How to improve your persuasive writing skills

Even the best students might struggle with persuasive writing, often failing to incorporate persuasive features into their writing. One of the ways in which you can improve your persuasive writing skills is by putting your understanding of persuasive features into practice. For example, your teacher might ask you to create an ad on a certain topic. Similarly, you might be asked to write a speech which aims to persuade a group of people to do something. The bottom line is that you need to adopt lexical features that are deliberately used in persuasive texts because they have the power to affect people’s emotions as well as  their way of thinking and doing things. I am going to share a few tips and tricks that work for my students and hopefully as  a student of IGCSE EFL and/or AS English, you might find them useful too.  

Perhaps the best way to start is by going back to Ancient Greece. According to Aristotle, persuasive writing is probably the most important type of writing there is. You may disagree with this statement. Perhaps you prefer stories or descriptive writing. Their purpose is to entertain you and teach you something, especially if you are open to interpreting imagery and reading symbolism. However, if your purpose is to influence someone with your words, then you will probably need to incorporate the features of Aristotle’s rhetoric into your writing, regardless of the sub-genres of persuasive writing which you might be focusing on (e.g. scripted speeches, advertisements, travel writing, reviews).

You are probably familiar with the terms such as ethos, logos and pathos, which are associated with Aristotle’s rhetoric. But why are “Aristotle’s appeals’’ or ‘’Aristotle’s triangle’’ or ‘’triad’’ relevant to persuasive writing or any form of persuasion? Evidently, Aristotle approached the topic of persuasion keeping an audience in mind. Such an approach was probably pretty obvious to him – in order to convince someone else of the benefit of your point of view, you need to use lexical features, or, in other words, language, which holds the great power – the power of persuasion.