The following activities help students practice tactics for enhancing the persuasiveness of professional texts.

Instructors are welcome to copy content directly into their CMS as is or with their own modifications. If you decide to use an activity from the resource site, please copy the student-facing content into your CMS as opposed to linking to the resource site.

Activities

Negative Feedback Activity

This lesson plan and in-class activity pair a free-write prompt with collaborative revision to teach students about active problem-solving and reader-centered writing. In this lesson, students apply empathetic and rhetorical skills to evaluate a piece of writing (in this case, a sample of negative feedback) from the perspective of both writer and reader. They then collaborate with fellow students to devise a reader-centered revision strategy to enhance the effectiveness of the piece.

Principles of Influences Lesson

This in-class lesson plan uses a PowerPoint presentation to introduce students to the six psychological principles that account for individuals’ automatic compliance—principles necessary to exert influence over an intended business demographic. Grounded in psychological persuasive techniques, this lesson builds upon the insights of social psychologist Robert Cialdini, explored in his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. 

Problem-Solving in Business Activity

This generative activity asks students to analyze, evaluate, and redesign business problem-solving writing strategies so that they effectively apply to their own professional fields. After developing field-appropriate principles for written problem-solving (referred to as an “outline” in the activity), students then draft short, informal messages aimed at solving one of three provided problems. 

Rhetoric in Bad News Letters

This in-class lesson plan helps students develop a critical understanding of the rhetorical appeals—ethos, pathos, and logos—as applied in business genres, particularly letters/emails. This lesson uses a variety of textual samples—from letters/emails to scholarly research papers to online blogs—to guide students’ investigation, thereby ensuring the post-course application of rhetorical skills.

Sticky Ideas Lesson

This in-class lesson plan uses a PowerPoint presentation to help students identify what makes an idea “sticky” (i.e., more memorable and more capable of changing attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors). Essential to students’ understanding of effective persuasion, this lesson builds upon the persuasive techniques explored in Chip and Dan Heath’s book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.