A Prized Possession

Descriptive Writing CourseworkEnglish IGCSE

What objects would you rescue if your house was about to burn down?

Is there a relationship between monetary value and the things you treasure most?

Can a value be placed on all objects?

How might you go about describing prized possession?

Prized possession

Physical attributes

Its origins and how you

came to possess it

What it makes you

think about, remember

and feel

Why you value it

SizeShapeColourTextureSmellTaste

WeightFunction

Physical Attributes

How did you come to possess it?

Who gave it to you?

When did you receive it?

Where were you when you received it?

Why did you come to possess it?

Origins

What does the object make you think about?

What do you feel about the object?

What memories do you associate with it?

Associations

Why do you value this object?

What does it mean to you?

Value

Does a photograph accurately ‘describe’ an object?

Can a painting capture aspects of an object that a photograph cannot?

Your task is to describe your object as a word painting rather than a photograph!

Figurative language

Adjectives to support nouns

Multi-sensory appeal

Concrete details

Varied sentence length & structures

Interesting vocabulary

Personal & imaginative content

Atmospheric

Controlled framing

Controlled framing

• Close up description of attributes

• Place object in context (time and place)

• Origins of the object

• What it makes you think and feel and remember

• Why you value the object.

Example text: The Lampstand

For much of my early childhood, nestled in one corner of my father's study, there stood a squat and rather ugly table lamp. It was the 1970s and the fashion of the day was for small, cheap tubular shades in orange and other fiery tones. The shade bore no tassels and hovered over the base which was an object of much mystery to me. It was fashioned in metal and was the size of two bunched fists, one atop the other with a hole drilled through the centre where the flex fed into the bulb. It was shaped like a broken heart, nestled above the jagged legs of a robotic tarantula and its entire surface was jagged and barbed like some strange alien cactus.

Its appearance was in no way beautified by its colour; the lamp stand was a mass of rusty browns and greens. It was a brutal modern art sculpture and very much out of place in my family’s home. For years I had no idea of its origins and, like so many things in childhood, I stopped noticing it after a while and it blended into the world of objects around me.

One afternoon in late November when I had come home from university for a weekend, I was sat on the windowsill, watching rivulets of rain criss-crossing their way down the study window when my gaze was drawn once again to the curious spiked fingers of the lamp stand. My father was once again serving an extended tour with his Regiment overseas and my mum was wearing a brave face while she waited for his return in the New Year.

She had just bought me a welcome, steaming mug of tea and noticed me staring at the lamp. She joined me in my vigil and I noticed that she was shuddering while her face took on a haunted expression. I reached out for the mug which betrayed her trembling hand and asked her what was wrong. What she told me meant that I would never again look at that lamp in the same way.

The violently twisted metal of the stand was not as I have assumed, a rather tasteless piece of art, but was instead a 2 kg shard of shrapnel that had come close to killing my father when he was serving in Northern Ireland during the mid-1970s. Apparently, dad was kneeling beside a brick wall, his rifle cocked in his arm as he attempted to radio his position to HQ when the air above him suddenly shrieked venomously and he was showered in red dust and chips of terracotta as the bricks all around him rained down debris.

An IRA mortar ambush had taken place and had my father remained standing just a few moments longer, the red hot missile would have torn through his body and killed him outright. By fate, or sheer luck, he had escaped that grisly end and, once he had caught his breath, he took his bayonet, prised the savage fragment from the wall, and carried it back to base before, in due course, bringing it home.

My father has never been one to tell war stories; his time in service is always something he's protected my sister and I from and so it's not surprising that growing up, I never learned of the lamp’s real identity. He quietly carved a wooden base from a piece of oak, wired in the bulb and the lump of shrapnel sat in a corner of his study as a reminder that life is fragile and very precious.

That strangest of lamps is still in my parents’ house, and I often find myself hypnotised by its blade blistered surface; it evokes in me an odd mix of melancholy, pride and relief. Had that missile cut its way in a slightly more downward angle, or had my father not crouched to make his radio call, I would have grown up without him. But he did crouch, and there are few sights I gain more pleasure from than watching dad nestled in his armchair, reading a favourite book by warm lamplight.