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Writing Persuasive Essays with Complete Efficiency

The history of persuasive essays dates back to ancient Greece during the Classical period. This form was being used by the rhetoricians to address the Greek republic’s fellow citizens. Rhetorics are a significant part of academics to prove one’s own point of view since time immemorial.

Rhetoric can be defined as the art of persuasive or effective speaking in the public. The audience was being convinced through the use of language.  The writer’s role in writing a persuasive essay is to convince the audience about a specific perspective or take up an action. These types of essays require a good understanding of the both ends of the subject of the essay, awareness of your audience’s biases and extensive research work.

Persuasive essays can be called as a ‘fixture of modern life’ and are commonly found in political speeches, blogs, newspaper editorials and advertising. They often revolve around contemporary issues such as- “The school board is debating on whether or not to ban cell phone use in school. Write an essay convincing the board to adopt your position.” This essay prompt portrays that the main intention of such essays is not to inform your readers, but ‘convince’ or ‘persuade’ them to act or think in a particular manner. You can get an all-round perspective about such kinds of essays from the experts of the Management Paper. A good paper writer will let you know the pros and cons of writing such an essay and what is the best approach you must take to make it a brilliant one.

4 Steps to Make It Easier to Write the Persuasive Essays

This 5 step writing procedure can ease out your understanding in writing persuasive essays and help you in understanding the subject of the essay quite efficiently.

1. Prewriting for Your Persuasive Essay

This phase is extremely significant for writing an essay and hence it is required to plan the various aspects of your essay properly during this phase.

• Choosing a position is the first thing you must do. Think about the essay topic or the given essay prompt, and decide from which side you will be writing for- for or against the given topic.
• Understanding your audience. The reader’s point of view must be understood by you in order to draft an effective persuasive essay. You must analyse whether your readers are inclined to any particular side or are they open to hearing it out as they did not yet decide to take up their position.
• Doing the research. The base of the persuasive essays is convincing and solid evidence. You should never rely on any particular or one single source. Extract as much information possible from various websites, literary sources, interviews, surveys and many more. You can also have a talk with the community experts and teachers. Read extensively and do note them down. You have to gain knowledge of both the sides of your issue and you cannot compromise with that.
• Segregate the stronger evidence as well as the main points that you will use to oppose the views.

The next thing is to create an essay outline. Organise all the evidence you have to build up the strongest claim and argument you can. If you are already being provided with an essay format or essay structure, you must incorporate that structure in your essay outline. Generally, a persuasive essay consists of six to seven paragraphs. The Management Paper offers students like you with free essay formats and free essay outline to make you understand how to start off your initial steps towards the final drafting of an essay.

A Outline Structure For Persuasive Essays

Introductory paragraph

• The attention of your readers have to be grabbed with the help of an essay ‘hook’
• An overview of the entire argument has to be presented
•  Close the essay introduction with the main claim of your essay, that is, the thesis statement which reveals the ‘position’ on which you will argue

Body paragraphs

• Each of paragraphs in the essay body must contain one idea or one claim that is related to the thesis statement and this claim has to be supported with one evidence per paragraph
• Within each of the paragraphs, you must include enough details to support your statements

Contrasting view paragraph

• Describe the main significant points of the opposing claims and then refute them with proper evidences

Concluding paragraph

• State the significant proven claims from the entire essay, relate them to the thesis statement and supporting elements in the essay conclusion.

2. Writing the Persuasive Essay

While you are writing the initial draft for your essay, you have to take into consideration the following things:

• The essay introduction is the first paragraph of your persuasive essay and then must contain a hook to grab the attention of your readers. This may be a bold statement, a rhetorical question, a quotation or some personal anecdote such as “Driving while talking on a cell phone, even hands-free, is the equivalent of driving drunk.”
• Through the thesis statement, it must be clear and transparent to the readers that what is your position in the essay or which side are you taking up in the essay.
• A separate perspective has to be covered through each of the paragraphs in the essay body and strong evidence must be offered in these paragraphs through various real-life examples, experts quotations, statistics and facts.
• Do not just stick to one way of making an argument. Use other ways like hypothetical situations illustrations, drawing comparisons or using an analogy.
• Do not think that your audience already has got abundant knowledge of the essay subject. Provide them with ample background information and define the various terminologies.
• Most significant evidence must be summed up in the essay conclusion that would leave the readers feeling encouraged and make them take an action or a position. Make the closing sentence a sort of dramatic plea, something that would imply that immediate action has to be taken, a question that would make the readers think deeply about the essay subject or some type of recommendation that would give the readers ideas that they can use in their future.

3. Revising of The Persuasive Essay

During this particular state of your persuasive essay, students are required to reorganise, modify and review their work in the best way possible. You can take into consideration the following things:

• Does the essay take a solid stand on the issue, that is being supported by enough evidence such as examples, quotes, statistics and relevant facts?
• Does the introduction of your essay have a hook that can grab the attention of your readers and make them keep reading the entire essay?
• Can you see enough evidence in each of the paragraphs to compel the readers about your point of view and its focus is on a single point for support?
• Have you presented the counterarguments and then oppose them?
• Have you used varied sentence structure? Have you used precise word choice? Are the transitions that you have placed mark a smooth transition between the various paragraphs?
• Is the value of the position of the writer conveyed well through the essay conclusion? Does the conclusion urges your readers to act and think in a particular manner?

4. Editing of The Persuasive Essay

The next thing that you must do is to correct errors and proofread in mechanics and grammar and thus edit your essay to enhance its clarity and style. You can give your essay to someone to chalk out the errors that are missing your sight.

“You can’t convince anyone of anything. You can only give them the right information, so that they can convince themselves.” – An apt quotation by Eben Pagan in this context. Give them what they need to know and what is needed to make them believe your point, and they will be convinced. The experts at the Management Paper do the same job. They collect all the necessary information and include them in your persuasive essays so as to make it rich and convincing.