TEACHING PERSUASIVE WRITING THROUGH START-UP PITCH CONTENT: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY WRITING FRAMEWORK

Persuasive writing is a central component of university-level English instruction; however, it is often taught through decontextualized essay topics that lack relevance to students’ academic and professional contexts. As a result, many students struggle to develop authentic rhetorical awareness, audience engagement, and purposeful argumentation. This study examined whether integrating start-up pitch content into a general Exposition and Argumentation course could enhance students’ persuasive writing performance. The start-up pitch genre requires writers to articulate a problem, propose a solution, justify its value, and persuade a target audience, making it a potentially effective context for teaching persuasive strategies. Using a mixed-methods quasi-experimental design, the study involved 60 undergraduate students from different academic majors enrolled in a general English writing course. Students completed a traditional argumentative essay as a pre-test and a start-up pitch text as a post-test. Both tasks were assessed using an analytic rubric measuring argumentation, coherence, audience awareness, and language use. In addition, reflective journals, questionnaires, and instructor observation notes were analyzed to capture students’ perceptions and learning experiences. The results indicated improvement across all dimensions of persuasive writing, with particularly noticeable gains in argument development and audience adaptation. Qualitative findings further suggested that students became more aware of rhetorical purpose, evidence selection, and persuasive language while also reporting higher levels of engagement and motivation. Overall, the study suggests that start-up pitch writing can provide an effective pedagogical approach for teaching persuasive writing in general English courses by connecting traditional essay instruction with authentic rhetorical practice.