descriptive paragraph
TRANSCRIPT
Descriptive Paragraphs
Professor: Leticia EstevesQLU-Panamá/ Fall 2015
Academic WritingEnglish 101
Descriptive paragraphs include details that appeal to the five senses:
A good description is a word picture: the reader can imagine the object, the place or the person in his/her mind.
Descriptions usually follow a pattern known as spatial order.
Spatial order is the arrangement of things in space.
A writer plans where to put each object in a word picture in the same way artists plan where to place each object in
painting.
In a description, writers often use spatial order to organise their ideas.
Spatial order is the arrangement of items in order by space.
• Describe things on the left.• Describe things on the right.• Describe the things at the top.• Describe the things at the bottom.
Spatial Order Signal Words
Just as there are words to show time order, there are words to show spatial organization
on the left at the top ofnext to in the center
in front of in the front ofinside outside behind
between in back of across
Sentence for Descriptive Paragraphs
The topic sentence of a descriptive paragraph should name the topic.
The controlling idea of a descriptive paragraph should give the overall impression of the place you are describing.
The details or secondary ideas should be full of adjectives.
