Take a look at the following document for some ideas for the multi genre project.
Friday, February 27, 2015
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Descriptive Essay: Tips for Revision and Editing
As you finalize your descriptive essay for submission, consider the following points:
1. What is the dominant impression of the person/place you are describing?
-Do you have SPECIFIC, clear, vivid examples, anecdotes, and/or direct quotations that illustrate your point?
-Do you show, not tell, or do you come right out and state how you feel?
(Ex of telling: I have so many great memories of this place; if there's one person I'll always remember, it's Mr. G.) Don't do this!
2. Have you made intentional selections about DIDLS? How do these choices contribute to your tone?
-What connotations do your words have?
-Have you used any figurative language? If so, to what effect?
-Have you varied sentence and paragraph lengths? Do you italicize words, use parenthesis, dashes, and/or quotation marks?
-Do you use powerful verbs, nouns, adjectives and adverbs? (Note: powerful does not necessarily mean big and fancy.)
-Do you create images that appeal to one or more of the senses?
-Have you been selective about the details you include? For example, if you are describing a place, you do not need to lead the reader through the place and describe EVERY detail that you see. Only describe the ones that pertain to your dominant impression. What you don't say can be just as powerful as what you do say.
3. Have you considered the way you begin your essay. You may want to begin by:
-Reflecting back:
Ex: The other day I was reading through some essays that I was going to use with my 10th grade classes; one of them got me thinking about Mrs. Goulette--my second grade teacher--and her unconventional teaching tactics. Here it is more than twenty five years later, and I still have vivid images of our backwards spelling bees standing on top of our desks. It prompted me to google her, to no avail.
-Jumping right into your description:
Mrs. Goulette's classroom was not your typical elementary school classroom. First of all, it was split between accelerated second graders and struggling third graders, something that probably wouldn't happen today. In fact, most things about Mrs. Goulette's style of teaching wouldn't fly in our modern day. She constantly singled kids out and embarrassed them. She used to dump the contents of our desks on the floor if they were messy; the unlucky student who had this happen to her (yes, I suffered this fate once) not only had to face the humiliation of watching the entire contents of her desk being spilled on the floor in front of her classmates, but she also would have to stand at recess. Kids would be lined up along the wall of the school at recess, wantonly watching as the other students played kickball and dodgeball.
-Reflect on a specific anecdote:
One of my clearest memories of Mrs. Goulette is when she told us about finding cigarettes in her daughter's purse. She spoke openly with us about her own struggles with smoking--how much she wanted to quit and how difficult it was for her to do so. Mind you, I was in second grade at the time. She had such devastation in her voice as she relayed the tale to us, laboring over each word as she recounted finding the pack of cigarettes. Her response, though, is what has stuck with me over the years. She made her daughter sit down and smoke the entire pack at once, causing her poor daughter to throw up repeatedly. Cruel as this may have sounded to our seven year old ears, the message rang true. Her daughter, who was by then an adult, had never smoked another cigarette again.
This story was pretty indicative of Mrs. Goulette's style of teaching.
4. Have you considered how you end your essay?
Notice how both of the mentor essays end in specific moments in time. They also end with very short sentences.
Ending in a specific moment in time prevents you from making broad generalizations and cliche statements.
Consider a final appeal to the senses that might capture your dominant impression.
Consider something you do now or a thought you have now that reflects back on your person/place.
Consider using a very short sentence to end.
Ex: As I look at my own son, I think about whether I'd want him to be in Mrs. Goulette's classroom--whether I'd want him to have to deal with the desk dumping, the cigarette story, the backwards spelling bees. But then I think of everything else, and I decide. Absolutely.
5. Have you edited for comma rules, punctuation, capitalization, subject/verb agreement, apostrophes, spelling, etc.?
-Do you have SPECIFIC, clear, vivid examples, anecdotes, and/or direct quotations that illustrate your point?
-Do you show, not tell, or do you come right out and state how you feel?
(Ex of telling: I have so many great memories of this place; if there's one person I'll always remember, it's Mr. G.) Don't do this!
2. Have you made intentional selections about DIDLS? How do these choices contribute to your tone?
-What connotations do your words have?
-Have you used any figurative language? If so, to what effect?
-Have you varied sentence and paragraph lengths? Do you italicize words, use parenthesis, dashes, and/or quotation marks?
-Do you use powerful verbs, nouns, adjectives and adverbs? (Note: powerful does not necessarily mean big and fancy.)
-Do you create images that appeal to one or more of the senses?
-Have you been selective about the details you include? For example, if you are describing a place, you do not need to lead the reader through the place and describe EVERY detail that you see. Only describe the ones that pertain to your dominant impression. What you don't say can be just as powerful as what you do say.
3. Have you considered the way you begin your essay. You may want to begin by:
-Reflecting back:
Ex: The other day I was reading through some essays that I was going to use with my 10th grade classes; one of them got me thinking about Mrs. Goulette--my second grade teacher--and her unconventional teaching tactics. Here it is more than twenty five years later, and I still have vivid images of our backwards spelling bees standing on top of our desks. It prompted me to google her, to no avail.
-Jumping right into your description:
Mrs. Goulette's classroom was not your typical elementary school classroom. First of all, it was split between accelerated second graders and struggling third graders, something that probably wouldn't happen today. In fact, most things about Mrs. Goulette's style of teaching wouldn't fly in our modern day. She constantly singled kids out and embarrassed them. She used to dump the contents of our desks on the floor if they were messy; the unlucky student who had this happen to her (yes, I suffered this fate once) not only had to face the humiliation of watching the entire contents of her desk being spilled on the floor in front of her classmates, but she also would have to stand at recess. Kids would be lined up along the wall of the school at recess, wantonly watching as the other students played kickball and dodgeball.
-Reflect on a specific anecdote:
One of my clearest memories of Mrs. Goulette is when she told us about finding cigarettes in her daughter's purse. She spoke openly with us about her own struggles with smoking--how much she wanted to quit and how difficult it was for her to do so. Mind you, I was in second grade at the time. She had such devastation in her voice as she relayed the tale to us, laboring over each word as she recounted finding the pack of cigarettes. Her response, though, is what has stuck with me over the years. She made her daughter sit down and smoke the entire pack at once, causing her poor daughter to throw up repeatedly. Cruel as this may have sounded to our seven year old ears, the message rang true. Her daughter, who was by then an adult, had never smoked another cigarette again.
This story was pretty indicative of Mrs. Goulette's style of teaching.
4. Have you considered how you end your essay?
Notice how both of the mentor essays end in specific moments in time. They also end with very short sentences.
Ending in a specific moment in time prevents you from making broad generalizations and cliche statements.
Consider a final appeal to the senses that might capture your dominant impression.
Consider something you do now or a thought you have now that reflects back on your person/place.
Consider using a very short sentence to end.
Ex: As I look at my own son, I think about whether I'd want him to be in Mrs. Goulette's classroom--whether I'd want him to have to deal with the desk dumping, the cigarette story, the backwards spelling bees. But then I think of everything else, and I decide. Absolutely.
5. Have you edited for comma rules, punctuation, capitalization, subject/verb agreement, apostrophes, spelling, etc.?
Thursday, February 5, 2015
DIDLS: The Tone Acronym
When establishing or determining the tone of a piece of writing. readers and writers should consider five key elements.
Diction - the connotations, or associations, of word choices
Different words for the same thing often suggest different attitudes toward that thing. For example, what is the difference between happy and content? How about happy and ecstatic?
Imagery - vivid appeals to understanding through the five senses
The images a speaker/writer chooses to present suggest her attitude toward her subject. For example, if a narrator visiting a farm describes the awful smells rather than the beautiful countryside, her description would tell us something about her attitude.
Details - specifics that are included or omitted
Details are most commonly the facts given my the author or speaker as support for the attitude or tone. The speaker's perspective shapes what details are given. For example, how might child's report of details from a car accident differ from that of a parent or a police officer?
Language - 1) the overall use of language such as formal, colloquial, clinical, or casual, etc., or the use of dialect or jargon
An ambassador speaks differently than a teenager who speaks differently than a farmer who speaks differently than a soldier from the Civil War. The type of overall language contributes to the tone.
Language - 2) figures of speech such as metaphor, simile, personification, metonymy, synecdoche, etc.
A figure of speech names on thing in terms of another. The way in which a speaker compares something to something else can tell us something about the speaker's attitude. For example, if I compare her black hair to soot or to onyx, the connotation would be very different.
Syntax - sentence structure and the use of punctuation
Long, flowing sentences give the reader a different feeling than short, choppy sentences. If the narrator uses awkward sentence structures or grammatical errors, we might think that he is uneducated. The use of dashes, italics, run on sentences, short sentences, capital letters, etc., all contribute to how we read and process the information in a passage.
Diction - the connotations, or associations, of word choices
Different words for the same thing often suggest different attitudes toward that thing. For example, what is the difference between happy and content? How about happy and ecstatic?
Imagery - vivid appeals to understanding through the five senses
The images a speaker/writer chooses to present suggest her attitude toward her subject. For example, if a narrator visiting a farm describes the awful smells rather than the beautiful countryside, her description would tell us something about her attitude.
Details - specifics that are included or omitted
Details are most commonly the facts given my the author or speaker as support for the attitude or tone. The speaker's perspective shapes what details are given. For example, how might child's report of details from a car accident differ from that of a parent or a police officer?
Language - 1) the overall use of language such as formal, colloquial, clinical, or casual, etc., or the use of dialect or jargon
An ambassador speaks differently than a teenager who speaks differently than a farmer who speaks differently than a soldier from the Civil War. The type of overall language contributes to the tone.
Language - 2) figures of speech such as metaphor, simile, personification, metonymy, synecdoche, etc.
A figure of speech names on thing in terms of another. The way in which a speaker compares something to something else can tell us something about the speaker's attitude. For example, if I compare her black hair to soot or to onyx, the connotation would be very different.
Syntax - sentence structure and the use of punctuation
Long, flowing sentences give the reader a different feeling than short, choppy sentences. If the narrator uses awkward sentence structures or grammatical errors, we might think that he is uneducated. The use of dashes, italics, run on sentences, short sentences, capital letters, etc., all contribute to how we read and process the information in a passage.
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
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