Teaching and Learning the Writing of Persuasive/Argumentative Discourse

School students' performance in persuasive/argumentative writing is not as good as their performance in narrative writing. Typical weaknesses are lack of support for reasons, poor organization, and immature language. Persuasive writing is thought to be difficult because it is more cognitively demanding than narrative writing. Persuasive/argumentative writing should, however, be included in the elementary curriculum, for a number of reasons: persuasion occurs early in spoken language, precursors of argument appear in the writing of very young children, even poor persuasive writing shows embryonic forms of argument, and children's social and educational experiences offer abundant opportunities for contextually relevant writing.