Writing Persuasively

Persuasive Writing

Persuasive Writing

Convincing someone to do, feel, or think something

Open Ended

What is your claim?

Open Ended

Who is your audience?

You are ready to start writing your letter?!

Today's Focus: Writing the introduction of your letter.

What does a good introduction need?

• How will your 'hook' your audience?

• You need to consider your audience, what is important to them?

• What is the tone of your letter? Is this something that is serious, urgent, funny, friendly?

• How will you introduce yourself?

Multiple Choice

Consider the following claim: There should be stronger laws to stop people from littering.

The audience would be lawmakers. What would lawmakers care about most?

• Making laws that voters want

• Ignoring voters' demands

• Making laws that are confusing

• Making new laws

Multiple Choice

Now that you know what lawmakers want (to make laws that voters want), we need consider the tone of our letter.

Choose the best tone for this letter.

• Funny (should have a lot of jokes)

• Sad (should make lots of people cry)

• Urgent (should make people want to make changes quickly)

• Sarcastic (the whole thing is a joke!)

Multiple Choice

Now that we know what our audience wants and the tone of our letter, we can think about introducing ourselves.

Why would the reader of this letter want to know who you are?

• They want to know if you're serious about your claim

• They want to know if you're credible (you're someone that they should listen to)

• They want to know more about you and why you've made this claim

• All of the above

Recap...

The introduction of a persuasive letter needs:

- To have a clear audience

- To address the needs/wants of that audience

- To have an appropriate tone

- To include an introduction of yourself

Open Ended

Think about your claim and the audience for your letter. What tone would you want to set for your letter?

Let's look at an example letter and see what we can find!

We're looking for: claim, tone, audience needs, and introduction