Description/NarrationKendall Cross, Jillian Doke, Sava Dujanovic, Kianna Lee,

Luana Mello, & Ashley QuinnAPELAC 3, Period 5

Definition of Description

Using words to depict or re-create a scene, object, person, or feeling

Builds detail and brings immediacy to a subject

Reading Description

Appeals to the five senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch

A writer’s involvement with the subject will determine how objective or subjective a description is

Objective: tries to convey subject impersonally, without emotion, used in scientific writing

Subjective: impression of the subject filtered through firsthand experience

Reading Description Continued

Effective description requires dominant impression- central theme to which readers can relate all details

Point of View is key

Real or imagined physical relation to subject

Psychological relation to subject

Analyzing Description

“It is air so heavy that it weighs on your tongue, as if you can open your mouth and take a sip. It is a soup, a big hot pot of soupy air, fetid under the equatorial sun.”

Blue = Figures of speech

Red = Specific, concrete details

Developing a Descriptive Essay

Thesis: choose a subject and specify in a sentence the dominant impression you want to create

Organizing: arrange details in a way by which readers are not confused by shifts among features

Spatial organization: near to far, top to bottom, left to right

Chronological sequence of event

Revising & Editing a Description Essay

Have you in fact created the dominant impression you intended to create?

Check quality & strength of the impression of details, cut irrelevant

Are your point of view & organization clear & consistent?

Watch shifts from I to one

Keep a sharp eye out for vague words and use details that call on readers’ sensory experiences

Five Main Points to Remember about Description:

1. Requires central theme to which readers can relate all details

2. Appeals to senses- sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch

3. Organize details near to far, top to bottom, left to right or chronological order

4. Cut out vague words (loud, short, etc.) and irrelevant details

5. Examine subject one sense at a time to conceive concrete words and figures of speech to represent sensations and feelings

Ex: Does acid describe the taste of fear?

Definition of Narration

You narrate every time you tell a story about something that happened

Narration helps us make sense of events and share our experiences with others

Used to entertain, explain, summarize, persuade, etc.

Majority of what we read and write

Reading Narration

Narration relates a sequence of events that are linked in time

Illuminates the stages leading to a result, often serving a larger point

Several possibilities of arrangement :

A straight chronological sequence that relates events in order of occurrence

Final event of self revelation

Reading Narration Continued

An entire story in a summary

Flashbacks that recall significant event

Point of view, a position relative to the events:

Pronouns indicate the storyteller’s place in the story

Verb tense indicates the relation of the writer in time to the sequence of events

Analyzing Narration

“After my father died, a grey cobra came into the house. My stepmother loaded the gun… The gun jammed. She stepped back and reloaded but by then the snake had slid out… For the next month this snake would often come into the house and each time the gun would misfire or jam…”

Black = chronological order

Red = past tense

Green = transitions

Developing a Narration Essay

Address the questions of who was involved, what happened, when and where did it happen, why and how did it happen

Be sure to identify your point of view and attitude

Expand and compress the reader’s intention with details

Make a thesis explaining why the event was significant

Organized with dramatic events in sequence

When drafting, experiment with dialogue and use chronological order

Revising & Editing a Narration Essay

Is the point of your narrative clear, and does every event you relate contribute to it?

It should be obvious to the reader and no distractions by insignificant events

Is your organization clear?

Make sure readers will understand any shifts in time

Have you used transitions to help readers follow the sequence of events?

Reviewing and Editing Continued

If you have used dialogue, is it purposeful and natural?

Make sure the quotations move the actions ahead

Practice reading the dialogue aloud to check that it sounds like something someone would actually say

Five Main Points to Remember About

Narration 1. a story with a chronological sequence

2. utilizes transitions and points of view

3. remember to have who, what, when, where, and why

4. Use personal experiences to enhance your argument (make sure your narrative has a point)

5. Use clear transitions to make a rational sequence of events

Précis Practice

In Kaela Hobby-Reichstein’s “Learning Race” (1999), she suggests that racism is something that one is taught, not born with, and that it takes away people’s, “childlike innocence” (85). Growing up with a best friend of a different race helps Hobby-Reichstein illustrate the absence of racism in children and the lack of separation between children of different races, until taught otherwise by adults such as the teacher who claimed Reichstein’s painting was, “wrong” but “she wouldn’t explain why” (84). She recalls eye-opening childhood experiences of racism and cultural differences in order to comment on the ever-present racial stigmas of the world, and the lack thereof in children like Reichstein who only noticed “the creamy pink color of my skin and deep brown color of her skin weren’t the same” but not the difference between them (84). Reichstein intimately addresses adults who taint the innocence of children with racism and hatred, the feeling of which she recalls “I learned the feeling of hatred and it hurt,” by using personal and painful narration of her experience of bigotry and racial injustice she experiences as a child, and she reveals the “hatred differences can inspire” (86).

Practice Description Homework

Read the essay entitled “Learning Race” on page 83 in Narration

Practice a précis

Homework: Read the essay entitled “Starrucca Viaduct” on page 107 in Description