2. A) Read the following passage.

b) Rewrite it, paragraphing correctly.

c) Does each paragraph express a single thought? Prove, sentence by sentence, that your answer is justified. Indicate any points at which you would recommend a new paragraph division, and any parts of the paragraph that you would omit.

d) Give the passage a title.

Sam Perkins grew up on a cotton plantation in South Carolina. At 18, after a number of adventures, he found himself in Chicago, working half a day in a restau­rant and spending all his spare time on education. He studied geography and history. It was in his drawing classes, however, that Sam achieved his greatest successes. The teacher of drawing was a specialist who taught only this subject. She was a white woman named Frances Balston – tall, dark, with brown eyes and wavy hair. Sam liked her from the first lesson, when he watched her arrange a rose on a piece of white paper as the model for class work. Sam finished his rose. Then putting another piece of paper over the drawing he began to make idle lines. He glanced across the room. Between him and the north window sat a Negro girl, her head and shoulders outlined against the sky. Instantly Sam’s pencil was working. He did not see Miss Balston across the room, did not feel her standing there, till he woke to find the whole class looking and laughing.

Description

There are two kinds of descriptions:

1. Technical description gives an objective account of the appearance or structure of a thing;

2. Suggestive description evokes an impression of a place, scene, or person. Suggestive description is primarily emotional.

Technical description a Sitting Room

As you come into the room, you will notice a piano with a low music-stool in front of it. Next to the piano, a tall bookcase stands against the wall. On the left there is a large window. Under the window there is a radiator, but you cannot see it because it is behind the settee. On the settee there are two cushions. The fire-place is at the other end of the room. On each side of the fire-place there is an arm-chair. In the centre of the mantelpiece there is a clock, and above it an oval mirror. On the right you can see a standard lamp.

Opposite the fire-place you can see a small table with an ash-tray and some newspapers on it. By the table there is a small chair.

The floor is covered with a beautiful thick carpet. A chandelier hangs from the middle of the ceiling. At night, when it gets dark, we switch on the light and draw the curtains. During the day the light comes in through the window.

Description of a place or scene (Suggestive Description)

In describing a place or a scene you should first determine the central emotional effect which you wish to produce. Then you should select the details which will most effectively develop this impression and present them as vividly as you can.

For the purpose of illustration, consider the passage by John Galsworthy quoted from The Apple Tree.

Spring was a revelation to him this year. In a kind of intoxication he would watch the pink-white buds of some backward birch tree sprayed up in the sunlight against the deep blue sky, or the trunks and limbs of the few Scotch firs tawny in violet light, or, on the moor, the gale-bent larches which had such a look of life when the wind streamed in their young green, above the rusty black underboughs. Or, he would lie on the banks, gazing at the clusters of clog-violets, or up in the dead bracken, fingering the pink, transparent buds of the dewberry, while the cuckoos called and yaffles laughed, or a lark, from very high dripped its beads of song.