Narration & Description: Student Writers
Santi Buscemi
But narration, and description are very sophisticated skills that are used by scientists, and by business writers and by professionals in almost every field. And so we need to teach students these skills. If a scientist is going to describe an animal, or describe a geological formation, or explain a geological formation, that's description. If a biologist or a botanist is going to explain a living thing, description is involved. Or what about explaining a mechanism. A machine. Or how a bridge is built. Description is involved there. So those are important skills.

Gregory Andrus
When I was a young boy, there was absolutely no separation between what was beautiful, what was pure, what was brilliant and warm, and what was my mother at her piano. She was not unlike some exquisite, exotic animal perched on her bench when she was playing. Her long hair would cascade down her back. Her eyes, proud and dignified as if she were royalty, looked straight ahead at her sheet music, and her long slender arms extended to the keyboard where her elegant, tiny fingers would almost seem to caress the very keys they would depress.

Megumi Taniguchi
Descriptive writing or personal writing, it really is a place that students feel comfortable. And they really are able to engage with the writing. And for a lot of people, once they had to write about themselves then they realize "Hey, I have interesting story to tell, I'm a good writer, I can do this." And that's when they start to open up.

Gregory Andrus
I would even be remiss in saying she "played" the piano. For with my mother, it was clear that she seduced, she conquered, and then she made love to the piano. Every piece she played, whether it was Mozart or Rachmaninoff, she played with such passion that the very notes seemed to have been individually written by these master composers for her fingers, and her fingers only.

I think the sensuousness of her playing, and the effect it had on the men at the parties she played at, paid a heavy toll on my father's psyche, for many times after a party, she would leave with my father sulking. My father never had much appreciation for my mother's talents, and he even seemed to feel threatened by them.

Taniguchi
It also is a very important foundation, I think, for being able to write clearly and concisely, and descriptively and thoroughly, and all the different types of writing. And then we build on that with the different levels of academic writing. It's really to me, the bridge between the personal writing and the academic writing.

Chitra Divakaruni
Narrative skills, descriptive skills, those are very important, in very unusual fields. Let's say you are a police officer, you're writing up a case report, you have to be able to describe this person you're writing about. Or you have to be able to put a narrative event in order.

Lynn Troyka
People think by describing something, by telling how it works, by telling the story and comparing them. Therefore those modes of thinking are wonderful to practice because it just makes a person an educated, as it were, person, in the world more familiar with those modes of communication and thought they're gonna hear for the rest of their lives.