Persuasive Essay
Draft Due:
Final Copy Due:
Audience and Purpose:
Your goal in this paper is to respond to a topic related to
one of the essays from your reading. Your response should
take the form of a persuasive paper contextualizing your
position on the argument imbedded within the original text
and extending the thinking. Below are some possible
positions you could take:
 You support the author’s position
 You reject the author’s position
 You support the author’s position, but dislike the way
the author argued the position
 You reject the author’s position, but believe the
position is well argued
 You find a middle ground the author has not considered
Assume your audience would be vaguely familiar with the
topic. Because some of your audience will not agree with
your position, you should consider opposing positions and
address those views.
You should look for areas of common ground, acknowledge the
counter- arguments, refute the counterarguments, and/or
concede the point.
Make sure your response adds to the conversation and does
not merely reflect or mirror what has been said. This is
the area where you critical analysis of the argument is
presented. This is where you demonstrate a clear
understanding of your argument. Here is where you also
demonstrate that you are well informed on the issue and
your tone is reasonable and logical.
Planning and Drafting:
1st – read the essay carefully, noting the author’s thesis
and major points being argued/presented.
2nd – clearly state your opinion on the issue (or related
issue) and make a list of major points you wish to raise
either in support or to refute the author’s position.
3rd – think about how the author presented his/her position.
How did the author express his/her opinion? What do you
agree/disagree with?
4th – begin to create your argument/position (your opinion)
taking care to provide support for each of the points you
wish to make. You must use information – quotes, summary,
paraphrase – from an essay. You may/should also use outside
sources.
You will need to provide a new way of addressing the issue,
provide new evidence to support your position. This
evidence could take the form of: personal experience,
statistics, facts, historical reference, or expert opinion.
Remember to use a combination of evidence/support and cite
your sources.
Evaluation Criteria
(COMES Rubric):
 Fairly and adequately summarizes the author’s position
 Provides adequate support or evidence to reinforce
your position
 Adds to the conversation – does not simply restate
opinions from source material but adds your own
opinion/credibility/ethos
 Projects a reasonable tone
 Contains well-organized and coherent paragraphs
 Uses correct citation format (APA)
 Contains few if any correctness errors