I am one of the leaders of fiction reading discussion. For this discussion, two articles were given, and students had to answer some questions about these two articles. The first article was titled “The Burlington Northern Southbound” and the second article was “Kim Church: Bullet”. Students had to answer questions like: what interested them the most about the stories?, how well did the authors describe the item?, etc. Some questions also asked the information that students got from reading these descriptions and if they found anything useful for their technical description assignment. 

Since the first posts from students were divided between my partner and I, we read many opinions about these two articles, and we realized that students were mostly saying that the article “Kim Church: Bullet” was better at describing the item, compared to the other one. They found the article “The Burlington Northern Southbound” very confusing, and they were not able to understand for which object was the author talking about, until the end of the article. Both these articles helped students to realise what they should include or should not include in their  technical description assignment. The main difference between these two articles and the technical description assignments is feelings. In both articles, the feelings of the authors about the item were shown in the stories, but students should not include their feelings or thoughts about the product that they are presenting. Students were aware that they should do a detailed description of their item, and also they should mention the item at the beginning of the writing. The detailed description of the item includes the color, size and material of the object, and these informations were well described in the second article.

To sum up, these articles were important to read. Even though they are not technical descriptions, and students didn’t find these helpful, unconsciously students got a lot of information from these articles. These articles gave ideas of what students should include and should avoid saying in their technical description assignment. These articles do a great job in portraying the visualization so vividly to the students, that make the reader feel part of the story. Students were also having conversations with each other, sharing ideas and helping each other.