assignment

1. Read the Lecture Notes in Unit 5 on persuasive writing. Below

A major emphasis of college is allowing students to express their views and trying to influence others to accept certain views or notions. This practice is known as argumentation or persuasion. Many times we think of argumentation as two or more people shouting at each other or becoming angry in expressing their views. However, in college, that is not what argumentation is about (or at least it is not supposed to be).

Instead, college is a place where everyone should be free to lay their views out on the table for others to see. If we think we have a good idea about something, we may try to influence others to accept our views. Others may evaluate our argument to see if our views are worthy of acceptance.

At this stage of college, many times the terms "Argumentation" and "Persuasion" are used interchangeably. However, there is a difference between the two. If you try to define the differences between these two terms by looking them up, you will see some variety in the definitions. However, we will go with the definition or our book in Chapter 10.9

This definition basically goes along with many other definitions in other sources that say Persuasion is more about influencing based on opinion and emotion. Argument is defined as influencing using facts and evidence.

For the essay we will be writing for this Unit 5, we will be leaning more towards the Persuasive definition.

This unit will be teaching about writing a Persuasive Essay where you try to influence the reader to accept your position on an issue. You may use opinions in your essay to support your position, but those opinions should be supported.

Here is an example. Many states have laws requiring drivers and passengers in vehicles to wear seat belts. One could take a position on this issue of seat belt laws that seat belts should not be the law; instead of wearing a seat belt should be up to each individual person.

The writer may approach this essay with an introduction defining the issue of seat belt laws. The writer could then state his or her position that wearing a seat belt should be optional, but not required by law. Since this essay is more along the lines of persuasion, the writer could begin by telling a story about his or her experiences or knowledge of how seat belts do not always help in an accident and could instead be harmful. To support the story, the writer could then cite some statistics to show a number of cases where seat belts actually did more harm than good.

To understand more of how persuasion can work in writing this type of essay, you will want to read through Chapter 10.9 in our online text. Here is a link to that page:

https://open.lib.umn.edu/writingforsuccess/chapter/10-9-persuasion/

You do not need to follow all the advice in this chapter. Reading this chapter is to offer ideas for constructing this type of essay. You will have more freedom in how you organize and design the Persuasive Essay than you did with the previous two Unit essays.