Writing Workshop 4
C2 · Writing · Rhetoric and Persuasion
Model answer · Task 1
✍️ ━━━━ MODEL ESSAY · OPENING ━━━━ ✍️
It has become commonplace to say that we live in an age of manipulation. Every scroll through a social-media feed, every recommended video and every targeted advertisement seems designed to steer us, and the claim that the line between persuasion and manipulation has “disappeared” captures a widespread sense of unease. Yet the claim, taken literally, is both too strong and, in an important respect, self-defeating. If the distinction had truly disappeared, we would have no vocabulary with which to object to what is being done to us. What has changed, I shall argue, is not the existence of the line but the difficulty of seeing where it falls.
⋯ (the complete model answer is in the teacher’s guide)
Model answer · Task 2
✍️ ━━━━ MODEL ANSWER ━━━━ ✍️
Motion: This house would require every school to teach media literacy.
I have spent three years volunteering for a fact-checking project, reading the messages that reach teenagers every day. Last month, a sixteen-year-old in our town shared a fake health warning with three hundred classmates; within an hour, parents were calling the school in panic. She was not careless — she simply had never been taught how to check a source. And she is not unusual: a large international survey found that only about a third of fifteen-year-olds could reliably distinguish fact from opinion in a text. We teach young people to read; we have not yet taught them to read critically.
The ethos is earned because my experience is directly relevant; the pathos because the case is typical rather than extreme; and the logos because the figure comes from a large, published study.
Sample questions (2 questions)
- Your turn: write a critical essay (550–700 words): “In the age of algorithms, the line between persuasion and manipulation has disappeared.” Analyse the claim, draw precise distinctions, evaluate examples and counterarguments, and reach a nuanced conclusion. Use at least three C2 frames from this programme.
- Your turn: write a 120–160-word opening for a speech on a motion of your choice that combines ethos, pathos and logos. Then add one sentence explaining why each appeal is “earned”.
Answers and hints from Migo appear when you do it online.