Teaching Secondary Students to Write Effectively

E X A M P L E   1.5.

Questions for understanding purpose

• 

What are the aspects of effective writing 

for this purpose?

• 

What are my goals for this writing 

assignment?

• 

Am I writing to inform or persuade?

 —If I’m writing to be informative, is the purpose 

to reflect, explain, summarize, or analyze?

—If I’m writing to be persuasive, through what 

channel am I to persuade my audience: an 

editorial, a speech, a blog, an essay, or some-

thing else?

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Recommendation 1 

(continued)

Finally, teach students to adapt their strategies 

depending on the audience and purpose. For 

example, when students use a planning strat-

egy to write a persuasive essay, they should 

keep in mind that the appropriate support-

ing evidence will depend upon the audience 

and thus, they should carry out the planning 

strategy differently based on the audience. 

For a writing assignment in a social studies 

class, the strongest supporting evidence may 

be quotes from historical figures and events, 

while the strongest supporting evidence for an 

assignment in a science class may be results 

and statistics from a science experiment 

(rather than, for example, quotes from a scien-

tist). Example 1.6 challenges students to use 

the same strategy to evaluate an informa¬tive 

essay and a persuasive essay. Example 1.7 

illustrates an assignment that challenges 

students to write two persuasive essays on the 

same topic for two different audiences.