Lesson: Persuasive Strategies
We have talked about the importance of gathering evidence for our arguments from a variety of sources. Another way to look at it is appealing to various parts of our audience’s being: their minds, their emotions, their identification with certain, well known individuals. Today we’re going to learn about some of these specific persuasive strategies and find examples of them in advertisements.
Introduction to New Material:
Go through persuasive strategies chart with students, discussing each using a visual example (clips of commercials, ads from magazines, etc.).
Divide students into groups. Give each group 5 different ads and ask them to identify the persuasive strategy/strategies each uses.
Students find an ad themselves, bring it to class, and present the strategy being used.
Further Independent Practice:
Students read through each others’ persuasive paragraphs and label the various strategies used (perhaps, each strategy could be represented by a different color). If a student notices they’re only using emotional appeals, the student must go back and work more logic in to their argument.