Writing a Strong Persuasive Essay

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The strong persuasive essay consists of the proper use of Aristotelian appeals and well oriented arguments constructed by means of Toulmin model of rhetoric. Using those techniques, Michael Chang, the author of the article “America’s Failing Education System,” attempts to convince the reader that the U.S. secondary educational system is poor in math and science because of the inability of secondary school math and science teacher, eventually causing the U.S. incompetence in the global environment. However, Chang fails to establish effective Aristotelian appeals due to the insufficient explanation of his professional credential , the inadequate coherence of the audience and the exigency, and the collapse of Toulmin model. In addition, inconsistent and redundant paragraphs make the author’s thesis unclear, and the lack of citations and international data makes the reader doubt the entire idea of the article. Thus, the poor rhetorical techniques reduce the cogency of Chang’s argument.
To begin with, the article is missing ethos due to the absence of the information of how the author is related to the educational field. From the description of the feathered hair, which was one of the popular hairstyles from 1970’s to early 1980’s, the reader can assume that the author had been a high school student during 1980’s. Additionally, Chang mentions Led Zeppelin, the English rock band from 1968 to 1980 and Dave Matthews, the popular American band during 1990’s. However, the author’s professional credential is not presented in the article, making the audience question the authority. In order to gain credibility from the reader , the author should explain how he is proficient in the educational field. Therefore, the lack of explanation regard...

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...ulmin’s model. The author is unsuccessful in showing his own authority because he does not provide information about his educational proficiency. His attempt to appeal to the emotion is also miscarried because the author does not make connection between the audience and what is at stake. Additionally, the redundant paragraphs confuses the audience over the author’s main thesis, and the lack of the necessary data and backing makes the argument invalid and unsound, causing the collapse of Toulmin’s model, logos.Therefore, the article cannot convince people that the U.S. secondary school education is falling. In order to make his argument convincible, he should provide information over how he is related to the educational filed, mention the audience’s children to make the distance between the author and the audience closer, and provide international data and citation.

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