(Don't) Picture your audience in their underwear: building audience awareness for persuasive essays12/9/2020 The last week or so, I've helped over a dozen writers with their argumentative/persuasive essays, so I thought I'd take a moment and record some advice I've said to pretty much all of these students. First of all, I don't like the term argumentative. It makes it sound like you're supposed to yell at your audience. Trust me. We don't want that. Instead of thinking of your assignment as an argumentative essay (even if your teacher calls it that), think of it as a persuasive essay. (They're the same thing anyhow!) We want the audience to really consider what you're saying and be persuaded. That's the ultimate goal of any "argumentative" essay. In order to do that, you need to do a few things. Picture your audience, but not in their underwear! Maybe you've heard the advice to picture your audience in their underwear? This is usually in reference to overcoming stage fright, which happens most often when giving an important speech to a group of people. Although similar, writing a persuasive essay is different from giving a speech. I like telling students to imagine their audience in the form of a friend (one person!)-- someone they might want to sit down and have a cup of coffee with (or cocoa in my instance, since I don't drink coffee). But you do not need to picture them in their underwear. Make this a friend you trust, someone you consider intelligent, and someone you'd like to keep your friend. Your goal is to persuade (get your point-of-view across to them) without belittling or making them so angry they never want to speak to you again. This person will have a completely opposite view point as you. They'll have questions, concerns, interests, and feelings about your topic. "Listen" to them. This will help you keep your friendship. I find that as students "picture their audience" in this way, their tone will be kinder as they respond to questions and concerns from their oppositions. Overall, they have a more mature argument. Teachers sometimes drill into us that we need to take a stance, take a stance... and yes, we do need to take a stance... (Or say what we believe and never waver from it!) But in doing so, we often forget that we're persuading, not just saying what we believe. There's a really awesome video (which I'll post below) where Ellen Degeneres defends her friendship with former President George W. Bush. They have complete opposite points of view when it comes to politics, lifestyle choices, etc. But they're friends! And that's okay. Your job in a persuasive essay may not be to tell your friend everything you believe or persuade them to your political party. Instead, you may want to start small and convince them in one point of your stance. (More on that in a moment!) To do that successfully, you need to know your audience (your friend) and where they stand on an issue and why.
Informed doesn't mean what my sister told me or what I read on social media. I think most of us know this, but it's easy to get fired up about the latest meme or headline we read online. Being informed means going to credible sources. For this, I recommend using your school's library database. When becoming informed on an issue, make sure you're looking at both sides of the argument. I think too often we think we need to find a bunch of quotes to support our ideas, and that is one way of doing it. But it's much better to go into that researching process with an open mind. I often tell students that if you want your audience to listen to your ideas, you need to first listen to theirs. Either way, make sure you're looking at recent articles that will help you see where we're at on a particular issue right now. Whenever possible, narrow down your search. Too often we think we need a BIG issue in order to write a 3-4 or even 5-6 page argumentative paper. The opposite is true. The more narrowed your topic---your issue, your stance--- the easier it is to support it and write about it. This leads me to my final piece of advice for this blog post... Give your readers a reasonable request I won't go too much into thesis statements here, but I think most of us can agree that you need to have a purpose for anything you're writing, but that purpose is especially important for persuasive essays. In your thesis statement or claim, you should clearly state what you want the reader to do or think differently by the time they finish reading your essay. Oftentimes I see students making several claims or asking their readers to make huge changes. Maybe they think that if they ask for something big it will be more impressive. Or maybe they don't think much about what they want their readers to do. (It goes back to that audience awareness we talked about earlier!) But if you don't say what you want your readers to do, then it can easily turn into a ramble or rant. No argument. No persuasion. Instead of asking your readers, for example, to ban all cars everywhere (because we want to stop pollution), ask them to consider walking more often. Instead of asking your readers to abolish all animal testing, consider a specific product that you know does animal testing and encourage your readers not to support this company. That kind of thing! Whatever it is, make it a reasonable request. It's possible that your audience, despite doing all these things, will (still!) not be persuaded. That's okay! But at least you can know you've given it your best effort.
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