Persuasive Paragraphs (1)

A paragraph is a group of sentences about one topic. There are four main kinds of paragraphs: descriptive, persuasive, narrative, and expository paragraph.

A persuasive paragraph aims to seek support for a writer’s opinion or argument. It convinces the readers to accept a particular point of view or take a specific action. Therefore, a writer needs to include reasons and examples to support his opinion. The reasons and examples can be opinions or facts (statistics, figures, result of study, survey, etc.).

The writer needs to include the three elements and information as follow:

Topic sentence	= topic + controlling idea = topic + an opinion or argument about something
Supporting sentences	= supporting ideas + supporting details = Arguments (facts/opinions) + examples/explanations
Concluding sentence	= restate, summarize, predict, or suggest

Supposed that you are going to write about a topic about ‘change’, you may come up this brainstorming:

• Topic sentence: If we want to change our world, we need to change ourselves first. 
• Supporting sentences: 
• Be a role model 
• Every person affects other people 
• People believe when they see 
• If we want a friendly smile from others, we smile first 
• Direct control 
• External things influence us less than ourselves 
• If you change how you think then you will change how you feel and what actions you take. 
• Value added 
• Changing your outer world without changing yourself is that you will still be you 

See the paragraph:

Changing Our World

If we want to change our world, we need to change ourselves first. First, we have to be a role model. Everyone can affect other people, so what we do will influence others. People believe when they see, not just only hear. We have to prove that what we do is good or right so that they will follow. To be an example, if we want others smile at you, we may need to smile first. Secondly, we have direct control over ourselves. Things happen to us are partly because we let them; external things influence us less than ourselves. If we change how we think, we will change how we feel and what actions to take. If we perform poorly in our study, we can’t blame the government, school, and teachers because blaming others is denying the reality. If we change by studying hard, the teachers will try more and the school will provide more services, too. Last, we will add values to ourselves. If we change the world without changing ourselves, we will still be ourselves, the same. We will still have the flaws, anger, negativity, self-sabotaging tendencies, etc. All in all, we should start from ourselves.