Name: Become a better writer: How to use personification
Uploaded: 2019-02-26T14:03:35.000Z
Duration: 9 min 51 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Today we have a writing lesson for you to transform your writing so that it becomes richer and more interesting to read.

We're talking about personification today.

"Personification", let's just write it, there.

"Person", "fication" - that suffix means making into.

So, we're making into a person  an object or a non-human thing.

If I say: "The car screamed", I'm exaggerating the noise of the car.

It's obviously got a very powerful engine; slightly antisocial.

It exaggerates how much of a hurry this car is in.

Which one of these words do you think would go with "sun"?

So, it's either going to be a nice feeling, the sun - it's warming us; or it's too hot,

in which case it's going to be slightly unpleasant.

"The sun spat" - no, that sounds more like rain than sunshine to me.

It's looking and it's quite harmful, these rays.

The sun glared out, shining its harmful UV rays into the person's skin."

The house can either: "spit", "sit", or "watch".

"The nightclub spat out the drunk", but I don't think we're going to have a house spitting.

"The house was perched; the house was sat on the top of the hill from which there was a fantastic view."

Let's go for the ones that's easiest first; it's always a good exam technique - you go

"The washing machine spat out the dirty clothes at the end of the cycle."

A "cycle" is a complete sort of revolution; it's a complete trip in the washing machine.

It's when the clothes go in and it finishes.

That means we have: "The clock" and "watched".

"The clock watched the inhabitants of the house mournfully."

"Mournfully" - an adverb to express sadness.

What we're doing is we're bringing to life these objects.

We don't say: "he" or "she" for objects, like you do in other languages, but we can use

personification to describe and give things more of a quality.

Let's have another go: "The washing machine _________ my change".

So, a vending machine is something, you know, you put a coin in, get a can of Coke or get a chocolate bar, or something healthier.

I've put some money into the vending machine, and it's taken that money and not given me a can of Coke.

So, obviously that's quite annoying, so I want to turn this vending machine into an annoying person.

So, what's going to be an annoying action?

I need to describe the swallowing of my change.

That's something a human could do; a human swallows.

Let's have that kind of idea, but I'm going to use: "gobbled up".

"The vending machine gobbled up my change."

"It _________ at me as if it had not done anything wrong."

So, I don't know about you, but when I'm a teacher and I look out to my class and I catch

someone doing something they shouldn't do, and they'll often go: "Mm, no.

We're trying to turn them into a human being.

"It stared at me as if it had not done anything."

Obviously, the vending machine doesn't eyes...

Doesn't have eyes, but we're giving it a human characteristic.

I've got four examples, here, that I would like you to have a go at.

You're going to have to give this shoe either a good quality or a bad quality.

Is it doing something nice or doing something annoying?

You're going to be doing the same with the "hoover".

"Hoover" is quite an English word for "vacuum cleaner".

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Become a better writer: How to use personification

sort

nasty

slightly

exaggerate