Reflection: Persuasive Pieces

Writing a persuasive piece can be difficult, regardless of what you're trying to be persuasive about. There are three, main difficulties that I can identify when writing a persuasive essay, these being; The person reading or listening to your persuasive piece may already have preconceptions about your topic, making it extremely difficult to persuade them over to your side, espescially if they have held these preconceptions for a long time. The second difficulty that I identified was the difficulty in writing a persuasive piece without using any logical fallacies; it's not always easy to back up your opinion and information with hard facts, a credible source, or even arguments that make sense. The third, and final, important difficulty with writing a persuasive piece would be if whoever listened or read your piece had a radically different opinion compared to yours, and not just a misconception. People can be stubborn and will sometimes cling to their beliefs, even when presented with a credible and possibly true source. It can be difficult to overcome the beliefs of a reader if they're uninterested in keeping an open mind. These are all difficulties in writing a persuasive piece.

Some ways these difficulties can be overcome is through practice, preparation and proper editing. When giving a speech orally, it is vital that you are able to captivate the audience's attention within the first 10 seconds, or else you will have completely lost it. It is important to be a strong speaker when presenting a persuasive piece orally, and sometimes it can have such an impact that the audience may miss a flaw in your piece, like a logical fallacy or a contradiction; meaning if you don't have your editing and preparation skills down, this has the potential to save you from the equivalent of pulling something out of your rear end during a presentation. Strong oratory skills are a neccesity when presenting a persuasive piece orally and the best way to improve this is to practice your speaking. Another way to overcome the difficulties of presenting a persuasive piece is to have your piece thouroughly edited to ensure that all your information is correct and there are no logical fallacies presented. To improve your editing skills, or to ensure your piece is properly edited, it would be a good idea to edit your draft first then find someone else to edit it after, then finish it off by editing it once more to ensure accuracy in your claims. These are important in ensuring your persuasive piece will give you the highest chance to be successful.

I believe the best way to practice these skills without hindering the class would be to incorperate these skills into our daily classroom routine. An example of this would be if we were given a speech in class, after completing what is require of us we could take the time to point out the logical fallacies found, if any, and also by editing them to ensure there are no errors in the text.