Cathryn Peers and Professor Deborah Dean, English
Writing is a social response; however, many sixteen year olds find that hard to understand. To high school students, writing is the means to an end – get the teacher/parent off your back, get a good grade, finish the project, etc. When I first mentioned the words “Persuasive Essay” to my class of 32 high school juniors, the moans, groans, and rolled eyes actually interested me. Why did these students feel so adverse to this essay type in particular? So, we talked about it. Students saw the essay as busy work; when would they ever use this in the real world? The more they talked, the more I saw that these students saw the persuasive essay as too structured and boring. They limited their topics to intense and broad topics that they could never sufficiently write about. They failed to see the everyday persuasion that surrounds all of us.
We encounter persuasion everywhere. Everyday these students watch TV, listen to music, and argue with friends and family. These are all moments of persuasion, but the students couldn’t see that… at first. But before they could even think about writing a persuasive essay, they had to understand what persuasion really is. They had to identify and name it in order to actually see it. So, I showed them.
Through out the unit, we watched commercials, we listened to speeches, we read articles. Each medium of communication brought different strategies of persuasion to the table. Through commercials, students learned colors, little jingles, and famous stars persuaded them. Through speeches, students learned repetition, comparisons, and imagery were also persuasive elements. Through articles, students learned figures of speech could be persuading as well. It was now more than just facts that persuaded these kids, and all of the sudden, they began to see how they were persuaded, and that affected their writing. Students now used what they saw to persuade others. The classroom was a cool place as we analyzed something more than a poem or a novel. Analyzing was fun when it involved World War II posters, or commercials with famous sports stars. During each new activity, the students would even argue with each other! They were actually practicing tools of persuasion without being coaxed by a teacher.
I was so impressed how learning the terminology of persuasion (i.e. ethos, pathos, logos) honed the students’ skills they were already developing. As they learned the terminology, the referenced examples in their own lives and readings to further understand each term. The classroom was an exiting place. Students were seeing persuasion all around them, in all different real world professions. They saw that everything has an element of persuasion, and because of that, learning how to write persuasively was now an investment.
However, mention the word “essay,” and the students were back to their moaning, groaning, and rolling. Something was still bothering them. Unfortunately, I never found out what.
About this time, a month into the persuasive essay unit, my mom passed away. She had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in late December, and barely made it a month beyond that. Dealing with the death of my mother was a struggle, but the classroom provided a place for me to completely focus on something else. Teaching was a sanctifying outlet that helped me through the struggle of losing my mom. It was the only time I felt I was truly being myself. My supervisors at BYU were incredibly supportive and helped me a great deal. However, the environment at the school was a little different. My supervisors felt the need to relocate me to a more supportive atmosphere. I was moved from the high school to a junior high a few towns away. While I was never able to finish my persuasive unit, I never stopped studying up on perfecting the unit.
While I was at the Junior High, I had other requirements and could not teach a persuasive essay. However, as I studied genre-‐theory, I saw the importance of genre analysis for areas of Language Arts beyond the persuasive essay. My seventh graders and I did a mini-‐unit of genre study to prepare for the final project concluding a unit on the novel Wednesday Wars .The project was to be a multi-‐genre project answering the one of the major thematic questions in the book through at least 8 different genres. And though it was for a different grade, in a different unit, this was the final touch that I needed for my persuasive essay unit.
The high school students had studied many different genres, and yet their were fearful of the only one they saw in the future: the essay. What happened to all the fun genres they analyzed? We couldn’t spend all that time, and then walk out of them! Since I approached the unit in a more modern and less traditional way, I had created a unit based on genre theory to teach students how to adjust persuasive elements of writing to fit a variety of genres. The next logical step would then be to produce a variety of genres arguing their specific topic. This more authentic approach to the persuasive essay unit would enable students to use more real-‐world strategies to come to the same end: persuading.
My goal was to provide students with a richer comprehension of the social and professional uses of persuasive writing and its implications. While I was not able to complete the unit and assess the success of my goal, I was heading in a direction that enabled the students to see school-‐room writing as a real-‐world investment.
I intended to publish my findings in English Journal and still plan to do so when I am able to complete the entire unit.