Use an assortment of materials including one of Shakespeare's persuasive speeches (e.g. Mark Antony's speech beginning 'Friends, Romans...'), an article in a magazine that seems to entertain but which has a secondary persuasive purpose, Martin Luther King's 'I have a dream speech' and adverts for example.
Explain that we often communicate to persuade people. Some persuasive writing is very obvious e.g. the advertisement but sometimes persuasive writing can be more subtle. The primary purpose may be to entertain and the secondary purpose is to persuade.
Ask students to make a mind map or list the ways in which writers persuade their readers or listeners that their viewpoint is the right one. The information can be presented as a table if you wish so that students can then see that although the forms may be different that the techniques remain the same e.g. lists of three, rhetorical questions, involving the audience, quotations from authority figures, statistics, repetition, alliteration etc.
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