Persuasive Writing

Sample Essays & Questions

For CSEC and in your internal exams, you are required to write a persuasive essay. In CSEC, this essay is
written in the final section of the exam, Section D, while for internal exams, this essay is written as a pre-
exam worth 30% of your English Language grade. The topic of this essay can come from any field of study but
will only require simple critical thinking and some general knowledge of your surroundings.

TIPS:

✔ Keep your tone convincing without being dogmatic, belligerent, bigoted, over-emotional or overly

animated. Persuasion need not be aggressive; one should persuade with firmness and conviction but
also with grace and tact.

✔ Quickly create a simple outline for your essay before you start writing. I know many may think it is a

waste of time, but it is not. It guides your thought process, helps you to test out your ideas and saves
time in the end. It does not have to be in perfect complete sentences; it is for your personal use.

✔ For a persuasive essay, you are allowed to choose whether you will argue for or against the given

topic. Ensure that your outline includes both points for and against the topic. This will give you an
opportunity to analyse concretely which angle, whether for or against, is the best angle from which to
approach the topic. You can clearly see which side of the argument has more points, the stronger
points, the clearer points and the best supporting evidence.

✔ Writing an outline is useful for another reason. Every good persuasive essay requires an effective

counter-argument, which is an opportunity to acknowledge the opposing argument in an effort to

strengthen your own argument and also to show good sportsmanship and fair sound judgment. After
you have created your outline and decided whether you will argue for or against the topic, you can use
one or two of the points on the other side of the argument to formulate a solid counter-argument.

✔ Be sure to include at least one persuasive device per paragraph. Persuasive devices include, but are

not limited to: statistics, facts, figures, popular sayings, quotes, expert voices, hyperbole, irony,
paradox, contrast, current events, similes, repetition, emotional appeal, metaphors, hypothetical
situations, anecdotes, real-life examples, rhetorical questions and logical reasoning. Try not to use the
same devices for every single paragraph. Avoid inventing ridiculous situations or statistics to use as
supporting evidence.

✔ Don’t spend more than 40 minutes on your essay. Do not spend more than 8 minutes on any one

body paragraph. An outline will help you with this. Spend 6 to 8 minutes on your outline. If you think
your essay through thoroughly before you start writing and you have a clear outline of what you want
to write then you will not need to keep stopping to think about what you want to say during your
essay. WRITE QUICKLY. DO NOT STOP WRITING.

✔ You will be assigned a word limit between 300 and 400 words. Try to work with these confines but do

not let them hold you back too much. You do not get penalised heavily for exceeding the maximum
limit. Focus more on the time limit than on the word limit. Time management is key, especially for
CSEC.

****************************************
SAMPLE QUESTION:

Speaker A: Children should learn, from an early age, to be strictly obedient to their parents.

Speaker B: The greatest revolutionaries in history were not obedient people.

Write an essay expressing your views on these opposing statements.

Sample Plan/Outline:

FOR strict obedience AGAINST strict obedience

Obedience necessary to keep children safe. Blind obedience without thinking ability
is not encouraged. A good parent would
want children who can think for
themselves.

Obedience necessary for the proper Because everyone is sheepish and

running of a society. Freedom must have obedient, nothing ever changes.
limits. The world doesn’t revolve around
any one person.

The people who followed these Many laws and governing principles are
revolutionaries were obedient to them. unfair. Who gives certain people the
right to control others?

Obedience can be useful and necessary for Very often, people will disobey and rebel
unity and the preservation of life. whether you encourage it or not, so
instead of fighting it, try curbing it.

SAMPLE ESSAY (FOR STRICT OBEDIENCE):

What if Mark Zuckerberg had sheepishly gone to school and pursued the life his parents had set out
for him? What if Sam Sharpe had accepted the enslaved conditions of Africans in Jamaica? What if he didn’t
fight? What if Rosa Parks had just gone to the back of the bus as she was told or if Marcus Garvey and
Nelson Mandela had just accepted the oppression of Black people without a fight? Certainly, blind obedience
never did a great revolutionary make. However, while thoughtful disobedience to societal standards has
yielded some powerful transformative results, these cases have been the exception, not the rule. As a
general guiding principle, obedience is necessary for the proper functioning of a family and a society
and it is especially necessary to keep children safe and balanced.
It cannot be denied that sound judgement and independent thinking are good qualities in a productive
human being. Good parents strive to raise children who think for themselves instead of just following after
the crowd and always doing what others tell them. However, those same parents often become livid when
these same children disagree with something they say or disobey them. Why is that? The truth is,
realistically, children do not know everything and often they are misguided because of their lack of experience.
While it is often put forth that children can change the world, realistically, most children will not. All of the
“disobedient” revolutionaries mentioned so far in this essay have been adults. When they made a change, they
were old enough to understand exactly what they were doing and they disobeyed with a clear cause. Children
however, especially teenagers, often rebel simply as a means of forging their own identity and exercising their
independence, not for any greater good. Furthermore, it is not known that these revolutionaries were
generally disobedient people. They likely paid their taxes, listened to their parents’ instructions and did well
in school. However, they saw one area in life that was so unjust, a case in which they simply could not
sheepishly obey the powers that be. They had to fight. Moreover, these revolutionary leaders had loyal
followers and those followers had to be obedient to them in order for them to have any success. Imagine if
after Samuel Sharpe clearly laid out the plan for how the enslaved Africans were going to proceed with the
Christmas rebellion, some of them chose to disobey his instructions. They would have likely lost their lives
without cause and they could have ruined the whole plan altogether, leading to utter failure instead of the
success that it was. Thus, while children should be encouraged to be open-minded and to think
critically, a general spirit of disobedience is not something that should be nurtured in children as it
will lead to failure for these children and for society as a whole.
Obedience is necessary for the safety of children. Moreover, children need to learn to obey the first
time they are spoken to. Many Jamaican parents are known to threaten children with the following common
phrase, “Don’t make me have to talk to you more than one time! Watch me and you!” Why is it so necessary
for children to learn to obey and to do so promptly? Imagine a little boy, Johnny, is told by his mother not to
push his finger into the electrical socket. After she warns him the first time, she finds him near the socket
again. She warns him more sternly the second time and he continues to play around with the socket. By the
third time, he receives a stunning electric shock but he never puts his finger near the socket again. Though
Johnny finally learns to obey, would it not have saved him and his family a lot of pain if he had just obeyed the
first time? Many say experience is the best teacher but it is a hard and cruel teacher and it can lead to
detrimental consequences that could have been avoided if one had just heeded the words of those older and
wiser. Though Johnny’s example may seem like a simple one, many young people, especially teenagers and
young adults have lost their lives or caused damage to property, to themselves and to others because of
disobedience to older, more experienced figures in their lives.
Many teenagers argue that many rules are pointless and maybe this is true. However, sometimes rules
have value but simply because the child, in their limited understanding, cannot see the value of the rule, it does
not mean that the rule is baseless. Children, especially teenagers and young adults wish to be free from
“senseless” rules and restrictions. However, with freedom comes responsibility. As contradictory as it may
seem, true freedom must have limits. For example, think of a stoplight. What if everyone decided not to obey
red lights and simply drove out into the road whenever they felt like. Could we truly be free? No, we would
not. We would be enslaved by anxiety and disorder, never knowing when we would be the victim of a fatal
accident. Thus, the limitation of the stop light and the general understanding that everyone will obey the same
lights renders us all truly free to enjoy the open road without fear. Thus, obedience to rules, even those that
seem pointless teaches children humility. It teaches them that the world does not revolve around them, their
ideas or any one person and we all have to live by many of the same standards so as to coexist peacefully. Not
every little thing needs to be questioned as this only leads to discontentment and strife since people are so
diverse that everyone will never fully agree on everything. Adults are not perfect and neither are the rules
they make. However, there is wisdom that comes with age and this should be respected. The bottom line is
this: obedience is necessary for the proper running of the society.
In conclusion, critical thinking is important but obedience is more important. While critical thinking is
to be encouraged, especially among young people, obedience is necessary for the protection of our children
and those with whom they interact and it is necessary for the orderly functioning of a society.

****************************************

SAMPLE ESSAY (AGAINST STRICT OBEDIENCE):

What if Mark Zuckerberg had sheepishly gone to school and pursued the life his parents had set out
for him? What if Sam Sharpe had accepted the enslaved conditions of Africans in Jamaica? What if he didn’t
fight? What if Rosa Parks had just gone to the back of the bus as she was told or if Marcus Garvey and
Nelson Mandela had just accepted the oppression of Black people without a fight? Clearly, strict obedience is
not the path to progress. To some extent, it is true that some amount of obedience is necessary for unity
and good order but in our society plagued by wicked problems, nothing will change if everyone is
blindly obedient. A good parent should want to raise children who think for themselves and who will
thus effect meaningful change in society; besides, very often, people will disobey and rebel whether
you encourage it or not, so instead of fighting it, we should try curbing it.

Babies, young children and even some teenagers need strict vigilance. They need rules to obey. This
gives them guidance and structure as they are not fully developed in their thinking. However, beyond a
certain age, it is a parent’s responsibility to realize that their job is not to create robots but to create critical
thinkers who will change the future. If children are the future, then the future rests squarely in the hands of
parents. As ironic as it may sound, while it is a parent’s job to teach children obedience in their early years, it
is equally their job to teach them how to “disobey” responsibly in their later years. Parents should not be upset
just because their child does not agree with every single rule or request they make or with all the principles
that they themselves stand by. A child who questions things will grow up to be an adult who does not
follow after the crowd, who is resolute in his or her beliefs and who truly makes a difference in the
world. A parent’s pride in this face of disobedience is a small sacrifice to make. After all, if a child obeys their
parents without question, will he not just as easily be swayed to obey someone else who presents a different
idea to him? Think of Adam and Eve. They obeyed their Father, Jehovah, seemingly without thought.
However, as soon as Satan approached them with a new way of doing things, they quickly turned to
disobedience. They were not firm in their convictions. Thus, mindless obedience is of no benefit.

Do we really want our children to obey us just because we say so? The truth is that if people exercise
strict obedience without knowing why they are obeying, it will always have repercussions. Think of North
Korea. Under the regime of Kim Jong-un, the government mandates society’s dress, hairstyles and other
personal choices. However, a recent video published by Business Insider showed how the underground make-
up smuggling industry is thriving among young women in North Korea although make-up has been a
contraband item in North Korea for so long that they do not even have a word for it in the North Korean
language. Thus, strict mindless obedience is not real obedience. It is always a façade and people will always
see through unfair and overly restrictive laws and find ways of rebelling. Thus, instead of strict obedience, we
ought to encourage children and adults to obey mindfully. After all, in the truest sense, there is no such thing
as absolute disobedience. Disobedience to one person or standard equates to obedience of another person or
standard. For example, if a child’s parents tell her not to stay out past ten and her friends say she should stay
out until eleven, she might feel a rush of “freedom” from disobeying her parents but by disobeying her parents,
she is obeying her friends. Thus, everybody must be obedient to something, so let us train our children
to be obedient for the right causes with deep-seated reasons, not just following directions like sheep.

In a world plagued with such wicked problems, we need a little revolution in our lives. Humans
have made great strides, for example, in eradicating racism which used to be a global problem. However,
racism is far from dismantled. It is just a lot more entrenched now and hidden under a lot of “political
correctness.” Many people and institutions are now more racist than ever. However, people are a lot more
complacent now than in past decades. Hardly anybody has that “fire” in their spirit the way the great freedom
fighters of past times did. We are slavishly obedient to societal norms. We are obedient to our electronic
devices and the mundane affairs of our lives, so much so that we do not even take time to think and recognize
the deep-seated issues that affect us, racism being only one of the many. No one wants to “rock the boat” but
nothing will change if we keep silent and stay slavish. Someone must disobey.

Certainly, this is not a call for complete anarchy. However, in the world in which we live, some level of
controlled disobedience is necessary and parents should encourage their children to argue and to question
things, even their own rules and values. If not, things will always stay the same and our wicked problems will
persist. Furthermore, if a child or anyone else obeys without question, then that is not true obedience, as it is
not rooted in the heart and very soon, it will crumble. Controlled disobedience has been the trademark of
many revolutionaries. It is what has taken us this far as a human race. After all, if humans had strictly obeyed
the laws of gravity, how would we ever have known that we could fly?

****************************************

SAMPLE QUESTIONS FOR PRACTICE:

1. “Vegetarianism is the only way to be truly healthy and to live a long life.”
Write an essay expressing your views on the statement above.

2. “Super models and body builders in the public eye promote unrealistic body expectations for young
people and do more harm than good.”
Write an essay expressing your views on the statement above.

3. Some stakeholders at your younger sibling’s pre-school are on a campaign insisting that homework is
pointless and onerous for children under seven years old and should be abolished. Write a speech
which you will present to the school community, stating whether you agree or disagree with this
stance.

4. One school in your community has begun to offer condoms and birth control to its student population
to encourage safe sex. Many in the community are outraged as they believe that schools should
promote sexual abstinence instead. Write a letter to the editor in which you express your views on the
issue.
5. Speaker A: Single-sex schools are problematic because they do not properly train students for the real
world of interaction between males and females.

Speaker B: Co-educational learning environments create distractions for students, especially boys and
do not allow children to receive specialized education according to differences in gender.

Write an essay in which you advocate for either single-sex or co-educational schooling.

6. Speaker A: Let’s spend our money on campaigns to ban foods with high sugar, fat, salt and cholesterol
content for a healthy society.

Speaker B: I see your point, but shouldn’t we spend money to do research into better and cheaper
medications to help those who are already suffering from chronic non-communicable diseases.

Write an essay agreeing with either Speaker A or Speaker B.

7. Starting school and work at later times would benefit the entire society greatly.”
Write an essay expressing your views on the statement above.

8. “Skills pay the bills.” Schools should focus on creating a more skilled population instead of placing so
much emphasis on academics.

Write a speech expressing to your school board the extent to which you agree or disagree with
this stance.

****************************************