Question

How easy do you think it will be persuade about this course of action

Answer 1

You have a target audience. This is the person or persons who will be reading your essay.That audience should be essentially neutral to your idea or concept (it’s too much uphill sledding to convince someone who you know is already opposed to you to change his/her mind, and if someone agrees with you already, well, your job is done).You will set out a logical argument: what your audience should do, why they should do it, and what they stand to gain from it.

I can’t emphasize this last point enough. You are not using a stick; you are dangling a big juicy carrot. You won’t be the one eating the carrot, so ignore any considerations of how much this action might benefit you.

How much you might benefit from the outcome, should you be successful, doesn’t matter at all in terms of how to write a persuasive essay. And yes, the potential benefit to you might be the whole reason you’re writing it—but your audience won’t care, so put that aside. (You can rub your hands together and cackle if you want.)

So you’re probably thinking, yeah, but it’s my teacher. She’s going to be reading a whole bunch of essays and isn’t going to spend a lot of time on mine—I don’t think I’ll really change her mind about anything.

The goal of an academic persuasive essay is to construct a persuasive argument. You must pretend that your reader (your teacher) cares about the topic but has no strong opinions one way or the other.

In fact, when evaluating your essay, your teacher will only consider one question: Would this essay persuade a neutral reader? Would it at least elicit the reaction, “Hmm, interesting…he could be right”?

In a nutshell, your teacher wants to see that you know how to write a persuasive essay.