New Writelike lesson: "Persuasive Context"

Speaker: Darth Vader. Audience: Luke Skywalker. Issue: Join the Dark Side.

Having built a solid foundation with reasoning & argumentation, we've started a new persuasive writing topic.

The first lesson is called Persuasive Context.

Since persuasion is social, this lesson is all about learning to read the room.

Screenshot from the lesson showing questions we can ask about the audience. Who are they? What do they value? How invested are they in the status quo? What power do they have?

With examples ranging from Ancient Mesopotamian customer service complaints to the climactic confrontation between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back, we show students how to evaluate a rhetorical situation in terms of speaker, issue, audience, goal, & timing.

A screenshot from the lesson asking students to analyse the audience of a sign telling visitors not to play on a pipe in the sea. In the photo, loads of children are playing on the pipe.

In the next lesson, we'll show how to work towards a persuasive goal using the three appeals: character, emotion, & logic.

You can find the Persuasive Context lesson here.

You can also play persuasive context activities in Frankenstories

If you go to the Persuasive Context topic in Frankenstories you'll find preset prompts that cover the same skills.

You can customise these however you like!

Persuasive context game prompts in the Frankenstories prompt library for describing the context as a whole, or for zoning in on the speaker, issue, audience, or goal.

Find the Persuasive Context game prompts here.

Expect more updates in this section in the near future!

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