Description/Narration
Kendall Cross, Jillian Doke, Sava Dujanovic, Kianna Lee,
Luana Mello, & Ashley Quinn
APELAC 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 eyeopening 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