Creating persuasive texts (SACE Stage 2 English)
“Create persuasive texts that use argument and rhetorical strategy to position a specific audience.”
You need to build a persuasive text around a clear contention and a deliberate line of argument, using rhetorical strategy and a controlled tone to move a specific audience toward your position.
Jump to a section
What this dot point is asking
A persuasive text is a common choice in the Creating Texts folio (worth 40% of your SACE Stage 2 English grade). It might take the form of an opinion column, a speech, an open letter or a feature article with an argumentative edge. The performance standards reward texts crafted for purpose and audience and controlled, effective use of language and stylistic features - so persuasion here is judged as craft, not just as having strong opinions.
The core of any persuasive piece is a clear contention - the single position you want your audience to accept - and a line of argument that builds toward it. Decide your contention first, then sequence your reasons so each one prepares the ground for the next.
Argument first, devices second
Rhetorical devices are powerful only when they carry an actual argument. The most persuasive writing reasons well and also sounds compelling; writing that is all device and no substance reads as hollow to a discerning marker.
The central, arguable position a persuasive text asks its audience to accept. Everything in the piece - evidence, appeals, tone, structure - should be working to make that one position feel reasonable and even inevitable.
Establishing contention and audience in the first lines
"Every weekday at 3.15 the buses pull away from our school full, and every weekday a dozen students are left on the kerb watching them go. We are told the timetable is 'under review'. It has been under review for two years. If a council can find money to repaint roundabouts, it can find three extra afternoon services - and until it does, it is choosing, deliberately, to strand its own kids."
This opens with a concrete, shared image, names a target (the council), establishes a clear contention (the shortfall is a choice, not an accident), and sets an indignant-but-controlled tone calibrated for a local-community audience.
Match rhetoric to audience
Choose appeals that suit who you are addressing. Appeals to fairness, to self-interest, to shared identity, to evidence and authority each land differently with different readers. Inclusive pronouns, rhetorical questions, anecdote, expert evidence, and a calibrated emotional register are tools - use the ones that move this audience, and vary intensity so the piece builds rather than shouting from the first line.
A persuasive piece that stays at maximum outrage exhausts the reader and reads as unhinged. Plan a tone curve: reasonable and grounded early to earn trust, rising to your strongest emotional appeal near the climax, then a firm, forward-looking close. Modulation reads as control, and control persuades.
Common error
The most common weakness is a piece that piles on emotive language, exclamation marks and rhetorical questions while never actually building a reasoned case. Markers see through this quickly - it reads as ranting. Anchor every appeal to a reason a fair-minded reader could accept, and make sure your contention is supported by argument, not just volume.
Anticipate the counter-argument
Mature persuasion does not pretend the other side has nothing to say. Acknowledging a reasonable objection and answering it - the concession-and-rebuttal move - makes a piece more convincing, not less, because it shows the writer has thought the issue through and trusts the reader to follow. A column that addresses the strongest objection to its contention, then dismantles it, reads as fair-minded and earns the reader's confidence in a way that a one-sided rant never can. Place the concession where it does most work: often just before your climactic appeal, so that having cleared away the doubt, you can close with full force.
Close by leaving your audience with a clear sense of what follows from accepting your contention - a call to act, a reframed way of seeing the issue, a final memorable line. Because your folio includes a Writer's Statement, also stay conscious of why you are making each choice: a strong persuasive piece is one whose strategy you could later explain. The dot point asks you to position a specific audience, so success looks like a reader who, by the end, finds your position harder to dismiss than they did at the start.
Assessment-style questions
Questions on this dot point, each with a worked answer, written by ExamExplained. English has no written exam, so use them to check your understanding before your assessment tasks.
Practice10 marksCreating Texts (folio). Write a persuasive text (such as an opinion column, speech or open letter) that positions a specific audience to accept a clear contention. (One folio text)Show worked answer →
A high-band persuasive folio text is judged on craft for purpose and audience and controlled use of language, so plan an argument first and reach for devices second.
Plan: decide the single contention, name the specific audience, and sequence the reasons so each one prepares the ground for the next.
Opening: a concrete, shared image, the target named, the contention clear, and a tone calibrated for the audience.
Strategy: choose appeals that suit this audience (fairness, self-interest, shared identity, evidence) and vary intensity so the piece builds rather than shouting from the first line.
Strong move: plan a tone curve - grounded early to earn trust, rising to the strongest appeal near the climax, then a firm forward-looking close.
Markers reward appeals anchored to reasons a fair-minded reader could accept and penalise all heat and no argument.
Practice10 marksCreating Texts. Write a persuasive text for a clearly defined audience, and ensure your rhetorical choices are matched to that audience.Show worked answer →
A 10 mark answer turns on the fit between rhetoric and audience.
Plan: define the audience precisely (their values, what they already believe, what would move them), then choose appeals that land with them specifically.
Use the frame "Because the audience is [who] and values [what], I open with [appeal], build with [evidence type], and close with [call], each chosen to move this reader rather than a general one."
Strong move: anticipate the audience's likely objection and address it, which reads as a writer who knows exactly who they are talking to.
Markers reward rhetoric matched to a defined audience and penalise generic persuasion that could address anyone.
Practise this
Sources & how we know this
- Stage 2 English subject outline (2025 onwards) — SACE Board
- Stage 2 English: external assessment — SACE Board