Selective School Exam Tips and Tricks - PERSUASIVE WRITING!

Summary

In the video by EdAccelerator, key strategies for mastering persuasive writing for selective school exams are discussed. The video offers insights into what persuasive writing entails, providing a recommended structure that includes an introduction, argument paragraphs, a rebuttal, and a conclusion. The tutor emphasizes the importance of having a clear structure and strong arguments, as these elements are crucial for achieving high scores. Practical tips are shared on planning and executing persuasive essays effectively within the exam time limit, alongside the importance of obtaining feedback to steadily improve writing skills.

Highlights

• Persuasive writing can be quickly improved with specific techniques. 🎯
• Using a structured approach can lead to consistent high scores. 💯
• Introduction should succinctly present the topic, stance, and arguments. 📝
• Argument paragraphs should follow the 'TEAL' method: Topic, Explanation, Evidence, Link. 🔗
• A good rebuttal shows awareness of counterarguments and effectively dismisses them. ❌
• Inclusion of a conclusion is compulsory to complete the essay. ✔️
• Planning is key: spend time developing strong arguments beforehand. 🕰
• Constant feedback and practice are essential components of writing success. 📘

Key Takeaways

• Understanding persuasive writing is crucial for selective exams. 📝
• A clear structure enhances essay quality — use introductions, argument paragraphs, counterarguments, and conclusions. 🚀
• Spend ample time planning to ensure strong, persuasive arguments. 🕒
• Seek feedback to continuously improve your writing skills. 🔄
• Practice consistently to become confident and proficient in persuasive writing. ✍️

Overview

Persuasive writing is an essential skill for students aiming to excel in selective school exams like those for Melbourne High or Mac.Robertson Girls' High School. The video outlines how mastering this skill can significantly impact one's exam scores, due to the consistent and rapid improvement seen in students who follow a structured approach. With a focus on persuasive communication, students are taught to clearly establish their stance and support it with compelling arguments.

In this educational session, a structured formula for persuasive essays is provided, comprising an introduction, multiple argument paragraphs, a rebuttal, and a conclusion. The focus is placed on crafting strong paragraphs using the TEAL method: Topic sentence, Explanation, supporting Evidence, and Linking back to your stance. Additionally, understanding the difference between persuasive and discussion prompts is crucial for the exam.

To truly excel, the importance of planning cannot be overstated, enabling students to brainstorm and select the strongest possible arguments. The video encourages consistent writing practice—suggesting at least one essay per week—and emphasizes the value of feedback to make informed improvements. These steps are pivotal in achieving high proficiency and confidence in persuasive writing, with a clear path laid out for ongoing development.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Exam Overview and Importance of Persuasive Writing The chapter emphasizes the importance of persuasive essay writing for students aspiring to enter selective high schools such as McRob, NOSL, Melbourne High, or Susan Corey. Persuasive essay writing is a recurring component of their entry exams. The chapter aims to boost students' confidence in persuasive writing by explaining what it entails and providing strategies to improve these skills. It offers a guide on becoming proficient in persuasive essay writing with actionable steps that students can implement immediately after reading.
• 00:30 - 03:50: Understanding Persuasive Writing In the chapter titled 'Understanding Persuasive Writing', persuasive writing is identified as a formal essay writing activity aimed at convincing the reader through a well-structured argument. The text highlights how it is one of the sections where students can experience significant and rapid improvement in their scores on exams. This is largely due to the clear strategies and key elements that, when effectively executed, are almost guaranteed to boost scores. Understanding and mastering these fundamental aspects of persuasive writing is integral to success in this area.
• 03:50 - 10:00: Structure of a Persuasive Essay The chapter discusses the structure and purpose of a persuasive essay. It emphasizes the importance of convincing the reader of a particular stance, using the example of debating whether the Olympics are a waste of time. The critical steps include identifying one's belief, choosing a side, and persuasively arguing to convince the reader. The chapter underscores the essence of persuasive writing as a means to persuade the audience by presenting strong and clear arguments.
• 10:00 - 15:30: Planning and Writing Tips The chapter titled 'Planning and Writing Tips' discusses the difference between persuasive and discussion writing. It highlights that in persuasive writing, the writer has a stance and the goal is to convince the audience of that stance. On the other hand, discussion writing involves looking at both sides of an argument equally, without taking a specific stance. The focus of this chapter, however, is on persuasive writing and understanding that different types of prompts can arise.
• 15:30 - 20:00: Improving Argument Strength and Explanation The chapter emphasizes the importance of persuasion in arguments and explanations, particularly in achieving high scores in writing sections of exams. It notes that success in these sections comes from a structured approach rather than random attempts. High-scoring students consistently organize their writing and time, aiming for structured and persuasive arguments.
• 20:00 - 22:30: Sample Essay and Writing Improvement Tips This chapter focuses on developing a clear structure for writing, emphasizing consistency in producing high-quality responses. It presents a recommended five-paragraph structure for persuasive writing prompts, where each paragraph serves a distinct purpose. The first paragraph aims to introduce the reader to the topic.
• 22:30 - 29:00: Feedback and Practice Recommendations The chapter titled 'Feedback and Practice Recommendations' explores the structure of writing an essay, using the topic of whether the Olympics are a waste of time as an example. It emphasizes the importance of introducing the topic, expressing personal opinion, and providing supporting arguments in the essay's introduction. The chapter suggests that the introduction should be concise, ideally comprising three sentences, with one or two sentences dedicated to each component: topic introduction, opinion expression, and argument presentation.

Selective School Exam Tips and Tricks - PERSUASIVE WRITING! Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 essay writing is something that's on the selective entry exam year after year and so if you want to get accepted into mcrob nosel melbour high or Susan Corey persuasive essay writing in particular is something you want to become really confident with so in this video what we're going to do is we're going to run through a few key things I'm going to run through what is persuasive essay writing how do you become really good at it and set you off with a few key things you can do immediately after this video if you want to improve your persuasive writing skills cu the key thing is persuasive writing is actually something
• 00:30 - 01:00 you can improve at very very quickly I'd probably say it's the one section on the exam where students I work with generally see the fastest and most consistent Improvement because there's key things which if you do them it's inevitable that your scores are going to increase and so to get started with a really high level overview of this section what is persuasive writing now persuasive writing is where you're writing an essay so it's a more formal piece of writing and really it's all about persuasion it's about where you take a stance and you have to try and
• 01:00 - 01:30 convince the reader of your position so for example the type of question we might see for a persuasive prompt would be something like WR a persuasive piece arguing whether or not the Olympics are a waste of time and so you need to do a few key things here you need to identify what do you believe do you believe the Olympics are a waste of time or do you believe they're actually a worthwhile use of money and then you have to convince the reader of your stance so persuasive writing is all about convincing now on the selective exam
• 01:30 - 02:00 sometimes rather than persuasive writing they do have what's called discussion prompts discussion writing which is a bit different to persuasive writing and that persuasive writing it's all about you have a stance you convince us of your stance whereas discussion it's all about you don't have an opinion you just discuss both sides equally and so we'll focus on persuasive writing today but it's important to know that there is different types of prompts that can come up generally it's either persuasive or discussion and today we'll focus on persuasive which is all about
• 02:00 - 02:30 really about persuading people the more persuasive you can be the more persuasive your arguments are and the way you explain them the higher chance you'll be able to get a really high score in this section now the key thing with all writing sections on this exam is that students who do well they don't walk in there and just do something random every single time if you walk in and you structure your writing randomly you structure your time randomly it's going to be very hard to consistently get eights nines and tens out of tens for this section where if you have a
• 02:30 - 03:00 clear structure both for how you use your time but also how you structure your piece that's how you can just write really strong pieces every single time doesn't matter what the prompt is you can get really consistent with writing high quality responses now this here is a structure that we recommend for persuasive writing prompts it's got five paragraphs each paragraph has a very specific purpose so the first paragraph is an introduction now really the purpose of the introduction is to do a few key things the first thing is is just to introduce the reader to the
• 03:00 - 03:30 topic so imagine that you're writing an essay on the Olympics are a waste of time first thing is you need to introduce the reader to your topic second thing you need to introduce them to your opinion what do you believe about the topic and then finally you need to introduce them to your arguments why do you have that opinion what are two key arguments that back up your opinion that's really the purpose of an introduction you notice it says three sentences there and that's because you want to have one or two sentences on each one of those areas generally one
• 03:30 - 04:00 sentence on topic sentence which is explaining the topic one sentence on your stance or your opinion stance just means opinion and then one or two sentences on your arguments sometimes it might be two sometimes you might condense them into one the introduction is generally three or four sentences and it's about introducing those three key things the topic your opinion and your arguments you then have two argument paragraphs and the key thing with these argument paragraphs is again you want them to follow very specific structure
• 04:00 - 04:30 and that's teal so you want a topic sentence you want some explanation you want some evidence and you want some linking if you use teal for these paragraphs it's going to be pretty strong recently I looked at a few students paragraphs and they're saying how do I improve my paragraphs and only had two or three sentences and they weren't following teal and the reality is that a lot of marks are in these paragraphs here because this is where you do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of persuasion you've got your two arguments and you really explain why they are leading to you have the opinion
• 04:30 - 05:00 and the stance that you have and so I would put a lot of emphasis and a lot of time on learning how to write these argument paragraphs really well because that is where a lot of the marks do come from now the fourth paragraph is then a rebuttal it's only two sentences but it is very important for the reason that the examiners they don't want students who can only see one side who only think the Olympics are totally a waste of money everyone else who has the other opinion has no sense at all they don't really want people with that sort of
• 05:00 - 05:30 mindset they want people who can see both sides and so even in the persuasive style of writing the rebuttle is really important what the rebuttal does is it brings up a strong counterargument to your opinion so let's say my opinion is that the Olympics are a waste of money we need to bring up a strong counterargument to that opinion which is the Olympics are not a waste of money because they actually bring in a lot of Tourism and they bring in a lot of Tourism and those tourists spend money on hotels on accommodation on food on
• 05:30 - 06:00 experiences they spend money in the country which actually means that the Olympics is not a waste of money it's a positive use of taxpayers money that's a strong counter argument but what we want to do in the rebuttal is we want to bring up the counter argument but we want to squash it we want to rebut it that's why it's called a rebuttal you bring up a counter argument to your opinion but then you rebut it you prove why it's wrong and so the way the rebuttal works is you have two sentences one which brings up a counter argument
• 06:00 - 06:30 for example the Olympics are not a waste of time because it brings in more tourists to the city who spend money on hotels food and experiences bringing in more foreign income to the local area but then you want to prove why it's wrong and you'll say yes this is true however the Olympics are still extremely costly and that expense could have been better spent on improving education and healthare systems within the city for example and so the rebuttal you want to bring up a strong counterargument and then but it so prove why it's wrong
• 06:30 - 07:00 final thing is a conclusion now the conclusion you're not going to get many marks for this but you will lose marks if you don't have it because then it's not full essay it's missing the conclusion and so key thing with the conclusion you just want to make a one sentence don't introduce anything new just summarize your opinion your stance and your two arguments very quickly so no new information one sentence keep it concise keep it simple recap your stance recap your arguments and then you're done now this is a structure that you can use no matter what the prompt is
• 07:00 - 07:30 doesn't matter what typee of persuasive prompt it is you'll always have an introduction you'll always have a few argument paragraphs you'll always have a rebuttal and you'll also always have a conclusion the question a lot of people often ask is well how much should you write now this is kind of my recommendations here so roughly three sentences for the introduction it's probably realistically three to four sentences for these argument paragraphs it's probably realistically 3 to 4 to six is is the range rebut is generally just two but
• 07:30 - 08:00 maybe 2 to three and then conclusion 1 to two at the most what that normally leads to is it leads to about 250 to 350 Words which is maybe about one and a half pages up to two at the most is generally where most students sit and that's fine so you really don't want to focus on churning out page after page after page you just want to follow the structure make sure every paragraph has what it needs to be complete to be persuasive in its own regard and then that's going to be enough to get you off high school now that's the structure
• 08:00 - 08:30 that we recommend for how you actually structure a persuasive piece and that's something you can just learn so if you practice in isolation for a few days mastering the introduction then the argument paragraphs then the rebuttal then the conclusion structure is something you can actually learn very very quickly because this is a structure you either do it or you don't if you follow the structure you'll get ticks for structure if you don't well then it's just not going to be structured very well so this is something there's no really excuses not for structuring your piece well if you're willing spend the time learning it you'll be able to
• 08:30 - 09:00 structure it perfectly fine in terms of how you spend your time it's very similar to creative writing now what we recommend is break your time up into three parts overall the writing section of the exam you've got 40 minutes to write two pieces one of them is generally more creative in nature it's normally a story the other one is normally more formal in nature it's normally an essay it's normally a persuasive essay sometimes it's a discussion essay it could technically be anything but it's normally one of those two key things and what we recommend
• 09:00 - 09:30 then is in the 20 minutes that you have for this piece spend about 15 minutes at the start planning now planning is important for any form of writing but particularly for this style of writing it's even more important than ever before because if you think about it if you look at all these paragraphs here what is the common thing that's in almost every single paragraph it's in the introduction it's in the argument paragraphs it's in the rebuttal and it's in the conclusion there's one thing that's in every single paragraph and
• 09:30 - 10:00 that is your arguments your arguments are everywhere we introduce them in the introduction we go in depth in them in the argument paragraphs we bring up a counter argument and then rebut it in the fourth paragraph then in the conclusion we recap them and so it kind of makes it seem obvious that if your arguments are not very strong given that they're everywhere is that going to dramatically decrease your score yes it will you will not be able to get a high score if your arguments are not very good at all whereas if your arguments are really strong they're really compelling they're really persuasive
• 10:00 - 10:30 ultimately if it's a persuasive piece if you have persuasive arguments your writing is more likely to be persuasive and so that really is the purpose of the planning phase this is a time where you can take a step back and think how can I come up with two very strong arguments that support my opinion now generally the best way of doing this is not just thinking of two it's thinking of about 10 it's coming up with as many as you possibly can think of in your mind and then coling that list down to your two
• 10:30 - 11:00 Strongest Ones cuz what you'll notice is in that list of 10 there'll probably be three or four that are not particularly good there'll maybe be two or three which are which are decent but they have problems with them maybe they're not quite clear enough you don't really know how you would ride on them you don't know how you would explain them there's some sort of thing which you think's going to make it hard there's probably two that are both really strong but also you'll be confident riding on because often this is one thing you need to consider when you're choosing your arguments you need to think how confident am I explaining this because
• 11:00 - 11:30 there will be some arguments where it's a strong argument but if you have to explain it it's just going to be very difficult I often find arguments where I think W that's a strong argument I have no clue how I'm going to explain that I wouldn't be able to do a very good job so I'm going to choose a different one maybe it's not quite as strong but I'm going to be able to explain it perfectly so that's a key thing there another key thing is a lot of people think I'm not going to choose obvious arguments I'm not going to choose obvious arguments and I'm going to choose some random argument the truth is over the last year I've seen hundreds and hundreds and
• 11:30 - 12:00 hundreds of students arguments most people's arguments are not very strong at all and so the key thing is just choose arguments that are simple and that are strong so simple that if you told someone in year two they would easily understand them and if you do that then you're going to be ahead of 99% of people because most people cannot choose strong arguments so that's the priority priority is to choose the simplest strongest arguments you possibly can and that really is the focus in the planning time in the writing time this is where you should
• 12:00 - 12:30 have your two arguments you should know what your stance is so what you believe and then you just write according to the structure that we spoke about at the start of this lesson so you write an introduction few argument paragraphs rebuttle conclusion once you've written 10 20 30 of these pieces you'll become very confident with the structure and it really just comes down to coming up with strong arguments figuring out how you're going to explain them and then the writing phase is just executing on that normally we recommend about 15 16 minutes for writing time so you have about three minutes for planning 15 16
• 12:30 - 13:00 minutes for writing that gives you a couple of minutes left at the end for editing key things you want to look look for in the editing time is reading your sentences out aloud in your head and looking for sentences where it doesn't flow too well where you read it out Al loud and you think o that's a really long sentence it's missing punctuation that's probably the number one thing I see super long sentences and it's missing punctuation you've got two choices very often you just want to split it into two sentences sometimes you can add in a bit of punct ation and it can make it better probably when I
• 13:00 - 13:30 first start seeing people's writing 99% of people will suffer from that the other thing is you want to fix up spelling grammar punctuation errors because they do take away from your score you don't really want to lose a Mark or two just because you spelled some words wrong so that's something you do want to fix up in this time as well and it's also a good time just to check for structure how's the piece structured is there any small tweaks you can make to the structure there now as we mentioned because coming up with strong arguments really is the key thing I'm going to show you the progression of how
• 13:30 - 14:00 you can improve your writing over time because we've kind of touched on a few things we've touched on how coming out with arguments is important and also how structure is important and this is generally the way people will go about improving so the first thing is you just want to make sure that you can structure your writing coherently and clearly according to the structure that we spoke about if you can perfect structure then you've you've written a proper essay you've got an introduction you've got some body paragraphs you've got to rebuttle you've got a inclusion the basics are there for a high schore and
• 14:00 - 14:30 if you just do that even if the writing's not too good even if the arguments are not too good even if you don't explain them that well you're probably still going to get a 5 out of 10 or so maybe even slightly higher because you got the basics there it's a basic essay it could be improved but the basics are mastered next thing up you want to eliminate punctuation spelling grammar errors simplest way to eliminate these errors is just write sentences that you're confident that you know how to punctuate correctly choose words that you know how to spell correctly and
• 14:30 - 15:00 don't use grammar that you don't know how to use that's really the simplest thing it's it's basic but for example I just said to myself I'm not going to use words if I don't definitely know the spelling I'm not going to use some Advanced word that I think I know the meaning but I'm not quite sure or I think I know how to spell but I'm not quite sure just pick words that you know how to spell another thing that often goes wrong here is you might have seen some Advanced word somewhere in someone else's piece and you try and put it in your own but then because you don't quite understand the meaning of it well enough it just sticks out like a sore thumb very often when students try start
• 15:00 - 15:30 trying to use more advanced vocab they just stick these big words in the middle of sentences that doesn't really make sense and then it's just very obvious what you're doing so really you're much better off just using simple words that you know how to use that always make sense when they're used than trying to use some Advanced word you don't need Advanced words to get a high score third thing then is argument strength this is something that a lot of people find more difficult which is coming up with strong arguments ultimately it's persuasive writing your AR need to be persuasive if
• 15:30 - 16:00 you want to get sevens eights n t out of T probably the best way to improve this is just by chatting with your parents or a friend and debating topics all the time there's as long as you have a little bit of time before the exam if you do that every single night between now and the exam your argument your argument um creation ability is going to become significantly better and that's one thing I would do to improve here argument explanation is how you explain the arguments now for a lot of people they find this part here quite hard argument explanation you've kind of got
• 16:00 - 16:30 two different Pathways you can go one pathway is evidence so if you have access to evidence sometimes they'll Supply you evidence they'll Supply you newspaper articles or extracts with evidence you can draw on to use to back up your arguments then that's the easiest way because that's pretty easy to do if you have an argument and there's evidence for it well then that's easy if you don't have that then you want to essentially not make up stats because if you think about it do they want people who make up stats no is it easy to spot people who make up stats at
• 16:30 - 17:00 normally is because it's kind of obvious that most of us wouldn't have stats on hand about how the Olympics are a waste of money and so I wouldn't really recommend doing that it's also not that sophisticated or Advanced it's kind of a more of a dumb way of explaining your argument in terms of the better way of explaining it is through logic so just like how I did with are the Olympics a waste of money I don't have any stats to say that tourists bring in lots of money but I said look if there's a lot of tourists coming into the city it's inevitable they're going to spend money on hotels food experience while they're there and this income that
• 17:00 - 17:30 they bring in and they spend on these things is going to flow through to local businesses to local people in the community which is going to have a positive impact on the economy I had no starts there I had no stats at all but I just use logic to explain my way through it and so that's a more advanced and a significantly more sophisticated way of explaining your arguments and that's what you want to work towards language and expression wouldn't really worry about this at this point unless you're already getting incredibly high scores which most people probably need to focusing on these two the language and
• 17:30 - 18:00 expression is just making about your writing sound even better reading it out aloud thinking how can I make this sentence be a joy to read how can I Infuse and add more difficult words into this piece whilst making sure I actually understand the meaning of it I wouldn't worry about this until you've mastered all this other stuff because most people don't get to this stage and you don't even need to do this to get in realistically to get a really high score here so just before we wrap up today's session let's have a look at a sample essay now this one it's not perfect but it does follow the structure pretty
• 18:00 - 18:30 well and it is still a good piece of writing so the prompt was the world should transition to renewable energy sources like solar and wind do you agree now as we spoke about at the start of the lesson an introduction should do three things it should introduce the topic should introduce your opinion and it should introduce your two arguments this introduction does it perfectly first sentence introduces the topic second sentence introduces their opinion and then final two sentence introduces
• 18:30 - 19:00 their arguments and so i' say overall it's pretty strong it does all three of those things pretty well now the two body paragraphs how well do they follow teal teal meaning we should have a topic sentence which explains your argument that's the topic of these paragraphs we should have some explanation and evidence and then we should link back to our overall opinion the L there the linking is the number one thing people forget they spend the whole power arguing their point and then let's move
• 19:00 - 19:30 on to the next point when you spend all this time arguing your point you want to say that's why my opinion is true this reason means that my overall stance is correct if you don't do that then you've done all this arguing for no benefit really so if you look at this paragraph here renewable energy sources like solar and wind play a pivotal role in reducing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions pretty good topic sentence I'd say it explains the argument pretty well by harnessing these clean energy sources we can significantly slow down or even potentially reverse the devastating
• 19:30 - 20:00 effects of climate change that's a good explanation let's have a look at their evidence for instance solar farms and wind turbines generate energy without releasing harmful pollutants into the atmosphere unlike fossil fuels that's good this cleaner energy production is essential for a sustainable future pretty good so I think it could have maybe linked back to the prompt a tiny bit more but it did it pretty well it did it pretty well so I'd say overall this is a pretty good paragraph same thing at this one here it's got a good topic sentence it's got a good explanation it's got a little bit of evidence I do think it's
• 20:00 - 20:30 maybe this one here is maybe missing a link we could link back a little bit more to the prompt which we want to really show The Examiner we know what the prompt is we're not just writing some random essay we're linking it back to the prompt at every opportunity I think this here should really have had another sentence or a link back to should the world transition therefore this means we should transition because of these benefits so this particular paragraph was probably missing a link there rebuttle paragraph they bring up
• 20:30 - 21:00 something that CR critics often point to however then they then rebut it they say look critics often say this however that's not true for this reason so it's pretty good then the conclusion is a little bit longer but it's clear it Recaps their stance or Recaps their opinion and so overall this is a pretty good piece of writing and so this is a good thing to look to if you're looking to what's a standard what would you need to do to succeed this is a pretty good piece of writing it's it's probably going to get a pretty high score I'd say another thing I would say is should you model or closely learn from high quality
• 21:00 - 21:30 pieces you definitely should I know when I was in school one of the best ways of improving in writing was looking at a really high quality writing piece trying to model it and make my own piece that's very similar and then over time adapting my own style and making my writing even better than theirs was kind of the process I went through so that's what I do for this one here as well particularly for persuasive writing you can model pretty closely and so that brings us to the end of today's session where we're focused on persuasive r what I'd recommend from here is you
• 21:30 - 22:00 really want to be writing consistently between now and the exam so I'd recommend write one piece per week at a minimum it's only 20 minutes but the most important thing is getting feedback on your writing there's kind of two ways you can do that one way is you can just watch this video and compare your writing to this piece here and think okay how good is it compared to this is it good or is it worse and what could I do to improve what are they doing better than me I'm going to copy that otherwise we also do have a children program which I run where if you want feedback you
• 22:00 - 22:30 provide unlimited feedback in the program as well on essays just because writing feedback is important it's really important not to just write the same piece again and again and again without taking a step back and getting some feedback on it whether it's self feedback or feedback from someone else you really want to do that that's the most important thing to improve in writing because otherwise what happens to most people very often I'll log in I'll see someone submitted six essays every single one has the same thing wrong with it which just means they could have written one waited for some feedback then R the next
• 22:30 - 23:00 one and hopefully solved it and so that's a key thing you do really want to be mindful once you've written something think about what could you do to improve fix that then write the next one and that will lead to Improvement and so good luck persuasive writing is definitely some of you can improve out very fast to section where a lot of our students get the high scores and so I'm Keen to see some of your high scoring pieces