Week 5 - Description Essay
Introduction
We begin our second essay this week, a description essay. Descriptive writing asks you to use your skills at providing vivid detail, so the audience reading your essay can clearly picture the person, place, or object you are describing.
Learning Objectives
After successfully completing the description essay lessons, you should be able to:
describe the purpose, basic components, characteristics, and structure of descriptive writing
demonstrate writing techniques of a description essay
What is Descriptive Writing?
This section will help you determine the purpose and structure of descriptive writing. This will help you as you prepare to write your own description essay.
The purpose of descriptive writing
Writers use description in writing to make sure that their audience is fully immersed in the words on the page. This requires a concerted effort by the writer to describe his or her subject through the use of sensory details.
Sensory details are descriptions that appeal to our sense of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Your descriptions should try to focus on the five senses because we all rely on these senses to experience the world. The use of sensory details, then, provides you the greatest possibility of relating to your audience and thus engaging them in your writing, making descriptive writing important not only during your education but also during everyday situations.
The structure of a description essay
Description essays typically describe a person, a place, or an object using sensory details. The introduction of a description essay should set up the tone and point of the essay. The thesis should convey the writer’s overall impression of the person, place, or object described in the body paragraphs.
The organization of the essay can follow spatial order or chronological order.
Spatial order is an arrangement of ideas according to physical characteristics or appearance. Depending on what the writer describes, the organization could move from top to bottom, left to right, near to far, warm to cold, frightening to inviting, and so on.
For example, if the subject were a client’s kitchen in the midst of renovation, you might start at one side of the room and move slowly across to the other end, describing appliances, cabinetry, and so on. Or you might choose to start with older remnants of the kitchen and progress to the new installations. Another option would be to start with the floor and move up toward the ceiling. There are many ways to organize a descriptive essay using spatial order.
A descriptive essay can also be organized in a chronological order. This type of organization asks the writer to describe in the order that something occurs. Transitions such as first, next, later are used when writing in chronological order.
For example, if the essay is a description of a restaurant, you could start with describing the outside of the restaurant that you see upon your arrival, then move on to describing the waiting area while you are waiting to be seated, and finally describing your experience at the table once you are seated.
Writing a description essay
Choosing a subject is the first step in writing a descriptive essay. Once you have chosen the person, place, or object you want to describe, your challenge is to write an effective thesis statement to guide your essay. The remainder of your essay describes your subject in a way that best expresses your thesis. Remember, you should have a strong sense of how you will organize your essay--spatially or chronologically. Choose a strategy and stick to it. Every part of your essay should use vivid sensory details. The more you can appeal to your readers’ senses, the more they will be engaged in your essay.
Key Takeaways
Descriptive essays should describe something vividly to the reader using strong sensory details.
Sensory details appeal to the five human senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.
A descriptive essay should start with the writer’s main impression of a person, a place, or an object--this will be the essay's thesis statement.
Use spatial order or chronological order to organize your descriptive writing.
Now that you have a clearer idea of how how to write a description essay, please take the quiz Description Essay. Details are in the "Activities" section below.
Reading
Soon, you will be writing your own description essay. How do you get started? Frequently, the most trouble students have is getting started. One way around this is to read some sample description essays and share ideas about them with your classmates. That will give you a clearer idea of what your description essay could be like and make it easier for you to get started writing your own essay.
The essays I would like you to read are “America’s Pastime” and “Where Nothing Says Everything.”
After completing the reading, please do the Description Reading Reaction activity. Details are in the "Activities" section below and in Forums > Description > Reading Reaction.
Selecting a Topic
Now that we have read about descriptive writing and read some description essays, it’s time to start writing a description essay. The first step is selecting a topic.
This is the essay prompt for the Description Essay:
Write an essay in which you describe a person, place, or object that might be of interest to others. Your essay should start with your main impression of your topic. Using sensory detail, present your description of your topic in a way that informs and engages the reader.
For this essay, we will once again draw on the writing process to start our essays. You can use any prewriting strategy to find a topic. One way, for example, is to make a list. If you choose to do this, use the following headings: People, Places, Objects. Under these headings, make a list of subjects that you are interested in describing.
When you have completed prewriting, review your possible topics. Which of these are you curious about? Which would you be most interested in describing? Which can you write about in a way that is interesting and engaging? And, of which can you most clearly give your impression?
Choose that subject as the topic of your essay.
After completing the topic exercise, please do the Description Topic activity. Details are in the "Activities" section below and in Forums > Description > Topic.
Activities
These are the activities that you need to complete this week. All activities are due by 11:55 p.m. on their due dates.
Description Essay Quiz. Read "What is Descriptive Writing" and then take the quiz that covers that material.
Due by xx/xx.
Points: 15
Peer Reading Reaction Activity. After reading, "America's Pastime" and "Where Nothing Says Everything," post a forum message in which you write a 250-word reaction (minimum) about your reading experience that focuses on the following questions: What did both of these essays teach you about descriptive writing? Were the essays good examples? Which did you think was the best example? Why? Which essay did you like the best? Why? Use quotations from the essays to back up your thoughts.
Initial post due by xx/xx.
Two replies due by xx/xx.
Points: 20
Description Essay Topic Activity. Write a 2-3 sentence explanation of the topic you chose for your description essay. What person, place, or object did you choose as your topic? Why did you choose it?
Initial post due by xx/xx.
Two replies due by xx/xx.
Points: 10
- Original content from "ENG COMP I" contributed by Lumen Learning is licensed under CC BY 3.0
- Original content from "Writing for Success, v. 1.0" contributed by Saylor Academy is licensed under CC BY NC SA
- Original content contributed by Susan Wood