San Jose State Persuasive letter – Helping Cancer Patients through Art
Humanities
This assignment requires: 1 persuasive letter and 1 analysis of your letter. The two documents combined should total 1,000 words.
The Persuasive Letter
1) Your letter is written to an actual person, group of people, or organization.
2) Your letter addresses a real issue that has real significance to your life.
This could be any area of your life, such as home life (Dear Dad, Please give me more money for books); school life (Dear Professor, You should allow notes on the final because…or Dear Appropriate Cabinet Member, I have an idea about something related to SJSU…); work life (Dear Boss, I deserve a raise because…or Dear Hiring Manager, I’m an ideal candidate because…); campus or community life (Dear Neighbor, Feeding the deer is dangerous because…or Dear Neighbors, Please join the block clean-up project…); political life (Dear Representative, Vote against this bill because…or Dear President Trump…); consumer life (Dear Tostitos, Please do not encourage double dipping on your packaging because…or Dear Trader Joe’s, To save on packaging, please create a 24 oz. package of your Hot Pico de Gallo…); entertainment life (Dear NFL, What’s up with some of your team names?); or another area of your life where a persuasive letter would be relevant.
For more ideas, see this Persuasive Letter Topic Brainstorm page.
3) Support your argument with evidence (e.g. you’re good at using facts!).
Letter Analysis
REQUIRED Questions (every letter analysis should address these questions):
1) Who is your audience/reader? How did you keep this reader in mind when composing your letter?
2) What persuasive strategies did you use in your letter? Please point to specific examples of how you used these strategies. (e.g. show examples of your use of rhetorical language strategies and show ways you appealed to ethos, pathos, and/or logos).
OPTIONAL Questions (if your letter is short and you need to expand your letter analysis to reach the required total of 1,000 words, you might also consider these questions—pick and choose—you do not need to answer all these questions):
What strategy did you use in the introduction of your letter? Why?
Did you use an example or story in your letter? Why or why not?
Did you use statistics in your letter? Why or why not?
Discuss your conscious use of word choice in your letter.
Did you ‘show’ instead of ‘tell’ in your letter? Why or why not?
Could you write a similar letter to other people? If so, what changes would you make for your new audience?
