About Descriptive Essay

Dear all,

You might be confused about the very first essay assignment, and I indeed didn't arrange enough time giving instruction on Descriptive writing. Here you go:

1. As I had assumed that you must had learned a great deal in your first year critical literacy class, I played sample digital stories to show you that you could describe a person that has played/is playing a significant role in your life.

2. In order to show your audience (your peers, me, TAs, or imagined target audiences) who that person is and why you choose to write about him/her, you have to give sufficient details on what s/he has done or said to leave you unforgettable impressions, impacts, or influences at your critical moments, e.g., a decision making out of a struggling situation or  a turning point in life. 

3. You can certainly write about an object or a pet, too. Similarly, you will describe its appearance, the reason you got it, and its meaning to you. Once again, details about your interaction with it, the person who gave it to you, and the reason it was given to you can be included to make your description juicier. 

The purpose of practicing descriptive writing is to help you build the ability to illustrate with vividness, which will in turn help you with your second essay, a narrative (the focus is on an incident/a complete story in which description is an important part of it). Description means you will have to pay attention to your word use, rhetorical choices, and tone in your language so as to make it worthy of your audiences' time to read it. A narrative thus provides your audiences a relatable and insightful experience, which is a way of communication, too.

Next week, we'll talk more about description, with sample essays, and you'll just share your outline (how you are going to structure your essay) first. We'll fast review how we do outline, too. 

Remember, you should keep reading the books you select for yourself. Research shows that writing ability comes reading. And I have seemed to see that on your first two logs～