What are the most effective ways to teach students to use descriptive language?

Nah, I feel one of the best ways to teach a student to use description in their writing is firstly getting them to express themselves freely 🤍 For instance, don't say I am sorry but state why exactly you are sorry 🖤 Don't say, the sky is blue but try to picture the moon in the sky 🤍 Don't say "You are beautiful" but also say why you think someone is beautiful This can enhance your imagination as well as descriptions Showing them samples is good but helping them with imagery works better And then, everything else follows

I've done a few writing courses where it was suggested to find a writer you like and copy a passage from that writer's book. Write in long hand. This practice gets you engaging with that writer's style. I use it when I have writer's block, just to keep up the practice of writing. I teach it in my writing class to help students who are reluctant writers.

I think showing them good examples helps to expand their minds to see the possibilities, which can guide them when they want to express themselves freely. I remember how taking a course on ChatGPT opened up my mind to the possibilities offered by the AI and that has affected how I use the product to this day. When I get a task, I now actively work out how ChatGPT can help to make me more efficient at the task, not how ChatGPT can do the task for me. This was despite me being a seasoned software developer.

There are a lot of ways that one can teach a student to use descriptive writing in a useful manner, but it typically depends on the style of teaching and the student, and how to integrate the two. For instance, using descriptive language for me involves thinking of where I've been, what I've done, what each situation felt like, smelled like, sounded like, etc. Teaching students to recall the sensations that come to mind when they think of or remember certain times in their lives and allowing them to explore those moments is one of many useful methods. Some people can pull sensations out of their imagination, others need to have experienced such things. In any case, experience and imagination are both needed sometimes to create description.

Flannery O'Connor's advice: We need at least three of our five senses to experience what is being described. Try it out, and read Mystery and Manners by O'Connor.

Teach students to use the five senses in their descriptions. Have them practice writing descriptions that include sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. Encourage students to show emotions and actions through descriptions rather than just telling. For example, instead of saying "she was scared," they could write "her hands trembled and her breath quickened." Teach students how to use metaphors and similes to create vivid and imaginative descriptions.

One great way you could do this is by having two students partner together. While one student sits with his or her eyes closed imagining something specific, the other attempts to sketch what is being described. Once finished, have the student open his or her eyes and look over the sketch. Was it how the student imagined it in their head? What was lacking in detail?

Bring something and place it in a setting. Ask people to describe - in writing - what the thing is. Often with these exercises writers try to describe according to a rubric - it's even listed here - invoking the senses as an example. Instead, advise writers to pick key descriptors that matter to the thing. Many writers suffer from over description. I guess this is the beginning of the prescription to avoid over description?

Encouraging students to be silly and funny in their writing opens many creative doors for them. Firstly, they have a giggle and recognise the fun in writing creatively. A prompt to be as silly as possible and encouragement to explain each silly action helps them build the habit of answering 'why', 'how', 'what, 'when'. It is also a great chance to introduce adjectives and onomatopoeia!

My go-to exercise is the good old 'A character walks into a setting' concept. Different people use different variations of the setting (a bar, a town, etc) but I've found that the simpler the setting is, the better. One of the reasons I like this exercise so much is that it teaches two things at once. Not only is the writer learning how to effectively describe the bar, town, etc., but you can push them to utilise character POV more effectively too.

Using the power of asking questions will get students thinking, and help provide them with the creative space to find more depth and description in their stories. For example, if the student writes: "Tim wore a blue hat while he was walking home" You could encourage them to answer some of the following questions: "Where was Tim heading home from?" "Was he in a rush, or taking his time?" "How was the weather?" "What time of day was it?" "Was he alone, or with friends?" "What kinds of experiences did Tim have while walking home?" "What was he thinking about?" Questions like these will open up creativity, which is essential for writing in great detail.

Reading the story aloud *for* the student helps prompt them to self critique. This is an extremely valuable tool that will come handy throughout adulthood and work-life. Embedding the habit of listening to your own writing and recognising strengths and weaknesses from early on is a game changer.

Specificity and emotional POV is key to unique description. For example, don't have to constantly rely on metaphor to make a description pop. If you're describing a garden, for example, knowing all the specific flowers and sensations that you would feel in the scenario eliminates vagueness and puts the reader in the scene. If you do decide to throw a fancy metaphor in there, you should believe it. Sometimes writers will describe something in a way that seems bombastic and interesting, but doesn't actually feel true to life. Restraint and precision is paramount. Though it also requires a lot of research.

The use of a descriptive observations journal can be very helpful for some students of writing. The idea is to have the student carry a journal and practice writing their observations during the day. They can review entries weekly and reflect on whether their descriptions create the same internal response as the original experience. The closer their reflected responses are, the better they described the observation. The journals can also be used in class for social learning among the students. They can express individual responses to the descriptions.

I like to turn descriptive exercises into action, as it often turns out humorous and more engaging. Ask your students to describe how to do something you can do right there with them. For example, how to make a salad. You might get answers like “put the cucumber tomato in the bowl”. So you should show them how you’d follow their instructions EXACTLY. (E.g., don’t open any packaging, wash, or cut). They’ll inevitably tell you it’s wrong, and you have a great opportunity to discuss the importance of clarity and descriptive language.

Whenever I get stuck with writing descriptive scenes, I take myself to a busy spot on a Sunday evening and write. A marketplace, a crowded park, a mall. Anything with a lot of activity. I proceed to describe everything - the people, what they are doing, the pitch of their voices, down to the colour of their clothes. This helps me zone out on everything else and hyper-fixate on the setting before me. I let it sit for a week and then revisit what I wrote. The idea is to determine this - if someone who was not there with me read it, would they feel like they were there? Ergo, re-writing. You can also ask a few friends to read your description to gauge whether they felt like they could visualize everything.

Teach students the "show, don't tell" method. This is where you give a detailed description of an action, scene, etc. For example, instead of telling your reader, "The door slammed when the concierge walked in the room." You show them by creating a moving image in literary form. "As the concierge strolled into the lobby with a trolley full of luggage, we heard a loud boom and felt a gust of wind blow through the entrance when the door slammed shut."

The best way to get students to use descriptive language in writing is to talk to them. Students bring experience and culture naturally to studies. Grammar and sentence structure are lockstep outcomes, but description comes from experience. Living language comes from experiences. “Fun” comes from experience relevant to the student’s experience and is activated with a level of trust. The teacher needs to listen to students to learn relevant interests enough to create disciplined, scaffolded play “sandboxes” where students can experience authentic descriptive language. If we create relevant models, students use them and flourish.

I really enjoy using just an image to write a short story! It’s a method I often used when creating prompts during my internship. Images can be interpreted in a copious amount of ways, and it’s even more fascinating to see what stories others create from them!

Teach them to focus on the verbs. Adjectives and adverbs can build up in descriptive writing exercises, but the most compelling and specific writing makes use of a wide variety of verbs. Take walking/running: Did the person fly by, amble, stroll, saunter? Stumble, skip, scram, or skedaddle?

At school pupils are taught to use the most complex and rich language possible. Then they get to university where we have to train them to stop all that. Good academic writing (in the UK at any rate) needs to be as precise and clear as possible, if only to meet maximum word count rules. I have written so much feedback to young people begging them to use words they actually understand (or use a dictionary!) and the simplest sentence structure possible. It is possible that in pushing for complex writing at school, pupils are being pushed to write badly and to worry that their ideas are not enough. Perhaps in our desire to broaden their vocabulary, we are taking away their confidence to express themselves clearly and directly?

Start from small processes with few steps like how they use an ATM. Then make it harder gradually like how they use their PCs or how they describe their symptoms to a doctor. When they need words, don't immediately provide it. Ask them to look them up. Try to illustrate the new words with adequate description.

After something is written, tell students to go back and ask themselves. "Who, what, where, when?" And write like they are telling a story. They want the reader to feel what they are feeling and to immerse themselves in the same environment. (Sensor) I coach students on writing college essays and I tell them that they have to give examples like a story and data to support what they say and not just write broad overarching statements. Use more adjectives and my #1 request is to use a Thesaurus!

It has to be a mixture of examples and feedback. The students need to be exposed to simple examples of simple descriptive language. Those examples must be annotated with the teachers. This annotating process has to keep going until the students show their ability to identify the descriptive features themselves. Then the writing process begins. They start producing descriptive pieces themselves in order to practice what they have been learning through observation. The process doesn’t take long. You could also add another step to it by asking them to describe before you even teach them anything and give them back their writings after they write again for them to compare.