Understand the assignment

In your essay, you will state an opinion about an academic topic and persuade readers to agree with your opinion.

Research

Remember that after you do enough preliminary research to brainstorm and choose your focus, you should do more detailed research about your topic so that you can make your outline. 

When you research for an argumentative essay, look for the opinions of the supporters, but also look for the opinions of the opponents. To best support your opinion, you will need to consider all of your audience, even those who have different opinions. A strong argument often acknowledges the opposite point of view. 

Brainstorm

You can use a mind map, a free write, general internet search, or a discussion group if you are having a difficult time thinking of things to write about. 

Choose your focus

Make sure the topic isn't too broad to cover in your essay. If you choose to state a broad opinion, you will need a lot of evidence to support the broad opinion that you have. Furthermore, when you have a broad topic, your readers will likely have more doubts about your opinion because they can think of more exceptions or other reasons that your opinion might not be true. Therefore, it is easier to defend an opinion with a more narrow focus and to do so with the time and word count restraints of a school assignment.

As you determine your focus, also determine which of the effective rhetoric appeals would best help you support the narrowed topic you choose. Would ethos, pathos, or logos best convince your reader that your opinion is right? You can use one, two, or all three appeals if you think it will help your argument. For more information on effective rhetoric Purdue OWL's resources on this topic. 

Outline

Also begin an outline for your essay. As you research about your topic, start organizing your findings. Some people begin an outline by listing topics and quotes. Others write topic sentences and supporting sentences. A persuasive essay follows typical essay organization, but you may find the body paragraphs don't always follow the regular 5-paragraph essay rules. You may need to plan for more or fewer body paragraphs depending on the support you need for your opinion. 

Introduction

Your introduction should start by describing any background that will be important for the reader to know. 

Here are some questions that can help you think about background information that the reader needs to be able to understand the problem: 

• Who typically supports my opinion? What reasons do they have? 
• Who typically opposes my opinion? What reasons do they have? 

At the end of your introduction paragraph, you should give your thesis. The thesis should clearly state the opinion that you will defend in your essay. 

Review the characteristics of an effective thesis as needed. For a persuasive essay, it is especially important that you don't simply state a fact; your thesis should be an opinion. You can tell if it is an opinion by asking if someone else could have a different opinion on the topic. For example, "Dogs are animals." is a fact, but "Dogs are the best pets ever." is an opinion. Someone else could think that cats or some other animal are the best pets, so you can tell it is an opinion. 

Body

Your body paragraphs should give reasons that support your thesis.  As you plan your essay, you should think about what type of appeal you will use to convince your reader your opinion is correct. You will need to use effective rhetoric to convince the reader.

Rhetoric is "the art of speaking or writing effectively" using principles of composition made by ancient critics to communicate and persuade (Merriam-Webster, 2022). Rhetoric was created by the ancient Greeks to effectively communicate and persuade (Sloane and Perelman, 2022). Aristotle, a famous Greek philosopher, divided rhetorical appeals into what we now call ethos, pathos, and logos (Sloane and Perelman, 2022). 

Ethos is the appeal to authority. This is where you use experts or show yourself to be an expert in order to get the reader to trust you and believe your opinion. 

Pathos is the appeal to emotion. This is where you use the emotions of the reader, specifically their emotional response to what you write, to convince them to agree with your opinion

Logos is the appeal to logic. This is where you use logical reasoning and evidence to show readers why they should believe your opinion. This is one of the most common appeals you will use in academic writing. 

As you try to persuade your reader, you can use these appeals to convince them. You can use one, two, or all of the appeals in the defense of your opinion. 

Optional Opposition Paragraph

Another way to support your opinion in the body paragraphs is actually to add a counterargument that shows how other people may disagree with you. This is optional in a persuasive essay. You follow this counter-argument with your reply or rebuttal about why your opinion is still good despite what the other opinion may be. This can be done in its own paragraph(s) or worked into the supporting paragraphs. A counterargument is usually followed by evidence for the counterargument and then a rebuttal with evidence for the rebuttal. When writing the counterargument, make sure you keep a respectful tone in your writing.

Example Opposition Paragraph:

If you use a counterclaim, you will want your counterclaim to be strong so your rebuttal can stand out and give really good support to your opinion. If you give a good rebuttal to a strong and fairly presented counterclaim, your opinion will be even more convincing to the reader. 

Conclusion

Your conclusion paragraph should start by restating your thesis to remind your reader of your main idea, your opinion. Then you should discuss your problem more generally and apply your opinion to the general context you established in your introduction. The middle part of your conclusion could be a summary or it could build on the information from your body paragraphs to apply the ideas of your essay to a bigger community. 

You can end with a closing statement that is a suggestion, prediction, or opinion.  For persuasive essays, you might also try using a call to action, asking your readers to join you in your cause. 

Call to Action Examples:

• To continue progressing, humanity should dedicate more resources to space exploration and scientific investigation. 
• Let us grow to be more considerate of our neighbors by learning about their culture by trying the traditional foods of their countries. 
• This is a serious issue that the government and its citizens should address.  
• It is not just people who live near beaches who should be concerned about pollution; everyone should be concerned about the negative effects of polluting waterways, shores, and oceans and do their part to reduce pollution in everyday ways. 

Exercises