Writing Workshop Persuading with Cause and Effect Assignment Prewriting Choose a Situation Consider...
-
Upload
brittany-hardy -
Category
Documents
-
view
216 -
download
0
Transcript of Writing Workshop Persuading with Cause and Effect Assignment Prewriting Choose a Situation Consider...
Writing WorkshopPersuading with Cause and Effect
Assignment
Prewriting
Choose a Situation
Consider Purpose, Audience, and Tone
Analyze the Cause and Effects
Gather and Evaluate Evidence
Write Your Opinion Statement
Decide on a Call to Action
Practice and Apply
Feature Menu
Assignment: Write an essay in which you examine the causes and effects of a situation and persuade the reader to take action to change it.
Persuading with Cause and Effect
When you look around your community and your school, you probably see that things are not perfect. What can you do about a situation you think needs to be changed?
You can start by asking a few questions: What caused the situation? What negative effects is it having? What action could fix it?
[End of Section]
Persuading with Cause and EffectPrewriting: Choose a Situation
Change agents are people who make things happen, often by persuading others to take action. Become a change agent by writing a persuasive cause-and-effect essay.
Look at the world around you. Think about situations you think need to change.
Persuading with Cause and EffectPrewriting: Choose a Situation
Brainstorm with other students about local situations or problems.
Persuading with Cause and EffectPrewriting: Choose a Situation
Make a list of promising topics for your essay.
• you find most interesting
• might inspire the strongest response in your readers
school lunches not nutritious enough
new housing infringing on coyote habitat
community center short on resources
no late buses for after-school activities
not enough city parks
[End of Section]
Choose the one that
Persuading with Cause and EffectPrewriting: Consider Purpose, Audience, and Tone
Purpose
Your essay will have a dual purpose:
1. To explain the cause and effects of a situation
2. To persuade your readers to take a specific action to change that situation
Persuading with Cause and EffectPrewriting: Consider Purpose, Audience, and Tone
How much do my readers know about the situation?
• Include any background information necessary to persuade your audience.
Audience
Think about what your readers, or audience, will need and want to know. Ask yourself
Persuading with Cause and EffectPrewriting: Consider Purpose, Audience, and Tone
What are my readers’ concerns or biases about the situation?
• Anticipate any objections—or counterclaims—your audience might have, and plan to address those in your essay.
Counterclaim How to Address
The expense of keeping the community center open will cause local taxes to go up.
The center is well worth the investment; it will keep kids out of trouble, make our community safer, and lead to greater productivity.
Persuading with Cause and EffectPrewriting: Consider Purpose, Audience, and Tone
Tone is the attitude you convey toward your subject or your audience.
[End of Section]
• For this essay, use words, details, and sentence structures that create a slightly formal tone. Your audience will take your ideas more seriously.
Persuading with Cause and EffectPrewriting: Analyze the Cause and Effects
Think about the cause-effect relationship that created the situation. Ask yourself
What is the initial cause of the situation?
• Analyze the cause so that you can explain to your readers why the situation exists in the first place.
Last year the city cut funding for the Heights Community Center. Because of these cuts, the center has been forced to eliminate its tutoring program and reduce its hours of operation.
Persuading with Cause and EffectPrewriting: Analyze the Cause and Effects
What are two or three significant negative effects of the situation?
• Identify negative effects to persuade your readers that the situation needs to change.
• Many students’ grades are falling because they are no longer able to get tutoring at the center.
• More kids are getting into trouble after school because they have too much idle time.
• Young people have fewer opportunities to pursue hobbies or find mentors.
[End of Section]
Persuading with Cause and EffectPrewriting: Gather and Evaluate Evidence
Provide evidence to support your explanation of the cause and effects. Make sure your evidence is precise and relevant.
Kinds of Supporting Evidence
Expert opinions are statements made by an authority on a subject.
Quotations present a person’s word-for-word statement on a topic.
Facts are statements that can be proven true; statistics are facts in numeric form.
Persuading with Cause and EffectPrewriting: Gather and Evaluate Evidence
Kinds of Supporting Evidence
Anecdotes are brief stories that illustrate general ideas.
Commonly held beliefs are ideas that most people share.
A case study is an individual example used as the basis for generalizations.
An analogy is an explanation of something readers do not understand in terms of something familiar to them.
Persuading with Cause and EffectPrewriting: Gather and Evaluate Evidence
Make notes to record your evidence. Pair each piece of evidence with the effect it supports.
Effect: Many students’ grades are falling.
Evidence: Since the city made cuts to the center’s funding, 68 percent of students who had once received tutoring there have seen their overall grade-point average decrease by at least half a point. (statistic)
Logical Reasoning
Persuading with Cause and EffectPrewriting: Gather and Evaluate Evidence
Use rhetorical devices to shape your explanations for the negative effects.
Effect: Falling grades for students
Logical Appeal
A study conducted by Bright Futures showed a strong correlation between high school grade-point averages and earning potential.
Emotional Appeal
Angela is worried that her grades won’t be good enough for her to earn a scholarship. “I’m really struggling now that the tutoring program has been canceled,” she lamented.
Ethical Appeal
The community has a responsibility to give its young people every opportunity to succeed.
[End of Section]
Persuading with Cause and EffectPrewriting: Write Your Opinion Statement
Write an opinion statement in which you share your perspective on the changes needed for a situation.
The Heights Community Center was established to help young people succeed at school and become more productive members of society. Citizens must pull together to make sure the center can fulfill that mission.
[End of Section]
Persuading with Cause and EffectPrewriting: Decide on a Call to Action
Finally, decide what action your readers should take to improve the situation. Write a sentence that clearly states your call to action.
Concerned citizens should write or call their city council members and urge them to restore funding to the Heights Community Center.
Hint [End of Section]
Persuading with Cause and EffectPrewriting: Practice and Apply
Use the information in this presentation to plan a persuasive cause-and-effect essay.
[End of Section]