Teaching adolescent ELs to write academic-style persuasive essays

Ramos, K. (2014). Teaching adolescent ELs to write academic-style persuasive essays. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 57(8), 655-665.


Teaching the craft of writing a persuasive essay to English Learners at the secondary level is demonstrated in this concise but detailed article. The approach used here takes the mystery out of how to write such essays by deconstructing the genre and looking at exactly how writers use specific kinds of words to formulate a persuasive essay. The article is focused on using the approach to help English Learners (ELs), but it could just as easily be used with any students who need to learn to write persuasively. In light of the outcomes found in the Common Core Standards for English Language Arts (CCSS-ELA) that includes most high school students in the United States, English Learners or not.

Ramos provides enough helpful resources for a teacher to get started using this approach, though it probably would also be wise to access some of the resources in the sidebar at the end of the article. The model used, Reading to Learn, is referenced there. This model does not seem unfamiliar, though; it resembles other models that are used for scaffolded explicit instruction. To me, it looks quite similar to Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey’s Gradual Release of Responsibility model, or even that old standby of the 1970’s and 1980’s, Madeline Hunter’s Seven Steps. The model here, like all of those, moves learners through a progression from very explicit input, to modeling with actual examples, to scaffolded group practice, to monitored individual practice.

What’s especially good about the approach here is that the learners are taught to recognize very specific word choices authors make, and to see those when they read examples of the genre. Doing that unlocks some of the mystery of writing in the persuasive genre. Authors are seen as having intentions, and crafting language in very specific and intentional ways. Here, we see learners doing detailed, “close” reading of persuasive texts, analyzing those texts by looking for, and color-coding, different kinds of words that are common to persuasion.

The list of craft devices used here is provided; it is called the “Language Resources Toolbox” (p. 660). Teachers will find the list helpful in two ways. First, it really helped me to think about what makes a text persuasive. The teacher must first understand this before trying to teach students to do it. I did have some understanding, but nothing as specific as what Ramos provides here, so my own knowledge was expanded. After reading this, I see things in persuasive pieces that I did not see before. The second way this helps, of course, is that it gives young learners something to scaffold their understanding of how writers use words intentionally. If it is something writers choose to do, then it probably is something that anyone can choose to do. One need not possess massive “talent” to write; it is a craft that can be learned and improved upon. That is empowering, especially for students like ELs or other struggling writers who may have felt that academic writing, though essential to college and career success, was a barrier or a mysterious door that would never open.

I’d like to see work like this done with other genres. Some writers like Donald Graves and Katie Wood Ray have done work on the writer’s craft in similar veins, but more could be done, especially with expository genres. Deconstructing what writers do not only can help with learning to write; it also provides good work in looking at the intentions of writers and how they convey them. That would be a way to learn to read more critically and knowingly, rather than just accepting texts at face value. With more and more texts becoming more and more available today, those are skills that empowered citizens will need.