Tuesday, November 6, 2007

A persuasive essay that you really want to do, trust me

In persuasive writing, the writer holds strong feelings about a specific issue and attempts to persuade his or her audience to agree with a certain point of view. You will select a topic that you feel strongly about, or at least one that you feel strong enough about to write a 700 to 900-word essay.

For this assignment, your subject should be a topic upon which you have strong feelings and can speak with some authority. You must take a stance on one side of a controversial issue and support your position with sound, specific arguments.

Your essay will be graded on the following:

  • A strong controlling idea in the introduction
  • Ideas organized in an order of importance sequence
  • The use of specific details to support opinions
  • The use of transition words to shift from one reason to another
  • The use of varied, powerful sentence structure
A reminder: as we have discovered in class this year, the most important part of any essay assignment is selecting the topic. A persuasive essay is no different. Select a topic you are passionate about and one that will allow you to support your opinions with good reasons. It's not the time to drift off on an unfocused rant.

Rough draft due: Wednesday, Nov. 14. Final draft due: Tuesday, Nov. 20

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