Writing persuasively helps you learn how to form and communicate sound opinions based on facts and evidence.

You Too Can Write Persuasively

Now I bring you… Some tips on ways to succeed…

What does it take?• Writing an effective persuasive

essay requires a great deal of planning, drafting, and revising.• Thinking through an argument

entails stating an opinion, using evidence, adding support and commentary, and possibly making concessions and transitioning through your points.

First activity• Remembering that your audience is

the school’s principal, Mr. Gaines, and that persuade means “to move by argument,” develop an opinion that you believe you could be persuasive about on the following subject:

Bullying in school.

Second Activity• Come up with three reasons that you can defend to support the opinion statement in the first activity. • Start each of the reasons with your opinion statement and then the word “because.”

Third Activity• Put the two activities together

into a thesis statement. • It should be one sentence

which states: the subjectyour opinion on the subjectthe three reasons for your opinion on the subject

Sample• Topic: The Death Penalty• Opinion: Abolish it.• Supporting Reasons

1. It costs taxpayers too much in taxes for appeals

2. It does not deter crime3. Violence increases after an execution

in states for at least a month afterward

Thesis: Governor, please abolish the death penalty in Washington because it costs taxpayers too much for appeals, doesn’t deter crime, and actually increases violence in our state each time we execute a prisoner.

Topic Sentences• As your thesis sentence

roadmaps your entire essay or letter, your topic sentences must roadmap each of your paragraphs.• Take a moment to write a

topic sentence for each of the paragraphs that your thesis suggests.

Sample Topic Sentence• The first reason I believe the death

penalty should be abolished is that it costs taxpayers too much in appeals.

• The second reason I believe in the abolition of the death penalty is that it doesn’t deter crime.

• The third and final reason I am pleading to have the death penalty abolished is that violence actually increases in our great state in the months surrounding each execution.

Support your topic sentences…

• You must support each topic sentence with at least two solid concrete details and two sentences of commentary.

• Take just one of your topic sentences and construct a complete paragraph of 8 sentences, including a topic sentence and a concluding sentence/transitional sentence.

Sample Paragraph…

TS: The first reason I believe the death penalty should be abolished is that it costs taxpayers too much in appeals.CD: Executions cost the taxpayers on average $2 million.

CM: This is simply too much to pay for the purpose of ending a life.

CM2: If taxpayer money is to be spent so casually, perhaps it could be used to educate citizens and prevent mindless violence instead of taking lives.

CD: Sentencing convicted murders to life in prison costs the state an average of $50,000.

CM: With a savings of $1,950,000, the state could substantially invest in education and health care.

CM2: A healthier and more educated public would lead to a safer Washington state.

CS/Transition: By saving or diverting money from executions to education and public health, it would also logically follow that our state would benefit equally by lessening needless violence if it could.