Vote for Me! Developing, Writing, and Evaluating Persuasive Speeches

Overview

Featured Resources

From Theory to Practice

 

OVERVIEW

To deliver an effective persuasive speech, students must formulate logical arguments and back them up with examples. In this lesson, students will study political campaign speeches to explore the characteristics of effective persuasive speechwriting and oral argument. While using an online tutorial and looking at examples, students learn what makes a strong speech. A second online tool helps them learn how to formulate a persuasive argument. Students then apply this information in two ways: by writing their own speeches and evaluating others'.

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FEATURED RESOURCES

ReadWriteThink Persuasion Map: Use this interactive tool for any lesson in which students need to create a piece of persuasive writing.

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FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE

Buss, K., & Karnowski, L. (2002). Teaching persuasive texts. In Reading and writing nonfiction genres (pp. 76–89). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

• Persuasive writing can take many forms including essays, letters to the editor, classified advertisements, and speeches.
  
  
• In political speeches, writers use precision to make the speech more easily understood.
  
  
• In a short persuasive speech, it's important to have an introduction that states the position of the speech clearly; this is followed by at least three pieces of evidence to support the position.
  

 

Tompkins, G.E. (2003). Teaching writing: Balancing process and product (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

• Students should examine the various ways persuasion is used in everyday life before they begin writing their own persuasive pieces.
  
  
• Persuasive writing is easily incorporated into content areas such as science and social studies.

 

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