stages of writing descriptive text

b. Descriptive text: Elephants

The African Elephant is described as the Loxodonta africana of Africa. They are very large, grey, four-legged herbivorous mammals. They have almost hairless skin, a distinctive long, flexible, prehensile trunk. Its upper incisors form long curved tusks of ivory. African elephants have large fan-shaped ears and two “fingers” at the tip of its trunk, compared to only one in the Asian species. Furthermore, the Indian Elephant is described as Elephas maximus of south-central Asia. The ears of Indian elephants are significantly smaller than African elephants.

Elephants are herbivores and eat all types of vegetation such as grasses, leaves, fruits, and bark. The facts tell that despite the size of ears the elephant’s hearing is poor, because elephants ears are used to aid ventilation. One of the softest parts of their body is at the back of the ears, which is called the knuckle. In a zoo, elephant trainers, called Mahouts, use their feet to steer or give commands to the animal via the knuckle at the back of the ears.

Some other facts about the elephants are : The elephant is the largest of all land mammals; Life Span - elephants can live for up to 70 years; Elephants normally walk about 4 mph; Elephants are able to swim for long distances; Elephants spend about 16 hours a day eating; They consume as much as 495 pounds of food per day; They live in tight social units led by an older matriarch; Males leave the herd between the ages of 12 and 15; Their tusks are of ivory and are actually enormously enlarged incisors; The elephant's eyes are small and its eyesight is poor, They have the largest brains in the animal kingdom.

Stages	Activities
Planning	-          Decide what I am going to write (a descriptive text about elephants). -          Finding details information about what we are going to write (Elephants). -          Making detailed notes (all detail information about elephants). -          Write down any preliminary notes. -          Consider the purpose of the writing (a descriptive text about elephants). -          Consider the audience the writing for (junior high and senior high school students). -          The content structure of the piece of writing (see example above).
Drafting	-          Write the first, second version of piece of writing before write the final draft ( the example above is the final draft).
Editing	-          Read through the draft carefully to see where it work or not related the text. -          Give more attention at issues of general meaning, overall structure and grammatical accuracy. -          Asking help to credible reader or editor (in this case  the writer English asking other English teacher to give comment and suggestion).
Publishing	-          Use the text (descriptive text about elephants) as one of the text in teaching descriptive.