This Unit Activity will help you meet this educational goal:
21st Century Skills—You will use critical-thinking skills and effectively communicate your ideas.
Introduction
Persuasive messages can greatly influence an audience. TV commercials are particularly persuasive: they combine both visual and oral techniques to persuade an audience. There are many means of persuasion. You can use both verbal and nonverbal communication to persuade or convince a person. The message or meaning of an image can vary based on perspective. The decision to show one thing and withhold something else is a powerful way to use imagery to persuade an audience. How an image is presented—be it using captions or cropping the image to accentuate a certain part—has the ability to focus audience attention on one aspect while detracting attention from undesirable areas.
We are bombarded daily with persuasive messages—from food boxes to junk mail. They combine both visual and oral techniques to persuade an audience. Stop and think about the effects that the messages have on you, your friends, and your family.
By understanding the elements involved in effective persuasive speech, you will improve your overall confidence in communicating. When presenting information to a live audience, how you say something and how you physically present yourself are equally as important as what you say.
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Directions and Analysis
Task 1: Choose Persuasive Imagery
In the lesson activity for “Identifying a Writer’s Purpose,” you wrote a persuasive message to convince an audience to use a product. Now develop a detailed list of the persuasive elements that you created in your message to persuade your audience to your point of view. Review your list and determine what imagery will enhance each persuasive element. Choose a product (or service) and a target audience, and then create either