Transactional and Persuasive Writing

Same idea, wrong wrapper

In Component 2B you are given a task such as: write a letter to your councillor, or a speech for assembly, or an article for a newspaper. Students spend all their effort on the argument and forget that the argument is only half the mark. The other half is the wrapper: the right FORM, pitched to the right AUDIENCE, for the right PURPOSE. Put a brilliant case in the wrong wrapper and it does not score. Three things decide the wrapper. The form sets the conventions. A formal letter needs an address and a sign-off; a speech opens by addressing a live audience; an article has a headline. Miss these and the piece is not really the thing you were asked for. The audience sets the register. How formal, how warm, how simple. You write differently for a councillor, for fellow students, and for a general newspaper readership. The purpose sets the devices. To persuade you reach for rhetorical questions, the rule of three and emotive language; to inform you reach for clear facts and a neutral tone. Underneath all of it, technical accuracy still counts, but accuracy alone never rescues a piece that is in the wrong form for the wrong reader. Carry one question through everything that follows: does this choice fit the form, the audience and the purpose?

Words for transactional writing

Five terms, each defined by what it is. They are the checklist behind every task.

Tap the two persuasive devices

Tap the TWO sentences that use a persuasive device, rather than stating something plainly.

• Do we really want our children crossing a busy road with nowhere safe to do it?
• It is cheap, it is quick, and it is long overdue
• The road outside the school carries traffic during the day
• A zebra crossing is marked with black and white stripes

Right words, wrong wrapper

A student writes a strong, well-argued case, but writes it in a chatty text-message style when the task asked for a formal letter to a councillor. Why does it lose marks?

• The content is good, but the marks also depend on matching the form and the register to the task, and a chatty style is wrong for a formal letter
• The argument itself must have been too weak to score
• It was simply too short
• The only problem is a few spelling mistakes

A letter against a speech

The same point can be made in either, but the situation the reader is in is completely different, and that changes the writing.

Match each form to its convention

Two things the purpose decides

Select the TWO things the purpose of a piece decides.

• Which persuasive devices you reach for
• Whether you mainly argue, persuade, inform or instruct, and the tone that fits
• How neat your handwriting is
• The exact number of paragraphs you are allowed

Answering a transactional writing task

A method for every Component 2B task. Read the task for three things: form, audience and purpose. Underline them if it helps. Everything else follows from these. Set the conventions the form needs. A letter gets an address and a sign-off; a speech opens by addressing the audience; an article gets a headline. Getting these right shows you have written the thing that was asked for. Pitch the register to the audience. Formal and measured for an official, warmer and livelier for peers, clear and welcoming for a general readership. Choose devices that serve the purpose. For persuasion, use a rhetorical question, the rule of three, emotive language and a well-placed fact. Choose a few and use them deliberately. Then write, and keep it accurate. Technical accuracy carries its own marks, so vary sentences and punctuate carefully once the wrapper is right. Three habits cost marks. The first is strong content in the wrong form or register. The second is scattering persuasive devices at random, so they feel forced rather than purposeful. The third is forgetting the audience, and writing as if for yourself.

Order how to plan a piece

Put the steps of planning a transactional piece into a sensible order.

• Read the task for the form, the audience and the purpose
• Set the conventions the form needs
• Plan the points and the order to make them
• Choose the devices that serve the purpose
• Write it, then check the technical accuracy

Build the matching rule

This is the rule that transactional writing rests on. Assemble it.

The transactional quick-fire

Five questions on writing to match a task. Three lives.

One point, three ways to write it

Here is one point, argued three different ways, to show how much stays the same and how much changes. The point, invented for practice, is that a school should add a zebra crossing outside its gates. Written as a formal letter to a local councillor, it opens with an address and a polite greeting, keeps a measured and respectful tone throughout, sets out the case point by point, and closes with a clear request and a formal sign-off. The one busy official who reads it, alone and later, needs it calm and organised. Written as a speech to fellow students in assembly, the same point is spoken aloud to a crowd. It opens by addressing them directly, uses a rhetorical question and the rule of three to carry the room, and builds to a rousing call to act. Sound and rhythm do work that a letter on a desk never could. Written as a newspaper article, it carries a headline and a byline, opens with a hook, mixes fact with comment, and speaks to a wide general readership who did not ask to read it and must be drawn in. The case for the crossing never changed. What changed each time was the shape of the writing, how formal it sounded, and which devices did the persuading. That match is the whole skill.

Complete the writing facts

The kind of writing a task calls for, such as a letter or a speech, is the _____. The reader or readers you are writing for are the _____. What the writing is meant to achieve, such as to persuade or to inform, is its _____. How formal or informal the writing sounds, to suit those readers, is its _____.

Three writing tasks to fix

Three student pieces that miss the task. In each case the fix is about the wrapper, not the argument.

• A task asks for a letter to the head teacher, but a student writes it like a chat to a friend. What is the fix?
• A student stuffs a persuasive speech with every device they know, at random. Why does that not score well?
• A student writes an article but never thinks about who will read it. What is missing?

Explain how to write transactionally

A friend writes strong content but keeps losing transactional-writing marks because it never quite fits the task. Explain how to write transactionally so it scores.

• Explain what to read from the task first: the form, the audience and the purpose
• Explain how the form sets the conventions, using a letter or a speech as an example
• Explain how the audience sets the register
• Explain how the purpose decides which persuasive devices to use
• Explain why strong content in the wrong form or register still loses marks
• Finish with the one check to run before writing, about form, audience and purpose