Speaking to persuade: Motivating audiences with solid arguments and moving language
University of Washington · View on Coursera ↗
Taught by Dr. Matt McGarrity
Personal DevelopmentBusiness
About the course
In the professional realm, we need to be able to argue without being argumentative. Whether you are fundraising for a nonprofit, pitching a business proposal, or suggesting a change to company policy, you are making arguments. In making the case for your topic, you often want to raise awareness, identify a pressing problem, discuss appropriate solutions, and outline specific steps for the audience. To be persuasive, you must be clear (the audience may have little to no existing knowledge), you
The consensus
Every one of the 20 reviews we read gave it 4★ or more. This is the most-upvoted one (5 votes).
“I liked it and I can say for sure it clears the doubts of a speaker and gives a clear understanding of how one can write effective speeches.”
Coursera's 4.8 comes from 366 ratings. Of those, 0.5% are 1–2★.
Starisk reads the reviews learners voted most helpful, and weights each by the square root of its votes: a review with 80 upvotes counts about five times one with 2. Unvoted reviews are not skipped out of laziness — by this model they carry no evidence that other students endorsed them.
That measures what the most-endorsed reviews say, not “true quality.” The rating distribution above is the whole population, so you can see the sample next to it.
Reviews read on 23 Oct 2026.Read them on Coursera ↗