April 8

Ap 8/16 A3.1 Your practice samples writing Persuasively – pdf

Before we started this Explaining and Defending a Point of View assignment, we experimented with developing stronger persuasive writing by sharing your individual attempts through Socrative. It was useful to use that app because then everyone’s examples could be read through, and chuckled at, but it allowed for a real-time review and discussion of which Persuasive responses were stronger and then what about the sentences made them stronger.

So the value of that activity isn’t diminished to that one-time activity, here’s the pdf with all your responses collected together.

They’re in random order and there’s no notes with it to indicate the sentences we thought were stronger/more persuasive. See if you can determine for yourself what comes across as a more confident and persuading response under each topic!

A3.1 Assignment – practice developing persuasive tone in writing – socrative samples

More Help Developing Persuasive Tone

This web link here opens an easy-to-understand handout that describes the following ways to improve persuasive tone:

  • Using personal pronouns: you, I, me, we, us makes writing more human
  • Appeal to the head: logic and common sense
  • Appeal to the heart: create feelings of fear, guilt, empathy to move the reader
  • Hard evidence: facts, statistics, data cannot be refuted easily
  • Soft evidence: expert opinions, examples relevant to topic to demonstrate point
  • Incentives: includes rewards for the consumer/reader
  • Humour: can be used to disarm the reader, so they are not so defensive and warm up to your opinion
  • Emotive language: using strong language to express a personal opinion needs to be written in a sophisticated way to stay credible
  • Poetic devices: alliteration, similes, metaphors capture/maintain a reader’s attention
  • Rhetorical questions: a hypothetical question used at the beginning can get the reader thinking about a topic
  • Imperatives: using commanding language to drive the point home (must stand up) usually used at end of writing once trust is gained
Category: ELA B10 | LEAVE A COMMENT
April 4

April 4/16 ELA B10: Persuasive Explanation/Defense Point of View Assignment – Possible Topics to Choose From

Hi Tens,

You’ve practiced developing your Point of View as well as anticipating what the opposition of that position would be for a topic of your choice.

We’ve also practiced Persuasive writing – developing and relaying your opinion on a topic in a convincing and rationally supported way. 

Now, it’s time to select a prompt to develop a response to.

For your choice, you have to develop the strongest reasons for what your position is as well as refute what you think is the weakest part of that position. If you can think of another prompt to develop your position on that’s not listed below, talk to me and we’ll discuss whether it is appropriate for this theme in the course.

  1. Should we impose our own cultural values on other countries with different values like “female genital mutilation” or “restrictions from allowing women to drive”?
  2. Is it appropriate for countries to set limits on the number of children citizens can have, in order to allow for more even sharing of resources for their people?
  3. Was it correct for Canada to accept Syrian refugees who are fleeing from their war-torn country?
  4. Is it proper for Canada to use resources to combat inequality issues in the world, like improving maternal and infant mortality rates?
  5. Is it a promising move for towns and cities to create bylaws making “bullying” a punishable offense with monetary penalties if found guilty?
  6. Does religion do more harm than good in the world?
  7. Should uncensored internet access be a human right and made available to citizens of all countries?
  8. Are Canadian teens limited in the ways they can be involved in promoting equality and fairness for others?
  9. Will discrimination of visual and  non-visual minorities always exist despite efforts to protect them from it?
  10. Could an event like the Holocaust ever happen again in the current digital age?
  11. Are we responsible for others?
  12. Are there limits to fighting injustice?

Consider these. 

Pick the one you feel most strongly about and consider how you could support it. Remember you cannot rely on your opinion or emotion only.

Know your choice by period 1 tomorrow. 

Category: ELA B10 | LEAVE A COMMENT