Better essays and techniques overview

Better Essays and Persuasive Techniques by Dr Jennifer Minter

Writing Better Essays and Persuasive Techniques helps students improve their essays and written skills.

Chapters 2 and 3 introduce students to reasoning and persuasive strategies.

Chapter 4 outlines a range of persuasive text types and their features.

Chapter 5: “Writing Better Sentences” shows students how a basic knowledge of parts of speech and phrases/clauses can help them overcome common grammatical pitfalls.

Better Essays and Persuasive Techniques

Better Essays and Persuasive Techniques: Overview

The following lesson plans are intended as a suggested guide for teachers/students from Years 7 to 9.

Part 1: First Stage (Year 7)

Part 2: Second Stage (Year 8)

Part 3: Third Stage (Year 9)

Better Essays and Persuasive Techniques

Part 1: Year 7Chapters 1-2: Essay structure and reasoning techniques.

Chapter 1 focuses on the process of writing an essay, planning and structure.

Chapter 2 focuses on different types of evidence and reasoning strategies.

See also tone-word building strategies.

Better Essays and Persuasive Techniques: pp. 5-34.

Part 1: Exercises (“downloadable” and “writable”)

•Exercises 1 - 13, pp. 23 – 35.•Revision exercise 15 p. 41

Plus supplementary exercises (if required) :

•mini-articles with tone word lists to build tone vocabulary and•essay-writing practice with plans and source material.


Part 1: Year 7 goals

• Students will identify a range of reasoning strategies authors use to persuade their audience.

• Students will improve their essay-writing skills through:

• a knowledge (and use) of different types of evidence and reasoning strategies and

• an awareness of essay structure and signposting techniques.



• Students will seek to improve their written expression and maturity through a series of vocabulary building word exercises.

• See introduction to tone, p. 43.

• Work through small mini-articles/exercises to learn tone words (See pp. 116-117).


Part 2: Year 8Chapter 3: Persuasive Techniques

The chapter focuses on:

•the author’s views, tone, style and choice of words; •the author’s appeals and values and•the author’s attacking techniques.


Part 2: Year 8 goals• Students will identify a range

of persuasive strategies.

• Students will use persuasive strategies in their essays.

• Students will use appeals to write better topic sentences

• Students will use “attacking devices” to write better rebuttals.




• Students will seek to improve their written expression and maturity through a series of vocabulary building word exercises.

• See introduction to tone, p. 43.

• Work through small mini-articles/exercises to learn tone words (See pp. 116-117).

Part 2: Exercises

Chapter 3: Persuasive Techniques

Exercises 18 - 29, pp. 48-68.

Revision Exercise 30, pp. 73-74


Part 3: Year 9Chapters 4-5: Persuasive text types and Better Sentences

Students will identify (and discuss in a fluent manner) a range of persuasive and reasoning techniques.

Students will use a variety of techniques to write different persuasive texts.


Part 3: ExercisesExercises 33, p. 79Exercise 35, p. 84Exercise 36, p. 87

Plus downloadable supplementary exercises to help students identify a range of persuasive/reasoning techniques.

(See fill-in-the-table samples).


Part 3: AimsStudents will use their knowledge of persuasive and reasoning strategies to write a variety of text types.

Exercises 33 – 39, pp. 77-95

Students will analyse a variety of texts, p. 84 and p. 86 and write a short essay.

(See Presentation on essay writing Part 1 and responses) Better Essays and Persuasive Techniques: pp. 77-94.

Resources include:

Suggested responses

E-books with exercises (downloadable and writable)

An e-licence (and class sets)


Better essays and techniques overview

Education

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