Out of all of the genre's we have read so far, I have to say that the
persuasive genre has to be my favorite/most familiar genre that I have experienced thus far. Tompkins writes that, "
Persuasive writing presents an argument, and when it's effective, writers are convincing, swaying readers to their viewpoint or to take action" (Tompkins, 2014, p. 252). In my 9th grade classroom, this seems to be one of the most common pieces of writing that students are asked to do and the type of writing that they struggle with the most. When I ask them what they struggle with specifically, they remark that coming up with the physical
argument and the
evidence to support their point is the hardest. In my class, when we are working on inferencing, we practice coming up with
arguments and using
evidence to support their claim, and I told my students, "I don't care if I am starting to sound like an air horn, but when you have an argument you always have to prove it." I started to put it in a song form so instead of the song, "I Like to Move It," our theme song in my classroom has come, "I Like to Prove It."
One of the ways that Tompkins mentions introducing persuasive writing into the classroom, and this is something that I would like to carry over into my future classroom is, "... by showing how persuasion is used in everyday life" (Tompkins, 2014, p. 260). By having students relate to a real life example, I would argue, (look at me using my persuasive skills!) helps to increase their motivation for future assignments. When students are able to see this type of example, it shows that not only is this skill beneficial in an English class, but it is truly used all over. This can even open up possible job explorations if students are curious about becoming a lawyer or an advertiser.
One of the ways I would incorporate
real life examples to promote their writing and also incorporate technology and multimedia into the classroom is to have my students find an advertisement any where they can find it; this could be a video advertisement on Youtube, a T.V. commercial, any advertisement on Instagram, or just general billboards/articles. When they inevitably find the advertisement, students can find the
argument in the advertisement and use
evidence from the image to support their answer. Once they have a
real life example of the persuasive genre, they can hopefully transfer their skills over to a writing piece. I think also another element I would incorporate while teaching this genre in class is to provide students with a graphic organizer to map our their thinking. Even though I have been writing for quite some time, I still utilize a graphic organizer in order to map and plan out my thoughts when writing a
persuasive piece since there are so many different elements to think about when posing an argument.
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