Try and persuade me, can you?

Hi, before I go any further take a look at this commercial video below and tell me whether you would purchase the product? Enjoy the show!

So people, will you buy the Serta mattress? Are you tempted to have one for yourself or your parents? Did you even consider getting it? If you do, you have been persuaded. It means that the commercial is persuasive enough to make you buy the product. If you don't, means you are not convinced with it. Persuasion is a form of social influence. It can be powerful enough to sway your mindset toward the adoption of an idea, attitude, or action.

In class, I have learnt three important ways of using speech to persuade an individual or group to feel as you do. Firstly, persuading your audience through the use of Ethos is a way of convincing them of your argument because you have validity on a personal level in their eyes. The word Ethos actually stands for credibility. Secondly, the use of Pathos, or emotional persuasion is simply a way of appealing to a person's emotions in order to convince them of your argument. Many argumentative speech topics are able to be given in a persuasive manner by the use of pathos, simply because it is easy to appeal to somebody's emotions throughout your speech. Logos speaking has to do with persuading someone through the use of logic. There are several different ways in which you can do this but one of the most effective is by developing a coherent speech that moves logically through the subject. If you keep your audience in mind and develop a good argument, they will be able to follow it to its natural conclusion.

We can be persuaded through various ways such being exposed to advertisements and commercials to get us to buy their products or listening to persuasive speech and presentations which could influence our thinking. However, we have to have a convincing and creative idea with supported facts in order to persuade people. Not only that, our presentations should be something memorable, inspiring and something that make sense to attract people’s attention. People are not dumb basically. They don’t just buy whatever we say or present because each person has their own thought and stand. Giving senseless speech could only put the audience off.

The one person who makes a good persuasive speaker is non other than Barack Obama. He is such a good role model who is capable of giving persuasive and inspiring words. He uses repetition of key words, he changes his tone and volume of his voice, he has good eye contact with his audiences and he includes gestures when he speaks. Below is an example of his persuasive speech. Hope that by listening and observing to his speech could help you learn how to persuasively present ideas.