Persuasive Writing-for folio

What follows is an extract from a real Higher essay. It is a brilliant essay and is at

the top end of what we are aiming for.

It is trying to persuade us that McDonald’s is bad for us.

You can’t blame parents for taking their kids to McDonalds. Said parents hand over the small fee of £1.99 and in exchange they are given a little box of happiness that seems to have magical properties that transform the terrifying monster in the back seat of the car into something resembling the child that they left the house with that morning. It doesn’t seem to bother them that this so-called ‘Happy Meal’ not only is gradually squeezing shut their child’s left ventricle, rotting their teeth and staining that lovely new jumper with tomato sauce but it is also the product of an international fast food giant whose only care is how big the number at the bottom of the balance sheet is at the end of each month. So what makes McDonalds so much worse than any other company? Admittedly they are not the only company whose track record is a disgrace but their status as the world’s number one fast food chain makes them one of the most dangerous names on the high street… …The reasons as to why this meat is deemed unfit are wide-ranging, although one of the primary reasons is that the cuts of meat used are from parts of the animal that tend to contain more fat than cuts of meat that should be used for our food. This means that as well as the fat levels you would expect to find in a burger, some of the meat itself is adding to the fat content. As if this wasn’t nearly bad enough, scientists have recently alleged that some of McDonalds’ foods, particularly children’s’ Chicken McNuggets, contain dangerous levels of what are called trans-fats.

Techniques we have spoken about so far:

Rule of ThreeHyperboleFacts/StatisticsRhetorical QuestionConnectives (discourse markers)

List some more connectives:

Other techniques for persuasive writing that you may wish to use include:

Alliteration

Personal Pronouns

Repetition

Short Sentences (for impact)

Subordinate clauses beginning with ‘if’

Imperative (commands)

You can persuade your readers of anything if you use these techniques…

David Cameron is moronic. Any uneducated fool can see that the cuts he is making are bad for our country, bad for its citizens and bad for the futures of their children. He has gone too far; from criminal cuts in care for the elderly to deadly deficits in supplies for our armed forces.

If he thinks that a family holiday in sunny Ibiza via Easyjet can make us believe that he is suffering at the hands of cuts aswell he is very, very wrong. While he lies lazily on a lounger at the beach we are suffering back here in our no longer booming Britain. As the cuts encourage rising living costs we can barely afford to feed our kids and clothe our backs, let alone save for a sun-drenched holiday, Easyjet or no Easyjet. Do you care about us David?

How dare you pretend to understand the trials and tribulations in the life of the common man. Have you ever had to rummage in the back of the sofa to scrape together enough coins for a pint of milk? Have you ever had to wear three pairs of socks in bed because you couldn’t afford to heat your house? Have you ever had to deny your children a school trip because you couldn’t afford the fees? I think not.

You can persuade your readers of anything if you use these techniques…

Now you try it.

Choose any topic.

Use the techniques to persuade a reader that your opinion is correct.

Write a short paragraph