Reading and Writing Skills
WEEK 10: Reading and Writing Persuasive Text Types
Learning
Objectives:
At the end of the lesson, the students should be able to:
1. Identify the context in which a persuasion text type is developed;
2. Describe a persuasion text type as connected discourse;
3. Identify characteristics of a well-written persuasion text type;
4. Apply critical reading as looking for ways of thinking and as reasoning in reading persuasion text types; and
5. Demonstrate the 21st century skill of writing a persuasive essay.
Activity Time
What are the recent events happened this past few
days?
What is your stand about it?
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Persuasive Writing
Can help you articulate detailed reasons for your opinions and will provide a chance to study facts related to your ideas.
Persuasion is possibly one of the best vital skills that any person can develop because it can be used in every imaginable social setting.
Persuasive Writing
Characteristics of a Persuasive Essay
The purpose of a persuasive essay is to persuade the reader to take the same stance as the author about an issue or concept. It may also be intended to persuade the reader to take a course of action.
Persuasive Writing
Active Strategies for reading a persuasive essay
Analyzing. Analyze the arguments or strategies that the author uses to persuade his/her readers.
Asking questions. Ask yourself: Is the author correct in the conclusions he/she makes? Do the facts merit a particular inference reasonable? Are there counter-arguments that may refute that of the author’s? is the author using non-logical devices to persuade the reader?
Persuasive Writing
Active Strategies for reading a persuasive essay
Identifying the main ideas and details. Identify the main ideas which may be specific arguments, and the details about them. The main ideas are usually written at the start of the paragraph.
The details may come in the form of examples, statistics, anecdotes, and more detailed explanations.
Persuasive Writing
Rhetorical Situation
Ethos, Pathos, and Logos
Ethos is the appeal to the authority and reputation of the speaker or writer.
Pathos is the appeal to the emotions. Anytime your writing has an emotional impact you are dealing with pathos.
Logos is the appeal to logic. Anytime you build a case by presenting logical reasons (causal explanations, syllogisms, etc.), you are using logos.
Persuasive Writing
Rhetorical Situation
• Photo radar is just a cash cow for the police. They say they care about people’s safety, but they just want your money.
• While photo radar may be abused for monetary gain, it is an effective strategy for enforcing traffic regulations.
• I understand why people dislike photo radar. They feel as if the police is spying on them, as if their constitutional right to privacy has been violated.
Persuasive Writing
Rhetorical Situation
• I think we need to provide more mental health instruction.
• I lost my daughter to suicide.
Persuasive Writing
Rhetorical Situation
• I think we need to provide more mental health instruction.
• I lost my daughter to suicide.
Background
Walking is not a very popular activity in Metro Manila. This may be even more true that it was fifty years ago. However, even before, the benefits of walking and the dangers of not living an active lifestyle have already been identifies. This essay, written during the Japanese period, mentions several benefits of walking without being very scientific in its discussion
Author’s Profile
Pura Santillan-Castrence (1905-2007) was the author of “Philippines Prose and Poetry,” one of the most well-known high school textbooks in English. She rose to prominence as one of the earliest Filipina writers in English. At the height of her career, she was a prolific columnist and contributor to many popular periodicals.
Author’s Profile
Her capability as a writer did not end with age, however, as she became a contributor to periodicals both Australia and the United States and came up with another book, As I See It: Filipinos and the Philippines, at the age of 100. she died at the age of 101 and was posthumously awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Commission on Culture and the Arts.
Activity Time
Do you like walking? Why or why not?
What do you think are some benefits of walking?
What kinds of people do you meet when you walk?
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Shall We Walk?
by Pura-Santillan-CastrenceThis essay was written during the Japanese Occupation but it is as relevant today as it was today.
I wrote an article some years ago on the benefits of walking. My automobiled friends praised the article politely enough, they liked it (at least they said so); the points were well taken; people should really walk more; it took someone like me to show in such graphic terms what could have been clear to everyone before… then they went on their morning-till-night automobile rides, increasing the size of their paunches and the number of their chins and illnesses…
I must state, however, that I didn’t start to sell the idea that walking is the panacea of all earthy ills, not that one should walk from here to Tarlac if there is not truck available, not that rain or shine, in sickness or in health one should walk or else. ButI did set out to claim that if milady has to give up once in a while her tricycle or carromata ride, she will be one none the worse for the little exercise she gives her limbs.
Walking keeps the form fit. It obviates bay windows, inelegant in men, unsightly in women. Walking puts into play painlessly and unconsciously, important body muscles. The leg muscles, obviously, are the ones mostly affected. But when the legs move they pull at the abdominal muscles, giving them the needed exercise which prevents their getting flabby and the abdomen’s becoming big and pendulous. The static muscles of the back, especially those around the spine, are put into movement, too, and this is essential in
Shall We Walk?
by Pura-Santillan-Castrence
There are all manners of walking. The ambling walking of the absorbed lovers, while satisfactory from the point of views of giving opportunity for sentimental discourse, is not so from the point of view of exercise. From the latter viewpoint, a brisk morning walk is the thing. You need not even plan it as a formal program. It is a relatively simple thing to walk to the office, or if that is too much because where you work is quite distant from your home, walk part of the way. Either choice you take, however, makes it worthwhile by deriving from it the exercise you need. Walk vigorously and enthusiastically. You can almost actually feel the blood circulating in your body with a briskness equal to the vim and zest you put into your walking.
Some enthusiasts have it that a good habitual walker is also a good habitual thinker. Perhaps the situation is a bit far-fecthed considered as direct cause and effect. Clean thinking may come as a result of good blood-circulation an general body health, to which may have contributed the exercise derived from walking improves the eyesight. Although when the walks are done out in the country, where a person has to look far into the distance most of the time, at hill-peaks and tree-tops or upon green grass across the brooks, the far sight focusing affords rest and is good for the eyes.
Shall We Walk?
by Pura-Santillan-Castrence
Walk and be healthy. Walk and save money. Why be a slave of His Excellency, the cochero, when it is only a matter of a ten or a fifteen minute walk? Walk, instead, and see the city sights at close range. Many things of varied interest will attract you. Show-windows will engross you if you are an addicted windowshopper. Perhaps you intend to buy a pair of shoes next pay-day. Or a ves, do, or a barong tagalog for a friend or hubby, a bag for little Wifie. Window-shopping now will help you later.
If you don’t care particularly to shop merely with your eyes, if window-shopping only gives you pain and longings you never hope to see fulfilled, there are other things besides windows to make a walk interesting. People, for instance. What o mother crowned of interesting human beings a short walk can afford you. You see all types, dressy fops with their uselessness written all over their persons, worried looking fathers of families, frowsy dames with eyes that tell stories of hopes and frustration, eager youths and pretty girls flirting with each other openly or subtly, but always charmingly, because they are young. You see an old woman with her bundle of knickknacks, and you wonder how many grandchildren will shout for joy on her arrival. There is a vicious-looking beggar whom you evade, because he appears more as your-life-or your –money type than a bonafide pauper who needs your help.
Shall We Walk?
by Pura-Santillan-Castrence
A loud-mouthed woman, with the market brand stramped on her face and bearing, is haggling over the price of a ride with an equally tough cochero. Words are exchange, voices become excited and shrill, but you are already out of hearing distance. All your interest is now taken up by an old couple, worn-out and thin to emaciating, but still with the light of love and adventure in their eyes. You see the man gallantly giving his arms to his wife as they staggeringly cross the street. You wipe the mist in your eyes, and it is good that you do so in time or you would not see two little children, their attention centered upon some candy displayed on a counter near the sidewalk, coming plump into your path. You step aside, watch the eager hungriness of their look.
Maybe such city sights fatigue you as they do some people who prefer using a walk for meditation purposes; then take to the wide open spaces. Don’t protest too soon…. You need not leave the city nor your job; you can simply take a little time to get out of the streetcar lines and busy-streets, and seek the fields or the less trodden path of so called civilized life. Walk and think, allowing Nature to soothe your bruised spirit. Let the swaying grass teach you the beautiful lesson of resilience, of bending to the inevitable, the wind of circumstance. Let the flower teach you the essential perpetuity of life, and the bird, the joy of existence. The tree, symbol of dignity and serenity, indifference and aloofness, is to make you see, with a sense of balance, trivialities for what they are; the little lakes, sometimes mere puddles, full of tadpoles and fishes and insects, to show you that life sprouts anywhere, that your own, for all its seeming importance
Shall We Walk?
by Pura-Santillan-Castrence
Perhaps you have a problem. Some would-be advisers walk it. Walk it and see it from different angles. Walk it and see it for the first time against the background of the whole universe. And while walking, says an expert on the subject, “think tall, pull your chin up and throw your chest forward no matter how heavy a burden you carry on your shoulder.”
With your sense of proportion restored by quiet deliberation and by the palpable sympathy of Nature all around you, you strike at one solution, then another. Your judgment, made clear by the classmates brought about by your walk and your surroundings, becomes sound and wise. You reach a decision, and it is generally good.
Walk and know yourself. You will be surprised to find out what an enjoyable companion you can be to yourself. Don’t be like the man who gets so bored being left alone with his thoughts that he has to have a book with him all the time he is not with people. Books have their place, too and an important place it is, but so have walking and getting acquainted with yourself. Just thresh out the little doubts you have regarding this and that, mull over remarks made by your friends or office mates, study the personalities you have come across during the day. It’s fascinating pastime. And all this while you are taking your constitutional walk.
Shall we walk this once then, Milady?
Comprehension Questions
1. What are some tips the author gives regarding how to do walking?
2. What are some other benefits of walking beside good muscular health?
3. Would you recommend walking as a good exercise in your community? Why or why not?
4. With which of the author’s points do you strongly agree and why?
5. How different do you think was the author’s city compared to today’s cities?
Activity Time
Using the graphic organizer below as a guide, draw the benefits of walking given by the author. Label them using few words.
Benefits of Walking
Activity Time
Writing your own Persuasive Essay
Think of the benefits of another physical activity. You may consider the following:
• Running
Playing a sport
• Dancing
A special kind of exercise
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• Martial arts
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Activity Time
Writing your own Persuasive Essay
Start your persuasive essay by stating the issue or concept and your clear declaration of your position or opinion about it.
• State your position
• Write your arguments •
Restate position
Activity Time (Vocabulary)
1. Emaciating
2. Motley
3. Panacea
4. Paunch
5. Vim
6. Flabby
7. Fop
