english
What does describe mean?
This is easy to define:
To give an account or representation of a place, a person or an event, real or imagined.
If you are asked to describe something, make your description as clear and as vivid as possible.
Part 1: Writing About Places
A. Look at this example of an actual students’ work. This first description is of a place:
I was born on a small island in the Caribbean between two French islands. The land is named Dominica, it is a small mountainous island covered with lush rainforest so when the hot Caribbean sun shone on it the whole island glowed a passionate mixture of dark and light greens. This is why most of the locals called it ‘De green jem of de Caribbean man.’ I lived not close to the beach, I lived high up in the mountainous parts of the rainforest where it stayed cool and moist.
This first extract is both clear and vivid. Try to think about how this has been achieved. The following should get you thinking.
The setting is established clearly in the first two sentences
Precise adjectives – ‘small mountainous’, ‘lush’, ‘hot’ – tell us what we want to know
More interesting, colourful language is used to create special effects – ‘a passionate mixture of dark and light greens.’
The use of local dialect (like kling-klings in Electricity Comes to Cocoa Bottom) makes it sound more authentic and real.
Is there anything else which you thought worked well? Add you own ideas/examples to the list above.
Whilst this is a good example of descriptive writing there are some punctuation errors. Can you spot them? Is there anything you don’t like about the writing? How do you think it could be improved upon?
B. Now we are going to look at some further examples of good descriptive writing, this time from accomplished writers. In this extract from his book ‘My Family and Other Animals’ Gerald Durrell has used a lot of figurative language to create setting.
The olives seemed weighed down under
This is easy to define:
To give an account or representation of a place, a person or an event, real or imagined.
If you are asked to describe something, make your description as clear and as vivid as possible.
Part 1: Writing About Places
A. Look at this example of an actual students’ work. This first description is of a place:
I was born on a small island in the Caribbean between two French islands. The land is named Dominica, it is a small mountainous island covered with lush rainforest so when the hot Caribbean sun shone on it the whole island glowed a passionate mixture of dark and light greens. This is why most of the locals called it ‘De green jem of de Caribbean man.’ I lived not close to the beach, I lived high up in the mountainous parts of the rainforest where it stayed cool and moist.
This first extract is both clear and vivid. Try to think about how this has been achieved. The following should get you thinking.
The setting is established clearly in the first two sentences
Precise adjectives – ‘small mountainous’, ‘lush’, ‘hot’ – tell us what we want to know
More interesting, colourful language is used to create special effects – ‘a passionate mixture of dark and light greens.’
The use of local dialect (like kling-klings in Electricity Comes to Cocoa Bottom) makes it sound more authentic and real.
Is there anything else which you thought worked well? Add you own ideas/examples to the list above.
Whilst this is a good example of descriptive writing there are some punctuation errors. Can you spot them? Is there anything you don’t like about the writing? How do you think it could be improved upon?
B. Now we are going to look at some further examples of good descriptive writing, this time from accomplished writers. In this extract from his book ‘My Family and Other Animals’ Gerald Durrell has used a lot of figurative language to create setting.
The olives seemed weighed down under