What is this sequence about?
This learning sequence aims to develop student understanding of persuasive language, focussing on how persuasive techniques work and why persuasive language matters. It aims to equip students with the skills to engage critically with their world by developing a persuasive metalanguage, exploring literary techniques such as rhetoric and understanding processes such as nominalisation.
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Big understandings Exploring how persuasive language functions allows us to think critically about texts and to create texts that persuade others. Questioning what we hear, read, and view contributes to our ability to be educated and engaged citizens. |
The sequence provides opportunities for students to explore these concepts by engaging with a range of written and visual texts.
‘Practically Persuasive’ has been written by teachers for teachers. It has been designed to provide students with rich, engaging learning experiences that address the Victorian Curriculum. The sequence consists of five flexible stages, including suggested learning intentions.
Overview of stages
1. Exploring the Purpose of Persuasive Texts
Suggested Learning Intentions
- To explore the purpose of persuasive texts
- To understand that the combination of words and images can be used to represent specific points of view
3. Text Analysis: Structures, Language Features and Nominalisation
Suggested Learning Intentions
- To understand how text structures and language features vary across persuasive texts
- To understand the process of nominalisation
5. Independent Construction: Persuasive Texts
Suggested Learning Intentions
- To create persuasive texts that raise issues and advance opinions using deliberate language and text choices
- To formulate persuasive arguments that are supported by evidence
2. Tools of Persuasion: Exploring Rhetorical Devices
Suggested Learning Intentions
- To understand how rhetorical devices are used to persuade in a range of texts
4. Co-Constructing Persuasive Texts
Suggested Learning Intentions
- To co-construct a persuasive text
- To practise using the language structures and features of persuasive writing
Prior knowledge
Before you commence this sequence, it is suggested that you ensure your students are familiar with:
- Topic sentences
- TEEL structure
- Essay structure, including the way in which clarity is achieved through appropriately sequenced ideas and information
You can find support for building students’ understanding of these concepts in the Literacy in English section of the Literacy Teaching Toolkit.
Teaching strategies
This sequence is organised around the Teaching and learning cycle: reading and writing connections, which is outlined in the Literacy Teaching Toolkit. The toolkit provides advice on the teaching strategies that you could use in this sequence. These strategies include:
The sequence highlights opportunities to apply the High Impact Teaching Strategies (HITS), which are a component of the Victorian Teaching and Learning Model.
Vocabulary
Students should be able to understand and use the following concepts and terms by the end of the learning sequence:
| Intensifiers | Persuasive language |
| Lexical cohesion | Rhetoric |
| Modality | Rhetorical device |
| Nominalisation | Medium and mode |
You can find definitions of some of these terms in the Victorian Curriculum: English Glossary. It is recommended that the explicit teaching of vocabulary occur throughout this learning sequence. The Literacy Teaching Toolkit provides resources and sample activities to support this practice.
Assessment
Opportunities for formative and summative assessment are identified at different stages of the learning sequence. Look for the 'Assessment Opportunity' icon.
You may want to develop a rubric to assess students’ progress. A range of Formative Assessment resources are available from the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority. This includes a Guide to Formative Assessment Rubrics, a series of modules to support you to develop your own formative assessment rubrics, and sample rubrics across six curriculum areas that demonstrate how you can put formative assessment rubrics into practice in the classroom.
In developing a rubric, you may wish to co-construct assessment criteria with your students. Each stage of the sequence provides sample success criteria for students working at Level 8.
The Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority has published annotated student work samples that provide teachers with examples of student learning achievement in each mode of the English curriculum: Reading and Viewing, Writing, Speaking and Listening.
Victorian Curriculum connections
Level 7
This sequence addresses content from the Victorian Curriculum in English, Critical and Creative Thinking and Personal and Social Capability. It is primarily designed for Level 8, but also addresses the following content descriptions from Level 7:
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Content description |
Stage |
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English: Reading and Viewing |
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Understand how language is used to evaluate texts and how evaluations about a text can be substantiated by reference to the text and other sources (VCELA368) |
Exploring the Purpose of Persuasive Texts Tools of Persuasion: Exploring Rhetorical Devices Text Analysis: Structures, Language Features and Nominalisation Co-Constructing Persuasive Texts |
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Understand and explain how the text structures and language features of texts become more complex in informative and persuasive texts and identify underlying structures such as taxonomies, cause and effect, and extended metaphors (VCELA369) |
Tools of Persuasion: Exploring Rhetorical Devices Text Analysis: Structures, Language Features and Nominalisation |
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Investigate vocabulary typical of extended and more academic texts and the role of abstract nouns, classification, description and generalisation in building specialised knowledge through language (VCELA371) |
Text Analysis: Structures, Language Features and Nominalisation Independent Construction: Persuasive Texts |
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English: Writing |
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Understand how modality is achieved through discriminating choices in modal verbs, adverbs, adjectives and nouns (VCELA383) |
Co-Constructing Persuasive Texts Independent Construction: Persuasive Texts |
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Plan, draft and publish imaginative, informative and persuasive texts, selecting aspects of subject matter and particular language, visual, and audio features to convey information and ideas to a specific audience (VCELY387) |
Independent Construction: Persuasive Texts |
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Edit for meaning by removing repetition, refining ideas, reordering sentences and adding or substituting words for impact (VCELY388) |
Independent Construction: Persuasive Texts |
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English: Speaking and Listening |
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Identify and explore ideas and viewpoints about events, issues and characters represented in texts drawn from different historical, social and cultural contexts (VCELT393) |
Exploring the Purpose of Persuasive Texts |
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Critical and Creative Thinking |
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Synthesise information from multiple sources and use lateral thinking techniques to draw parallels between known and new solutions and ideas when creating original proposals and artefacts (VCCCTQ034) |
Independent Construction: Persuasive Texts |
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Investigate when counter examples might be used in expressing a point of view (VCCCTR037) |
Independent Construction: Persuasive Texts |
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Consider a range of strategies to represent ideas and explain and justify thinking processes to others (VCCCTM040) |
Tools of Persuasion: Exploring Rhetorical Devices Text Analysis: Structures, Language Features and Nominalisation Co-Constructing Persuasive Texts |
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Personal and Social Capability |
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Perform in a variety of team roles and accept responsibility as a team member and team leader, assessing how well they support other members of the team (VCPSCSO041) |
Exploring the Purpose of Persuasive Texts Co-Constructing Persuasive Texts |
The sequence can be used to assess student achievement in relation to the following Achievement Standards from the Victorian Curriculum: English Level 7:
- Students understand how text structures can influence the complexity of a text and are dependent on audience, purpose and context.
- Students select specific details from texts to develop their own response, recognising that texts reflect different viewpoints.
- Students understand how the selection of a variety of language features can influence an audience.
- Students create structured and coherent texts for a range of purposes and audience.
- Students listen for and explain different perspectives in texts.
Level 8
This sequence addresses content from the Victorian Curriculum in English, Critical and Creative Thinking and Personal and Social Capability. It is primarily designed for Level 8, and addresses the following content descriptions:
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Content description |
Stage |
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English: Reading and Viewing |
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Analyse how text structures and language features of persuasive texts, including media texts, vary according to the medium and mode of communication (VCELA398) |
Exploring the Purpose of Persuasive Texts Text Analysis: Structures, Language Features and Nominalisation Co-Constructing Persuasive Texts |
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Understand how rhetorical devices are used to persuade and how different layers of meaning are developed through the use of metaphor, irony and parody (VCELA397) |
Tools of Persuasion: Exploring Rhetorical Devices Text Analysis: Structures, Language Features and Nominalisation Co-Constructing Persuasive Texts Independent Construction: Persuasive Texts |
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English: Writing |
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Understand the effect of nominalisation in the writing of informative and persuasive texts (VCELA416) |
Text Analysis: Structures, Language Features and Nominalisation Independent Construction: Persuasive Texts |
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Create imaginative, informative and persuasive texts that raise issues, report events and advance opinions, using deliberate language and textual choices, and including digital elements as appropriate (VCELY420) |
Co-Constructing Persuasive Texts Independent Construction: Persuasive Texts |
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Experiment with text structures and language features to refine and clarify ideas to improve the effectiveness of own texts (VCELY421) |
Independent Construction: Persuasive Texts |
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Understand how coherence is created in complex texts through devices like lexical cohesion, ellipsis, grammatical theme and text connectives (VCELA414) |
Text Analysis: Structures, Language Features and Nominalisation Co-Constructing Persuasive Texts |
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English: Speaking and Listening |
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Share, reflect on, clarify and evaluate opinions and arguments about aspects of literary texts (VCELT425) |
Exploring the Purpose of Persuasive Texts |
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Interpret the stated and implied meanings in spoken texts, and use interaction skills including voice and language conventions to discuss evidence that supports or challenges different perspectives (VCELY426) |
Text Analysis: Structures, Language Features and Nominalisation |
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Critical and Creative Thinking |
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Synthesise information from multiple sources and use lateral thinking techniques to draw parallels between known and new solutions and ideas when creating original proposals and artefacts (VCCCTQ034) |
Independent Construction: Persuasive Texts |
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Investigate when counter examples might be used in expressing a point of view (VCCCTR037) |
Independent Construction: Persuasive Texts |
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Consider a range of strategies to represent ideas and explain and justify thinking processes to others (VCCCTM040) |
Tools of Persuasion: Exploring Rhetorical Devices Text Analysis: Structures, Language Features and Nominalisation Co-Constructing Persuasive Texts |
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Personal and Social Capability |
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Perform in a variety of team roles and accept responsibility as a team member and team leader, assessing how well they support other members of the team (VCPSCSO041) |
Exploring the Purpose of Persuasive Texts Co-Constructing Persuasive Texts |
The sequence can be used to assess student achievement in relation to the following Achievement Standards from the Victorian Curriculum: English Level 8:
- Students understand how the selection of text structures is influenced by the selection of language mode and how this varies for different purposes and audiences.
- Students explain how language features, images and vocabulary are used to represent different ideas and issues in texts.
- Students interpret texts, questioning the reliability of sources of ideas and information.
- Students understand how a selection of language features can be used for particular purposes and effects.
- Students create and edit texts for specific effects, taking into account intended purposes and the needs and interests of audiences.
- Students explain the effectiveness of language choices they use to influence the audience.
- Students explain how language features, images and vocabulary are used to represent different ideas and issues in texts.
- Students create texts for different purposes selecting language to influence audience response.
Level 9
This sequence addresses content from the Victorian Curriculum in English, Critical and Creative Thinking and Personal and Social Capability. It is primarily designed for Level 8, but also addresses the following content descriptions from Level 9:
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Content description |
Stage |
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English: Reading and Viewing |
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Understand that authors innovate with text structures and language for specific purposes and effects (VCELA429) |
Exploring the Purpose of Persuasive Texts Text Analysis: Structures, Language Features and Nominalisation Co-Constructing Persuasive Texts |
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Explain how authors creatively use the structures of sentences and clauses for particular effects (VCELA433) |
Exploring the Purpose of Persuasive Texts Tools of Persuasion: Exploring Rhetorical Devices Text Analysis: Structures, Language Features and Nominalisation Co-Constructing Persuasive Texts |
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Use comprehension strategies to interpret and analyse texts, comparing and evaluating representations of an event, issue, situation or character in different texts (VCELY443) |
Exploring the Purpose of Persuasive Texts |
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English: Writing |
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Understand how certain abstract nouns can be used to summarise preceding or subsequent stretches of text (VCELA446) |
Text Analysis: Structures, Language Features and Nominalisation |
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Create imaginative, informative and persuasive texts that present a point of view and advance or illustrate arguments, including texts that integrate visual, print and/or audio features (VCELY449) |
Co-Constructing Persuasive Texts Independent Construction: Persuasive Texts |
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Review and edit students’ own and others’ texts to improve clarity and control over content, organisation, paragraphing, sentence structure, vocabulary and audio/visual features (VCELY450) |
Co-Constructing Persuasive Texts |
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English: Speaking and Listening |
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Listen to spoken texts constructed for different purposes and analyse how language features in these texts position listeners to respond in particular ways, and consider the interaction skills used to present and discuss ideas, or to influence and engage audiences through persuasive language, varied voice tone, pitch and pace (VCELY455) |
Tools of Persuasion: Exploring Rhetorical Devices Text Analysis: Structures, Language Features and Nominalisation |
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Critical and Creative Thinking |
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Examine a range of rhetorical devices and reasoning errors, including false dichotomies and begging the question (VCCCTR046) |
Tools of Persuasion: Exploring Rhetorical Devices Independent Construction: Persuasive Texts |
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Personal and Social Capability |
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Evaluate own and others contribution to group tasks, critiquing roles including leadership and provide useful feedback to peers, evaluate task achievement and make recommendations for improvements in relation to team goals (VCPSCSO050) |
Independent Construction: Persuasive Texts |
The sequence can be used to assess student achievement in relation to the following Achievement Standards from the Victorian Curriculum: English Level 9:
- Students analyse the ways that text structures can be manipulated for effect.
- Students select evidence from the text to analyse and explain how language choices and conventions are used to influence an audience.
- Students understand how to use a variety of language features to create different levels of meaning.
- Students edit for effect, selecting vocabulary and grammar that contribute to the precision and persuasiveness of texts.
- Students listen for ways texts position an audience.
Learning Progressions
The Literacy Learning Progressions support teachers to develop a comprehensive view of how literacy develops over time. You can use the Literacy Learning Progressions to:
- identify the literacy capability of your students
- plan targeted teaching strategies, especially for students achieving above or below the age-equivalent expected level in the Victorian Curriculum: English
- provide targeted feedback to students about their learning within and across the progressions.
The Literacy Learning Progressions have been mapped against the Victorian Curriculum F – 10: English. Teachers are advised to familiarise themselves with this map to understand how particular progression relate to the Reading and Viewing, Writing and Speaking and Listening modes and particular curriculum levels in English.