FS 101 / Sec 17: The End of the World

Creating a Virtual Experience

Assignment One

One significant component of expressing yourself in speaking or writing is creating a virtual experience for your audience. Listeners should gain a clear mental picture or strong feeling of whatever event you are describing. In this kind of writing, create strong images with action verbs, concrete nouns, and varied adverbs and adjectives.

"Realistic" writers often emphasize description, acutely observing material existence that they can re-create in words. Works that capture the uniqueness of a specific region are said to utilize "Local Color." In the quantity and quality of detail, authors and artists evoke a particular place and time.

Other authors animate their writing so that their listeners become actively engaged in the description. Their words evoke specific sensations, or create sound effects. They reproduce conversation using slang or dialect.

Don't overwhelm your readers with lots of big words, but use variety in language to hold their interest.

Choose one of the following topics and write an essay of 4-5 paragraphs (2 - 3 pages)

  1. Imagine a "disaster" (not necessarily the end of the world) that destroys your home town. Describe this in such a way that your audience can get to know a little bit about where you come from.
     
  2. What is the "local color" of Allegheny? Adopting a "realistic" mode, describe a place or event that you have already experienced at Allegheny College. Write this in such a way that the folks back home might understand something about what's happening to you here.

Assignment details:

  1. This assignment is due at our next class, Tuesday, September 2nd. Please bring a typed and stapled copy to class with you.
     
  2. Be prepared to read your description (or parts of it) aloud in class on Tuesday. Practice reading your essay out loud so that you won't trip up over your rich and impressive vocabulary.
     
  3. Send me a copy of your paper by e-mail. Your paper needs to be sent as an ATTACHMENT, so that I can read it on my computer (using Word2000).
    For online technology help, see the tutorials list, in particular, Reading and Sending Messages with Eudora
     
  4. Consider your audience in preparing your description. We will be listening to you read, not reading your paragraphs ourselves. How might that change your approach in writing this paper?

Online Resources

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E-Mail to acarr@allegheny.edu

Posted August 30, 2007
http://merlin.allegheny.edu/employee/a/acarr/fs/assign1.html