to find a neutral audience and engage them. Hundreds of students don't know what they want to do next Friday night.
#2 What viewers should do. Come and join us for our super fun concerts and party all night long! Doors open at 8pm! Admission is only 50 yuan!
#3 How viewers will benefit. The cool graphics and visuals in the poster do not illustrate but rather hint at a fantastic experience. You will have a great time!
3. Persuasive papers in the real world
Outside of school, being persuasive is still important. Knowing how to write a persuasive article in the real world can also come in handy. "Well, when will I be able to write a persuasive article in real life?" You might be thinking. The answer is "never", except: a job application cover letter (why should you hire me), a school admission essay (why you should let me sign up there), a letter to a company manager (why give me a refund), a letter to a city official (why you want me to raise chickens in the backyard), a letter to a bank (why you should lend me money), a letter to a potential client (why you should choose me to paint your house)...
4) So how exactly do I write a persuasive paper?
You've probably been exposed to the standard five-paragraph essay format favored by English teachers around the world: introductory paragraphs, three (or two, or four, or eighty-seven) body paragraphs, conclusions.
Nothing wrong with that. You can easily adjust it to a persuasive essay format by using three body paragraphs as your 1-2-3: identify the audience, illustrate the action, and explain the benefits to the audience
Obviously, this can be adjusted; for example, you might want to spend less time addressing/identifying your audience and more time telling them how great things would be if they only listened to you.
5) How to write a persuasive essay: framework
First, let's illustrate the action. What do we want the audience to think or do? Next, let's identify the target audience. Finally, let's identify the potential benefits (for the audience, of course), and the next step is to construct a persuasive essay outline. No matter what type of article you write, this is a good approach. A good outline will contain the subject sentence for each paragraph:
#1 Introduction.
#2 Who are we targeting?
#3 What readers should do.
#4 How this will benefit the reader.
#5 Conclusion.
The outline is complete and you now need to fill in the paragraphs. In the long run, this approach is much easier than trying to write instantly. Writing an article without an outline is like building a house without first laying foundations and shelves.
This is the kind of effort you can best learn from by example. As I mentioned, persuasion is all around you, every day. Want to know how to write a persuasive article? Check out the editorial page of your local newspaper. There will always be a few comment columns. Some of them can convince people to buy surfboards. How persuasive is the author? What works and what doesn't? What are their goals? Who are they trying to convince? You can also benefit by reading some of the best persuasive articles in history. Of course, if I don't point out that we have a very useful and convincing library of paper examples for you to review, then I'm derelict in my duties. Check out our resources and start writing!
Wikipedia: https://weipu.checkbloc.com/
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English Checkup: https://turnitin.checkbloc.com/
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