What does personal environment mean? For a student, personal environment may mean conditions in the family or school or neighborhood or city. Personal environment may even extend beyond these areas to include conditions in the state, country, or world community. The point is that by writing to persuade, writers have the opportunity to extend their ideas to influence others and thereby affect change.

A key point to remember is that when writing to persuade, your audience may not agree with you. Writing to persuade is, therefore, more demanding and more ambitious than many other types of writing. Your goal may be to change your readers' minds or move them to action. Your goal may be to sell a program, defend an idea, or refute an opponent. In all these instances, you should consider writing to persuade as an important method for shaping your environment toward your vision of a better world, whatever it is.

Organization of Essays to Persuade

One type of essay to persuade refers to questions of fact. If you believe, for example, that drivers who consistently drive faster than the speed limit are harming Mexico, it would be a good idea to get evidence to support how they are harming Mexico. Suppose you could show that speeding causes increased mortality rates on Mexico's highways, increased gasoline consumption and, therefore, increased pollution. Suppose you believe that speeding also contributes to more speed bumps, thereby augmenting problems two and three above. These are questions of fact which you could arrange topically with each idea presented and supported independently.  As you present your ideas, each main point should be followed by a reason why someone should agree with you. More, each reason should be a reason for action--you are writing an essay to persuade drivers to respect speed limit laws. Such an essay could be organized as follows:

Other questions of fact can be arranged spatially. Suppose, for example, that you believe that world citizens should do more to help preserve endangered species.  By organizing your essay spatially, it might be possible to discuss leopards, cheetahs, and elephants in Africa, Bengal tigers and snow leopards in Asia, jaguars and swamp deer in South America, and bald eagles and timber wolves in North America.  The organization of your essay might look as follows:

Another type of essay to persuade refers to questions of questions of policy. Personal questions of policy arise in nearly everything we do. We choose what to do for our summer vacation, whether to buy a new VCR, or which telephone service we should use. 

When you write about a question of policy, it usually requires the use of the word "should." How should I make the most effective use of my education? What should be done about the inept postal service in Mexico? Why should health care service providers provide free birth control to those who want it? 

Of the essays to persuade that have to do with questions of policy, some are (1) to gain acceptance or passive agreement; others are (2) to move the reader to immediate action.  There is a big difference between the two, and as a writer, you should know specifically what you are trying to persuade your reader to do.  Are you writing to get the reader to accept your point of view, or are you trying to move the reader to action. 

Types of Arguments in Essays to Persuade

The two main types of arguments in essays to persuade are rational and emotional.  If you are writing an essay against hunting, for example, an emotional appeal might begin as follows:  "Every year hundreds of bloodthirsty killers go out and ruthlessly slaughter thousands of innocent, helpless animals...."  Obviously, many words in the previous sentence are emotionally charged.  A rational appeal against hunting, on the other hand, might begin as follows:  "Every year sportsmen buy their hunting licenses and legally kill the state allotted limit of animals; however, evidence shows that this practice must be stopped because the annual "harvest" always exceeds the ability of nature to replenish the dwindling animal supply...."

Rational arguments are better when writing to persuade, especially when writing for an English academic audience.  In the rational example above, for example, it would be possible to support your position with the number of licenses issued, the numbers of animals killed every year for the last five years, the estimated decline in animal populations, etc.  Emotional arguments work best when writing for an audience that already agrees with your position; however, emotional arguments are rarely successful in persuading someone who does not already agree.  It is best to use emotional arguments for an academic audience very sparingly. 

Finally, remember these points when writing an essay to persuade:

1. State your organization.  If you have been reading these web pages, you have seen it repeatedly. "Tell your audience what you are going to tell them; then tell them; then tell them what you told them." Err on the side of clarity. If your audience cannot understand what you write, or if your readers cannot follow your ideas, you will, obviously, not persuade anyone.

2. Use a straight line of development.  State your points clearly and support them.  If you have any doubt about how to apply a straight line of development to an essay to persuade, refer again to the organizational chart referred to previously. A straight line of development is what the U.S. academic audience understands and expects. 

3. Anticipate possible objections. Remember that you may not be able to persuade everyone to accept your ideas. There may be individuals or groups opposed to what you have to say. Thus, you should anticipate their objections and deal directly with the reasons for their disagreement.

END of PART ONE

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