Transcript Persuasive Writing Introductions

PERSUASIVE
WRITING
Introductions
WRITING A GOOD INTRODUCTION
As a general principal, a good introduction
should always:
Give the reader a clear indication of the subject
matter of your piece.
 Set the tone of the article and your ‘voice’.
 Make the reader feel compelled to read the rest of
the piece.
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WHAT MAKES A GOOD INTRODUCTION?
In essence, a good introduction will be:
Snappy
 Memorable
 Succinct
 Powerful
 Informative
 Clearly understood
 Capable of establishing tone
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…SO WHAT MAKES A BAD INTRO?
This one’s easy. Bad introductions will:
Fail to introduce the subject of the piece.
 Be very mundane…’The subject I am going to
write about is…abortion/capital punishment.’
 Fail to establish a clear tone or line of argument.
 Lack style, effective word choice, sentence
structure or any other common persuasive
writing techniques.
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STANDING OUT FROM THE CROWD
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Making your introduction original and snappy is essential if
you are to encourage the reader to continue reading. Here
are a few ways to do it.
Hyperbole and tone
Striking statistics
Quoting established experts
Effective word choice and rhetoric
Rhetorical questions
Anecdotes
Lists
Climax and anti-climax
Get to the point…don’t waffle.
SPOT THE DIFFERENCE
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On the next two slides, you will see two
introductions which deal with the same subject.
Look, in particular, at how the second version
establishes a clear tone of irony and mocking
humour through the use of informal word choice
and figurative language (metaphor)
The first version is very much what markers will
be used to seeing from Higher candidates. You
should be able to see clearly why I am urging you
to be more stylish than this.
BAD INTRODUCTION (EXAMPLE)
At the moment, a lot of people are angry in
America because people are planning to build a
mosque in New York where the September 11th
attack happened. In this essay, I am going to tell
you why the people getting angry are being
misled by the media and why their anger doesn’t
make sense.
GOOD INTRODUCTION
Things seem awfully heated in America right
now; so heated you could probably toast a
marshmallow by jabbing it on a stick and holding
it toward the Atlantic. Millions are hopping mad
over the news that a bunch of triumphalist
Muslim extremists are about to build a "victory
mosque" slap bang in the middle of Ground Zero.
(Charlie Brooker, The Guardian)