Political Campaign

Because persuasive writing's purpose is to influence people's thoughts and actions, it is often one of the most challenging types of writing. It is often aimed at an audience who may be anywhere from neutral to hostile towards your ideas, so audience awareness is critical in this type of writing. Most people have opinions on political candidates, but convincing others of the validity of those opinions is the hard part. The following guidelines will help you to write a persuasive speech that is well supported.

Assignment: You will use write a speech for the candidate you created in civics. I will give a working grade on the project Tuesday for having your prewriting finished and most of the first draft completed.

Schedule:

Monday—Begin prewriting and working on the rough draft

Tuesday—Prewriting is due. Work on finishing the rough draft—due tomorrow in civics.

Wednesday—Take your rough draft to civics for classmates to vote on. Make a copy of it to

bring back to me tomorrow. In class today we will take a test on infinitives and the Animal

Farm Chapters 6-10 Vocab Quiz.

Thursday—Bring your rough draft back to me for credit. We will either begin working on

revising the speech you selected or a word cloud of your own speech.

Friday—Revise selected speech or work on other media for your project

*I will evaluate your progress throughout the week. If all goes well, we will continue working on election-related media the following week along with creating your final portfolio.

Tone

Tone is critical in persuasive speaking. Even though you should include propaganda, you must establish your credibility by sounding even-handed, rational, and thoughtful. Avoid sounding illogical, condescending, confrontational, vengeful, or overly-judgmental.

Prewriting:

Complete the graphic organizer. Use it to guide you in writing your rough draft.

Tips on writing the first draft:

* Open your speech with an interesting lead-in.

* Create a thesis statement that takes a clear position, but do not hesitate to qualify it if you need to.

* Support your topic with facts, statistics, examples, and expert testimony.

* Identify any source you have paraphrased, summarized, or quoted.

* Include useful propaganda at a critical point. Identify it in the margin as soon as you use it.

* Respond to major objections in a reasonable manner and explain why the audience should find your overall argument more persuasive.

* Conclude the speech in an effective way--by looking to the future of this issue, possibly summarizing major points, and then calling for action.

Propaganda

Glittering Generalities / Positive words linked to highly valued concepts; using nice words like goodness or patriotism. / A candidate is “good for America.”
Name-calling / Trash-talking another product or person, "mudslinging," "ad hominem attacks" / Rush Limbaugh on Michael J Fox; Ann Coulter trash-talks "liberals"
Testimonial / A famous person recommends a product; also political endorsements / New Jersey Democrats endorse Hillary Clinton for President.
Plain Folks / Appealing to regular people's values like family, patriotism / Bill Halter’s use of his old football coach in his ads.
Bandwagon / An appeal to be part of a winning group—you are “out” if not a part. / “Four legs good, two legs bad” from Animal Farm
Card-Stacking / Manipulating information to make a something appear better than it is often by stating only positive aspects and omitting negative factsor by biased comparisons / MSNBC omits Republican side; Fox omits Democratic views
Transfer / An appeal that tries to link two subjects in a person’s mind; often used to transfer blame / Ad showing Obama with his head held high and the word Snob under it.
Pinpointing the Enemy and Simplification / Both attempt to simplify a complex situation by presenting one specific group or person as the enemy; simplification uses stereotypes that will evoke a negative feeling / “The big banks can count on Blanche Lincoln.”

Propaganda Information Source:

GlendaleCollege English Lab/Reading Pages. GlendaleCommunity College. Web.

5 May 2010.