Now that speeches are mostly complete, we can turn our full attention to your persuasive essays. Let’s start with the basics:
1) 5-7 pages NOT including bibliography
2) APA style for in-text citations and the bibliography
3) This is an argumentative essay. It is persuasive, but it persuades through argument: reason supported by evidence. A good comparison would be what’s called a white paper. Think of it as a persuasive research essay.
Format-wise, it employs all the tools we discussed throughout the semester: a thesis, sub-theses, lines of argument and evidence, the stock issues (their names be praised).
The main difference between the speech and the essay is that the speech was directed at the class, while your essay is directed at the audience of your choice. Provided your choice is the audience most able to make a big impact on your problem. So rather than a roomful of 18 year olds you’re talking to the US Congress, the governor of Idaho, the LAUSD school board, the UN, a huge NGO, or whatever. Conveniently, these are all organizations that are used to getting white papers. You don’t need to indicate who your audience is explicitly in the paper. I can extrapolate, and if you think it’s not clear you can just put a little footnote on the first page explaining who you’re talking to.
“But Dr. McClain,” you grovel, “you’re so smart and important and imperious and we worship you. So how many sources do I need.”
“Well,” I reply benevolently, “You need evidence to support all non-trivial factual assertions. And in an essay that’s even easier because you have in-text citations. If you have two sources that say ‘Dogs are great’ you can just write ‘Dogs are great (Sharma, 2011; Gao, 2014).’ My advice is when in doubt, cite something.”
Some other general reminders:
1) THE STOCK ISSUES ARE THE WAY.
2) People are more afraid of losing something than they are of not gaining something, so your ills should be pitched as a negative thing. Frame your case as a danger we are facing, not something good we are missing out on.
3) We are persuading with argument, which means persuading through reasoned discussion (as opposed to, say, threats or irrational manipulation). That doesn’t mean we are not persuading with emotion, however. Remember, significance is the fuel of your case and significance is ultimately about emotion. Most people can’t really feel what $100 billion dollars means. Make sure you come up with ways to make your audience feel the meaning of your ill.
4) Remember ills and sig belong to your audience. Why they care might have nothing to do with why you care. Let’s say you do a really great job on your audience analysis and determine there’s three California state senators you need to convince to get your new pollution bill passed. You have a stack of ills and sig ten miles high about the danger of pollution, but is that what they care about? Always ask yourself–why aren’t they doing what I want now? Maybe you need to show them that the electoral costs of not adopting the bill are an ill too.
4.5) That said, don’t forget that sometimes people need a reason to do something and an excuse to do something. In other words, as a state senator I might adopt your bill because I know I’ll facing a primary challenge from the left, but I’ll prefer to tell myself (and everyone else) that I’m doing it because of how bad pollution is.
4.75) Make complying with your demands as easy as possible at every possible level, including the hypocritical if need be. You want your audience to delight in doing what you want them to do.
5) You can drive down the cost of compliance as low as you want, but your plan always needs positive value in the significance times solvency equation. Even if your plan has no material cost there are always psychological costs involved with changing behavior like irrational concerns about risk or even just plain inertia.
6) Persuasion is an emotional journey, and you are our guide. There’s a narrative in persuasion that goes from the bad, dark place of the ills to the happy, victorious place of solvency at the end of the speech/essay. Make sure your solvency and your conclusion paint a positive picture of what compliance brings. Try to get the audience to visualize what the better world after they do what you want looks like–perhaps even literally (e.g., “close your eyes and imagine Los Angeles without pollution”). The prospect of loss gets our attention, the prospect of gain inspires and empowers us.
7) My grading will ultimately depend on the question “would this actually work.” So ask yourself–would this actually work? Would this get compliance? What can you do to make compliance easier?
Based on past semesters, here are the top ten things that most people have trouble with while writing their persuasive essays:
1) Details matter a lot in bibliographies. Get the right format for the right source. You want your bibliography to be above suspicions. Also–is it in APA? Is it? DON’T YOU LIE TO ME!
2) You don’t need to use the “according to blah” format in a college paper. That’s for journalists. Citations serve that purpose for us, and they do it faster and better.
3) Speaking of citation, most of the papers you’ve written so far have probably been for English or at least literary studies classes. As a result, you’re used to using a lot of direct quotes. For many kinds of papers, indirect quotes are superior and should be used when possible.
To clarify:
Direct Quote
Smith (1994, p. 567) says “In my many years of research into the matter I found 12% of monkeys on this our island Earth are, broadly speaking, of a red hue or coloration when observed with the human eye.”
Indirect Quote
12% of monkeys are red (Smith 1994, p. 567).
Unless the exact wording really matters, use the indirect quote. It’s much, much more efficient. However, if you are using their language, make sure to get those quotations marks in there!
4) DON’T FORGET SOLVENCY!!! SOLVENCY IS NOT THE PLAN! For your plan to “solve” you need to have proof that a) it can happen at all, and b) that it will attenuate the significance. This holds true even if you think it “stands to reason” that the plan will improve the situation. More solvency is more.
5) Every non-trivial factual claim should be backed up by evidence. Most of the time in a paper like this that evidence will be a secondary source. That means your paper is going to have a LOT of citations in it. Again, more is more. If your paper is short, it’s almost always because you don’t have enough evidence backing up your claims.
6) In a paper like this, most of your time is spent proving factual points. Those factual points add up to the case. There is no reason to restrict yourself to a single piece of evidence for a given point, ESPECIALLY if it’s very important and/or likely to be contested. Yeah, I know, it’s basically the same as 5, but it’s that important.
7) Concrete details matter. Don’t just say “there is more x than y” if you can say “there is 42% more x than y.” Detail increases your credibility and makes you more persuasive.
8) Proofread.
9) Proofread again. Writing is revising, not typing.
10) Logical transitions are important. Between paragraphs, of course, but also between sentences. The value of a well-placed “therefore,” “despite,” or “due to” can be enormous.
topic Violence in Latin America households
