Can You Convince Me? Identifying, Analyzing and Applying the Author’s Intentions through Persuasive Techniques

Michelle Hilbeck

Introduction

My 6th grade English class is currently finishing Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix. It is a science-fiction novel that presents a possible future of America in which it is against the law for any family to have more than two children. The novel is narrated from an illegal third child’s point of view. In one section of the novel, the main character Luke discusses with Jen, another third child he has discovered, how the government has been able to enforce the laws through the use of television commercials and propaganda. The commercials air what the consequences are to families harboring a third child: death to the child and a hefty five-million dollar fine. The book also employs the use or propaganda posters in creating images of women as the worse criminals (than bandits or murderers). In another poster and commercial, women question their self-esteem and their body-images. The poster states “Ladies, do you REALLY want to look like this?” and shows a grotesque image of a pregnant woman. As a class we discussed whether or not Luke’s society is influenced by these commercials and propaganda. The students agreed that the population was influenced to some extent by what the government was telling the people. They took that position because Jen claimed that the population was actually decreasing due to fewer women having children based on what they saw in the images. The class also argued that Luke was forced to stay in his attic because his parents were nervous about the consequences they saw on T.V. I asked the question, “Well, do you think our society is influenced by what we see on television and in posters or by what we read in books?” One student of twenty-six said yes, we are influenced by what we see or read. The others did not think so at all.

It’s interesting to see that the students do not think we are influenced by what is presented to us in the media, even though, it’s clear that they are influenced by the trends seen on TV or in magazines. For example, some of my 6th grade students watch the show Jersey Shore and are infatuated with the people on the show. The students have passionate, heated discussions about the episodes and the cast members as if they were their best friends. Some of the actors from the show advertise six hour energy drinks on television. The new trend in the middle school is to have some of these energy drinks first thing in the morning. They don’t realize that the people on the show are getting paid to act in certain ways and that off the air these people act differently. The students also don’t realize that the producers air certain footage to pull in viewers and ratings. They don’t realize that the company that manufactures the energy drink picked the cast members because of the influence they have on the younger population.

I’ve concluded that the students have a difficult time understanding authorial intentions. They don’t recognize how the author of a given text works towards a certain purpose and perspective. The students don’t take the time to examine how authors choose their audience based on the point they want to make and their understanding of their target audience. They do not realize that the creators of the Jersey Shore understand who their audience is and know how to influence their thinking.

Rationale

In the unit, I want to address these questions: What are authors and creators trying to sell? Who are they trying to sell to and how? Is it an effective strategy? Is there anything missing or is there misinformation? In addressing these questions, I want my students to consider how authors and creators use the various persuasive techniques not only in commercials, but in printed articles, propaganda pieces and political advertisements to stress their point of view about a product or topic. I want my students to make the transition from identifying the author’s intentions and their techniques for persuading the audience to want their products or agree with their point of view into becoming the author and creators themselves by applying the same persuasive techniques to sell their own products and ideas. I also want the students to develop their writing skills a part of the application process by creating a persuasive piece that advertises with their final creative product and demonstrates their knowledge of the persuasive strategies. By the end of this unit, I want my students to become analytical thinkers and realize how much of we see in print or in visual format involves a creator selling something to the audience. They will be required to write a persuasive piece and create and advertisement on a controversial topic that shares their opinion on the topic. Their goal is to write the piece and create the ad using the persuasive techniques learned in class.

In addition, I chose to create this type of unit to help students receive instruction using informational text and media. Our current English/Language Arts curriculum neglects informational text in favor of fiction even though 55% of the Delaware Comprehension Assessment System (DCAS) consists of questions about informational text and documents. One specific Grade Level Expectation for 6th grade English is that students need to be able to identify the author’s purpose and explain why the author chose to create or word the document in the manner that he or she did. Students also need to be able to identify bias in a document. These two target skills are tested on DCAS but we do not have the resources in our curriculum map or textbook to hit these target skills. I wanted to create a supplementary unit that allows me to teach the essential skills students need to know in order to perform well on DCAS. This unit will also target higher-order thinking skills in that they by requiring students to analyze and examine informational text, visual media and documents to discover authors’ intentions, reveal possible bias and identify the ways they are manipulating the tone to get a specific reaction from the reader.

Demographics

I teach 6th grade English/Language Arts at Conrad Schools of Science, a magnet school for high school programs that focus on pathways in biotechnology, sports medicine, engineering, and nursing. The middle school program follows the norms and requirements of a typical middle school setting in the Red Clay School District. We operate on a block schedule; I see my 6th grade students on a daily basis for eighty-eight minutes. The students in my class range from high to low academic ability. I also teach special-education students. We follow the inclusion model in Red Clay so I have students in each class with learning disabilities. I have to differentiate instruction based on the various ranges of academic needs of my students.

The unit has been designed to fit into the block schedule and targets all ability levels and various modes of intelligences so that instruction can be differentiated based on the ranges of student ability level in the classroom.

Objectives

Narrative

The Urgency of Now

I have noticed a trend within our society that is not only prevalent with the 6th grade age group but with adults as well. There is a sense of urgency in wanting the new, up-and-coming technologies: faster internet, high-definition televisions that are now three-dimensional and smart phones that can surf the internet, buy movie tickets and book a dinner reservation. The world is becoming such a high-speed place that I wonder where this sense of urgency comes from. Why so fast?

In part, we are influenced by this idea of urgency because we have the motto “the faster the better.” In The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, Nicholas Carr observes that the internet provides a high-speed system for delivering and responding. “When we Google a keyword, we receive, in a blink of an eye, a list of interesting information to appraise.”of interesting information to appraise.”of interesting information to appraise.”

Carr quotes Maryanne Wolf who says that “we sacrifice the facility that makes deep reading possible” 2 because we overtax our brains with the extra visual stimulation. We simply decode the information because there is no reason for deeper thought. 3 This sacrifice of deep reading adds to the urgency because not only is the internet instantaneous, there is little thought involved. In addition, the Internet makes the hard-work of researching easy because it has already been done for us. So it is even more appealing to users and consumers. Because all the work and research has been completed for us, we assume that the information presented is accurate and valuable. We don’t question it. In conclusion, since there is no need for deeper thought and the information is instantaneous, there is no need to analyze where the information is coming from. This is the mentality of our youth: the faster, the easier the better.

Easily Influenced

What intrigued me the most was that my students didn’t consider that what we see out in the world influences our thinking and consideration of ideas. In Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, Neil Postman maintains that at an early age we encourage our children to become televisually literate by allowing educational shows like Sesame Street to act as teaching aides to our young children’s minds. Postman argues: “I mean to say only that, like the alphabet or printing press, television has by its power to control the time, attention, and cognitive habits of our youth gained the power to control their education.” 4 Instead of leaving our youth to the jurisdiction of the teachers and school administrators, Postman claims we leave them in the hands of TV executives and entertainers. 5 He goes on to argue that television is its own curriculum whose sole purpose is to influence, teach, train or cultivate the mind and character of our youth. 6 Television has become a learning tool to our students. Our youth are easily influenced by what they see on television. There is very little thought and effort required to watch television; the information the students see is spelled out clearly; the message is straight-forward. But because there is little effort or thinking required, television decreases students’ analytical thinking skills and their ability to question what they see. Students assume that everything they see on television is true or accurate. They do not realize that advertisers who understand television’s power to stunt independent, analytical thinking have purposely created the commercials, programs, characters to gain and keep their attention and ultimately influence their thinking.

Television is not the only outlet that conveys information and influences our thoughts. As Nicholas Carr states, “the Net is best understood as the latest in a long series of tools that have helped mold the human mind.” 7 The internet allows for superficial learning that takes little effort on the participants’ part. The same goes for magazine advertisements and newspaper articles. When we see a celebrity in a magazine using the product in the picture or wearing a particular outfit, our minds are stimulated and our thinking is influenced by what we see. We form an opinion about what we see, deciding whether we like the product or not. The author or editor of the magazine uses the fame of one person to shape the thinking of another. We assume that the news article we read is accurate because we assume the author or journalist who wrote the article did the proper research and reached logical conclusions. Authors in each case have specific intentions and want their audience to form specific opinions and agree with the writer’s train of thought. Our students have to realize that writers, advertisers and film makers use the same persuasive techniques to influence a person’s thinking.

Persuasive Strategies

There are seven different persuasive strategies that are used to gain people’s attention and to drive their thinking about an idea. Sometimes only one idea is used; sometimes authors and creators may employ more than one if they think it will help deliver their message.

It doesn’t matter what outlet is used. Whether it’s a newspaper article, TV commercial, magazine advertisement or a presidential campaign spot, all the outlets use one or more of these persuasive strategies to sell their idea or product. In learning the strategies, students can examine how s given advertisement, image or piece of writing builds the brand, triggers emotion or plants a belief in the minds of prospective consumers. They will be able to use these questions as the basis for

uncovering the author’s intentions and become more analytical thinkers by questioning the author’s judgment.

Persuasive Writing

Unfortunately, there has been little emphasis on writing in our curriculum and lack of resources on how to teach the different types of writing. Persuasive writing is an important skill students need to learn, not only because it helps students develop their own voice on topics that are of concern to them, but because it is indispensable in analyzing the author’s intentions. By learning how to create a persuasive writing piece, particularly focusing on development, students learn how authors develop their thinking and advertising it in a way that will influence others’ thinking. In Dynamics of Writing Instruction: A Structured Process Approach for Middle and High School states that the overall goal of the lesson is that students need to be able to “examine a body of information and draw logical conclusions about trends and patterns.” They also need to “write a coherent and logical paragraph that expresses a claim and supports that claim by citing relevant data and interpreting this data.” 8 In other words, if students learn to define their perspective and opinion, they can learn how to properly develop a persuasive piece. In means they need to know how to “take a position, clearly define the position they are taking instead, justify why they took that position instead of another, and effectively communicate their point of view so that the reader believes what is being said. Students also need to know how to provide claims and properly communicate the information or evidence that supports those claims to further engage the reader.

Strategies

Collaborative Learning/Group Work

Working together with peers is a life skill students need to practice. Collaborative learning allows students to learn to work together towards a common goal. Each member of the group is accountable to the others and required to participate in order to achieve the final outcome. Students need to learn how to work respectfully with others and learn how to consider each other’s points of views and opinions. Collaboration benefits students because by listening to their peers they can develop a better understanding of the task or content. It also extends their thinking by exposing them to other perspectives that they may not have considered. Individual and group evaluations are essential to monitor the group’s work and their progress working as a team.

Response to Questions

Student discussion is vital and beneficial to this unit. With class or group discussions, responding to questions is a good strategy to engage students in helping them identify the persuasive strategies used by the author and creator. In viewing different commercials and presidential campaign spots, students need to ask guiding questions that help begin to analyze the author’s intentions. In order to lay the groundwork for a discussion that allows students to explain their thinking. In examining magazine ads and propaganda, the students will work to address questions about the author’s perspective and the techniques authors use to influence the viewer.

Think-Pair-Share

Think-Pair-Share is a specific type of responding to questions strategy. It allows for collaborative learning by encouraging students to think and generate their own conclusions about a prompt (commercials, magazine ad, propaganda) or question. They then have to pair up with their assigned partner (or a peer of their choice) and share their individual conclusions. I will use the Think-Pair-Share strategy to allow the students to collaborate and share their ideas about the author’s intentions and persuasive techniques.

Task Analysis

Task analysis is the study of how a task is accomplished. Students will use this strategy by examining different examples of authors and creators’ work looking at what elements are present, how they are arranged, and what persuasive strategy is being used to influence the audience. They will use the process of task analysis to determine what the main message is, what the author’s intentions are, and who they consider their target audience is think the target audience

Proficient Reading Strategies

Proficient reading strategies are techniques student use to break-down and analyze a text to gain better comprehension of what was written. I teach my students these strategies at the beginning of the school year. I like linking the proficient reading strategies with analyzing the author’s intentions because going through the steps as a proficient reader, they are able to further analyze the text and determine the point the author is making and the strategies the author used to influence the reader. Students are asked to generate predictions before they read, make connections to the text as they read, write down questions the author leaves them with, make inferences, visualize, determine the main idea (particularly what they author is trying to tell the audience) and summarize what the author is trying to accomplish and how.

Graphic Organizers

Graphic organizers are a visual tool that helps display the relationship among facts and ideas. The make the content easier by helping to categorize related information and making it more visually organized and comprehensible. For the unit, we will use graphic organizers to help planning our persuasive writing piece.

Classroom Activities

Enduring Understanding: Persuasive strategies are ways to influence how people think and react to ideas and products.

Unit Vocabulary

Persuasive Strategies: Pathos, Logos, Authority, Ethos, Urgency, Claim, Research

Activity 1: Unit Introduction

This is the introductory lesson of the unit. It helps identify to the students what the final outcome or goal of the unit is: by examining different products and documents, students will identify the ways the author attempts to influence someone’s thinking through the use of persuasive strategies, will determine what the author’s intentions are, and determine whether if the author was successful or effective in attempts to influence someone’s thinking.

Objectives

Activity: As a class, read aloud The Berenstain Bears and the Trouble with Commercials in which Brother and Sister Bear enjoy watching commercials but Mother Bear sees this as a developing problem. The young bears look forward more to watching the commercials that the shows themselves. And because these commercials are so much fun and entertaining, Brother and Sister Bear must have whatever it is in those commercials. They want the specific brand of cereal advertised and let the other cereals in the cupboard would go to waste. They play with their new toys until another new toy comes into the picture. Seeing the trend, their mother makes the children promise that they will not mention another commercial or new product until they have finished the product they already have. As it turns out, the cubs don’t like the cereal advertised, and the toys break after a few uses. The moral of the book is to help children realize that not everything they see advertised on television is as good as it may appear. It also teaches children that advertisers work to create commercials that are sometimes more entertaining than the shows on television.

Read the story aloud in class and have students address these questions:

The point to be stressed is the moral of the story: that commercials on television are often visually more appealing than the shows because they need to find creative ways to sell a product. Viewers have to look further and see that the product might not be all it’s cracked up to be.

Activity 2: Define and Identify Persuasive Strategies Using Commercials

Objectives:

Introduction: Write the word “Perspective” on the board. Start off the class with a discussion about the definition of this term and create a word web based on student responses. Students will copy the word web and reflect on these questions in their journals:

Using the strategy Think-Pair-Share, students will discuss their reflections with their partner. They will include their partner’s reflection as a part of their journal entry.

Direct Instruction: Through a Power Point presentation, students will be given the definitions of the unit vocabulary or the persuasive strategies that authors/creators use in their products. Students will write the definition and the example given for each term. Students will be given a handout (Appendix B) with the terms.

Activity: The class will watch seven commercials, each representing a different persuasive strategy.

Part A: Students will be given a handout (Appendix C) asking them to match the commercial listed with one of the strategies and summarize their reasoning. After viewing each commercial, the entire class will briefly discuss their reasoning and their conclusions.

Part B: Students will complete the reverse side of the same handout (Appendix C) and in which the columns ask:

• What were the author or creator’s intentions?

• How did they accomplish this? (Visual displays, celebrities present, etc.)

• Who is their target audience?

• Do you think it was effective and influenced the viewer?

Activity 2: Identify persuasive strategies used presidential campaign ads and propaganda

Objectives:

This lesson takes a step further in identifying the authors and creators’ intentions through the use persuasive strategies. In this lesson, students will need to identify the creators’ intentions behind different presidential campaign spots -an especially since we are in an election year. Students will analyze campaign spots from the past to see how the creators advertise or sell the presidential candidate.

Introduction (Formative Assessment): Students will complete matching worksheet in which they match the persuasive strategy with its definition as a way to review instruction from the previous day.

Introduction Activity: Go to the website: http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/ , a collection of presidential campaign videos from both the Republican and Democratic Parties since 1952. The website also includes background information about each candidate, the history of that year and a summary of the results of the election. To conduct the lesson, have students watch the collection of videos from the 1952 election year, in which Eisenhower ran against Stevenson. Have them compare the two candidates running against each other by the style of the campaign spot and determining how the creator attempted to influence the viewer. In watching the videos, we will answer the following questions as a whole:

Activity/Assessment: Acquire access to laptops through the library or media center. With their partners, have the students return to the website. Have them select a two different election years and complete the same set of four questions for each set of videos, focusing on commonalities and differences between videos. In addition to answering the four questions above for each set of videos, students must complete the following question:

The main focus is finding the commonalities amongst the style and format of the videos. For instance, you will be able to find that the creators of the videos continue to put down the opposing candidate through different election years. Numerous creators still use animations and cartoons for the campaign spot to pull in viewers. Though web-based campaign advertisements are prevalent in recent years, there are also more videos available for these years.

Activity 4: Identifying Persuasive Strategies in Magazine Advertisements

Objectives

Television is not the only outlet through which we receive influencing stimuli. Magazine advertisements are an added feature in print that acts as a visual stimulus to the consumer. Advertisers take into account that many people are visual learners and whose senses are stimulated and engaged by what they see. This lesson is to help students examine different magazine advertisements to determine what persuasive strategies are being used by the creator, explain the techniques they used, identify their intentions and evaluate their efforts.

Introduction/Direct Instruction: Give each student a copy of a magazine advertisement, such as a “Got Milk?” advertisement. Hold a class discussion asking about the advertisement asking:

Activity/ Assessment: Have students break into their collaborative groups. Six magazine advertisement stations will be created around the room. Each group will be given seven to ten minutes to answer the five questions above for each advertisement.

Activity 5- Identify persuasive strategies used in articles and newspapers

Students will employ the proficient reading strategies they have applied to fictional texts to analyzing informational texts. Students are already familiar with performing before, during and after reading techniques while reading a text.

Objectives

Introduction/Direct Instruction: Make copies of a recent news article from the News Journal. Model the before, during and after activities the students will complete later in the lesson with the article “Head Trauma.”

Activity: Students will read the Scholastic SCOPE article entitled “Head Trauma” and complete the following tasks (Appendix D)

Before Reading: Students will take Post-it notes and write two predictions about the article and author’s intentions based on the title, pictures, and words or phrases throughout the text

During Reading: Students will make and write their connections to the text in the margins as they read. In addition, students will write down two questions to the author as they read through the text.

After Reading/Assessment: Complete the chart (Appendix D) and answer the following questions about the article.

Activity 6: Can You Convince Me- Final Project

Objectives

Requirements: Students will pick a single topic that they consider to be an issue in our society, a problem for which they can come up with a solution. Examples of topics are smoking, bullying in schools, obesity, privileges for the school, and the best sport, pet or class at school. Students will create a five-paragraph persuasive essay attempting to influence the readers about their chosen problem and solution. As a second requirement, students will pick a role defined below and complete the requirements of that role.

Students will need access to laptops or a media center in order for them to complete research on their topic by gathering as much information that they can about their topic. This information could be facts, statistics, or arguments for or against a given position. Fitting into the block schedule, students will be given two days to research and gather necessary materials.

In the final activity, students will apply their knowledge of the persuasive strategies by taking on the role of the author or creator. Students will be given a list of different options such as a journalist, film director, advertiser, or presidential candidate they can pursue and complete the task appropriate to that role.

Roles and Responsibilities:

For this project, students will need to be instructed on the elements of persuasive writing. They will be taught what elements create a persuasive piece such as selecting a problem and creating a viable solution. They will be guided through the prewriting phase and given help in selecting a topic. They will use graphic organizers to help collect their thoughts. For instance, students could create a topic cluster centered on the word “problem”. Students will create a web listing all of the problems they would consider writing about. They can expand their web even further by writing down all the facts they think they know about the topic and possible solutions for their problem.

After the prewriting stages and research, students then need to work on an outline to help guide the direction of the paper. Appendix E is a copy of the outline students will be given. Students will use the outline to help develop their thought into a five paragraph essay. The layout of the essay will be as follows:

Teacher Resources

Kemper, Dave, Sebranek and Verne Meyer. Write Source: A Book for Writing,

Thinking, and Learning. Wilmington: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005.

Museum of the Moving Image. “The Living Room Candidate.” Last modified 2010.

http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/.

Berenstain, Stan, Berenstain, Jan and Stan Berenstein. The Berenstain Bears and the

Trouble with Commercials. NewYork: Harper Collins Publishers, 2007

Lauren Tarshis, “Head Trauma.” Scholastic SCOPE Magazine, October 10, 2011.

Bibliography

Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show

Business. New York: Penguin, 1985.

Carr, Nicholas. The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. W.W.

Norton and Company. New York, 2010.

Smagorinsky, Peter, Johannessen, Larry, Khan, Elizabeth A., McCann, Thomas. The

Dynamics of Writing Instruction: A Structured Process Approach for Middle and

High School. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann, 2010.

Appendices

Appendix A: State Standards

CC6RI6: Determine the author’s point of view or purpose in a text and explain how it is conveyed in the text

CCRI7: Integrate information present in different media or formats as well as in worlds to develop coherent understanding of a topic or issue

CCRI8: Trace and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, distinguishing claims that are supported by reasons and evidence from claims that are not

Appendix B:

Appendix C:

Front Side

Back Side

Appendix D

Back Side

Appendix E

Write your Opinion Statement:_______________________________________________

Summarize the Problem:____________________________________________________

List the facts and details:

Propose the Solution:______________________________________________________

List the facts and details:

Continue the Solution:_____________________________________________________

List the facts and details:

Notes