little mini 4

Notes for assignment

Paragraph Organization for Description

Here's the thing they don't tell you in high school:rules for paragraphs (and basically everything else) change depending on what you are writing and for whom.

Thebetter you get at writing, the moreyou can bend these rulesto fit your particular situation.

• Last week, I mentioned that for the purposes of this classall paragraphs need to be at least 4 sentences long, minimum.

• A good paragraph goal is about a half a page per paragraph (however many sentences that is).

• You start a new paragraph when you switch topics, for a narrative that meansbreaking paragraphs when you switch locations or time periods(Five years later, or we went to my grandmother's house, etc.)

Description

• Usually, at this stage of writing, students need to work onfurther developmentand description in their paragraphs.

• So, I am asking for your final draft of this narrative, youenhance the importance of the most significant person, place, or thing by focusing ONE WHOLE PARAGRAPH on describing detailsabout it with a few of the 5 sensestouch, taste, sight, sound, smell.

• Idon'tmean that you say how important it is or how you feel about it, I mean that you should give it more attention in the narrative bydescribing what it is like so the reader can imagine it in their mind. Use concrete language, not abstract language.

Each description paragraph should:

• Create a single main impressionan overall effect, feeling, or imagethat brings the person, place, or thing alive for the reader. This can go in the topic sentence--the first sentence of the paragraph.
• Support the main impression with specific details
• Present the details in an organized wayspatially or order of importance, for example

Spatial Organization:the way things are arranged in order of how they appear.

• For example, in a room:

Coming home from work on Friday nights always welcomes me into the weekend. As I walk through the door, my eyes adjust to the dim light. The hallway opens up to a small, sparsely furnished living room. A row of candles of different heights and colors are lit and melting on the mantle of the fireplace. The rich tones of Frank Sinatra, accompanied by the rising crescendo of a big band, float on the air and lead me through to the kitchen. Marinara sauce is simmering on the stove top, and Parmesan melts on top of garlic bread in the oven.

Order of Importance:start with the most important thing and work down to the unnoticed details OR start with the 3^rdor 4^thleast important thing and build up to the best detail.

This works for describing an item or a person, for example:

What I immediately noticed about the dress my mother had just given me was the deep red color, its crimson matching my blushing face at the idea of receiving such a gift. I picked it up, running my fingertips across the buttery, soft fabric. Deep folds tucked into the waistline and cascaded downward. Finally, strung along the hemline were the tiniest, pearl beads. There must have been hundreds of them, painstakingly sewn by hands decades ago.

• But! In order to give your description significance, we need to know what the point of the paragraph is. You can put that as the first sentence of the paragraph or, I suppose, as the last sentence.

Topic idea + main impression in the first sentence = your significance or point of the paragraph as it relates to your story

Example: My mother's hair is as vibrant and lustrous as she is. (Then we go on to describe what her hair is like)

Words to try to avoid:

Good

Bad

Great

Stuff

Things

Amazing

Fantastic

Nowadays (or back in the day)

• These are literally the simplest and most common words you could think of to describe something.

• You don't have to dig out the thesaurus every time you want to write a word, though. Just take a second to think of a better, more descriptive word.

Example: The cookies smelled amazing.

What is a better word foramazing?

Example:He went home.

What other word could you use forwentthat would be more descriptive and tell youhowhe went home at the same time?

Think to yourself about the words you already know that would be more descriptive than this noun and verb.

DialogueMake Your Characters Say Something

• In the beginning of your narrative, you need to establish some people to interact with in your story besides yourself.

• You may want to describe one of these people in detail. (Or you may choose to describe the settingwhere the story takes placeas the most significant person, place, or thing).

• You may also need commas and quotations to set up the dialogue between characters in your personal narratives.

• Put a comma after "dialogue tags," which are phrases likeShe said.

• You can put dialogue and description in the same paragraph, but once you switch speakers, break the line and start on a new paragraph.

• The period goes inside the quotation marks (which is the opposite of what you'll do when you are citing a source in quotes).

Dialogue Quotation Example:

She was lying on the couch under several layers of blankets, trying to ignore the sheets of rain covering the road outside the window. "Nope. I'm not leaving the house today," she said.

From the other room Mel shouted, "But you have to go class? You have to learn about grammar and punctuation today."

"You are absolutely right. I don't know what I was thinking," she said. So, she kicked off the blankets and headed to her room to get ready.

Questions

1. Take a look at the notes for this week. After reading through them, how you would define what analysis is?

In other words, what is the difference between the first 3 paragraphs and the last paragraph of this paper?

2 True or False: The most important aspect of this paper is keeping the Observation and Process paragraphs separate from the Analysis. Don't intermingle them or include opinionated information in the first 3 paragraphs.

3 The notes say:

Here is a formula you can use to strengthen your thesis in your rough draft and make it better for the final draft: State something about A) the observation and process and B) sum up your analysis of that observation in once sentence.

Which one of these answers does both A and B?

Group of answer choices

a. This paper will explore the ways in which a dentist works under Covid 19 protocol changes.

b. Watching my brother sell his house indicates a number of important steps in the process that you should not skip.

c. An observation of a mother and her child in a park indicate that parenting in the age of smart phones can both be distracting and slightly dangerous.

4. True or False: Like most academic essays, the final paragraph of the Process Analysis functions to simply remind us of key ideas stated in the essay.

Group of answer choices