The art of persuasion

Claire Doll
MSMU Class of 2024

(3/2025) March can be a long and difficult month in education. One day, spring is teasing you with warm air and blue skies; the next, you wake up to a blanket of snow and a day off school, a gruesome reminder of a potential shortened summer vacation. There are hardly any days off this month, plus there’s state testing, and we just endured a cold, icy winter. What could possibly be next?

February and March are the months when my students read nonfiction texts—that is, we take a break from imaginary short stories filled with beautiful language to its stark counterpart, nonfiction. As you can probably gather, I’m not the biggest fan of informational or argumentative texts. I’d rather teach novels, dive into figurative language and characterization. However, if I’m not passionate and excited about what I teach, my students won’t buy into it. I knew I needed to inspire myself.

A big unit in nonfiction is rhetorical analysis—that is, the art of persuasion, or argumentative texts. Knowing how to dissect and understand arguments is increasingly relevant in today’s society, and it is important that students know this. I decided to teach my students an array of different activities to break down the heavy topic of rhetorical analysis while also having fun. The below lessons and activities are just a glimpse of how my students are spending the drab months of February and March.

Class Discussion

ELA is reliant upon four standards: Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening. Seldom do students prefer speaking and listening, as school has always been about books and papers and essays. However, I decided to design a class discussion for my students to build their confidence and generate thoughtful conversation. The topics: cell phones and social media.

After reading and annotating two articles on teen’s reading habits, media consumption, and cell phone use, students prepared for several discussion questions. The class discussion format was different than a regular classroom lesson: I discouraged hand raising, and I did not intervene in conversation (rather, I facilitated it). Students were responsible for appropriately interacting with each other and relying on social cues and article topics. Ensured by a rubric, this class discussion allowed students to share their thoughts on a popular, relevant topic while reaching curriculum standards.

While class discussions are not a one-size-fits-all, they do challenge my classes—both the quiet ones and the chatty ones—to take their critical thinking skills off the papers and actually use them in the way they are meant to be used: in natural conversation. I enjoyed facilitating this conversation and listening to my students’ feedback. Many of them asked when the next discussion would be!

Creating Advertisements

What’s one great thing about February? Superbowl season. As I write this, the Philadelphia Eagles have won the big game, and the halftime performance is resonating on social media, but with yet another Superbowl comes a flurry of new commercials.

Commercials and advertisements, I told my students, are a type of argument. In fact, it is in the curriculum that I teach advertisement techniques, such as bandwagon and testimonials. Upon learning these terms and watching several examples, I encouraged my students to create their own advertisement. They had to not only market a product they use daily, but also use rhetorical appeals and devices to sell their item.

Starbucks, Chick-Fil-A, and Lululemon were just few of the many products that students chose. They cited their favorite celebrities as testimonials and came up with creative ways to infuse pathos (appeal to emotions) into their advertisement. My students loved this project, as it balanced imagination, media, and argumentative techniques in one activity. Nonfiction, I learned through this lesson, can take several forms: speeches, articles, memoirs, and of course, ads. My students enjoyed applying their newly learned rhetorical analysis skills to sell the latest Starbucks drink or Chick-Fil-A meal.

Speed Debating

No, not speed dating—speed debating. I got this lesson from a teacher blogger: Write On with Miss G (writeonwithmissg.com). She has amazing lessons and I highly recommend her!

Debating can be a tough skill to teach. Students are passionate, but sometimes a bit too passionate, and debating requires a tedious balance of speaking, listening, and respect. Speed Debating, I’ve found, is a great way for students to stretch their argument skills while being exposed to several different topics—some funny, some serious—in the span of minutes.

The desks are organized into rows facing each other. Students will begin in pairs, facing one another, with a folded card in the center of their desks. One side of the card might read, "Hot dogs are a sandwich." The other side will read, "Hot dogs are not a sandwich." Whichever desk the student sits at, whichever side of the card they face, they must argue that topic. Whether they agree with it or not.

Thirty seconds or a minute will tick by—switch! Students must move to the next desk, facing a new opponent and a new card. This time, their side might read, "Homework is beneficial." The student must argue this topic now, despite his or her opinions, while their opponent argues that homework is harmful. Despite how either student feels, their job is to argue their side using rhetorical appeals and devices. Each student will carry a worksheet with them, taking notes and checking off their appeals used.

The lesson is meant to foster on-the-spot critical thinking skills as well as assess knowledge on rhetorical appeals and devices. While not a full-fledged debate, Speed Debating gives students a taste of formal arguing which will support them well into high school and beyond. Additionally, I believe it is important for students to not choose the topic or side they’d like to argue. This creates an even bigger challenge to objectively encounter with the facts and think like a lawyer.

Overall, for a teacher who prefers fiction any day, I thoroughly enjoyed teaching nonfiction. We have not only done these activities, but also read speeches on women’s rights; we have used analysis methods to dissect articles; we have identified the text structure in a variety of informational passages. Nonfiction plays an essential role in how students can understand the real world. After all, developing skills in analyzing how items are marketed, or how to respectfully disagree with someone, or how to have a general conversation, is so important. What matters is ensuring that nonfiction texts, just like fiction ones, can come to life. This ensures the lifelong skill of critical thinking and fosters a passion for rhetoric.

Read other articles by Claire Doll