Writing Skills - Linguistic Specificity

Specific and descriptive writing is the expressive goal. Language impaired children frequently use non-specific words in their speech and in their writing. For example, one of the most common words my students use to express an emotion is “upset”. I challenge my students to replace that word with a more specific emotion, such as “disappointed”, “sullen”, “outraged”, or “frustrated”. This straightforward exercise requires students to replace underlined non-specific terms, such as “good” and “people”, with specific nouns and adjectives in sentences. This worksheet lends itself well to group sessions and the classroom, because within group contexts students can hear several variations of replacements, and can evaluate the effectiveness of each. An answer key with multiple possible replacements is included.