Last Sunday, my mother brought me to the shopping mall to buy a toy

Last Sunday, my mother brought me to Toys R Us to buy a Barbie Doll.

Just a simple act of replacing the general terms with specific terms can help to paint a picture in the readers’ minds. Readers are able to see Toys R Us and Barbie Doll in their minds. That is how you can use this composition writing technique of being specific in your English compositions.

Here’s another example:

My neighbour and I like to play together in the park after school.

Can you spot the general words in this sentence?

They are ‘neighbour’, ‘play’ and ‘park’.

Now, if we replace these words with more specific terms, the sentence now reads:

David and I like to play soccer together in Bishan Park after school.

Are you able to picture David and the writer, playing soccer in Bishan Park?

Let’s try another sentence:

One afternoon, my brother and I were eating at a food court.

Which general terms can we replace?
How about ‘brother’, ‘eating’ and ‘food court’?

The sentence can be rewritten as:

One afternoon, my brother, Jason and I were eating Japanese Ramen at Jurong Point Food Court.

COMPOSITION WRITING TECHNIQUE – BE SPECIFIC

Try this activity with your child.

• Take a look at your child’s latest piece of writing or composition.
• Read it together with your child and get him/her to underline all the general terms in the story.
• Ask your child to replace each general term with a more specific term.
• Read the story again and see if it sounds more interesting now.

This is a simple way of getting our kids to write better and it is only one of the many composition writing techniques that primary school students can learn. As children progress from using general terms to more specific terms, they can be taught to expand their sentences to include more vivid descriptions. The art of story-telling and writing is to paint a picture in the readers’ mind.

Enrol in our composition writing classes or online composition writing programmes to learn more writing techniques.