Abstract:
Vision is crucial in normal language acquisition because it is responsible for a great deal of
human communication. The absence of this can lead to significant changes in language
patterns due to insufficient input and reinforcement from the visual channel. Descriptive
writing, which is sometimes called showing writing, involves the use of elaborate sensory
language, specific details and concrete words. The aim of any descriptive writing is to create
a mental picture of what is being described to the reader. Visually impaired learners like
their sighted counterparts, need to describe the world around them. Lack of vision as the
primary channel of description may affect the kind of writing they do. Despite studies having
been conducted on the visually impaired learners, there is little documented literature on
descriptive compositions for this population. This paper therefore examined the written works
for the visually impaired students with a view to determining the descriptive characteristics
found in the students’ written English compositions. Further, it sought to establish the
descriptive characteristics that were likely to disadvantage the visually impaired students.
The study was carried out in Salvation Army (hereafter S.A) Thika High school for the
visually challenged persons. The school is found in Thika town, Kiambu County in Kenya. A
descriptive research design was used. The population of the study comprised form three
visually impaired students and their teachers of English. The students were asked to write a
descriptive composition on a given topic. These compositions formed the linguistic data for
this study. Additional data was collected from purposively sampled teachers using
questionnaires to elicit data on the descriptive features in the students’ compositions, and an
interview schedule to obtain data on the descriptive characteristics that were likely to
disadvantage the visually impaired students. The findings revealed that concepts denoting
colour, shape, size, movement, texture and space were difficult to conceptualize hence
difficult to describe. Most of the information a human being receives, comes from the vision
channel. Consequently, in order for one to give a good description, the brain combines the
visual details with other sees.
Keywords: Descriptive power, descriptive writing, legal blindness, visually impaired, vision.
