How to Write a Descriptive Essay on Canadian Food

Writing guide
Posted on December 9, 2015

Writing an essay on an unfamiliar topic is always hard; it is doubly hard when it comes to a descriptive essay. By definition, a descriptive essay is supposed to recount your own experience, perception or memory – and when you don’t have anything in your life to base the description on, the problem is obvious.

What are you supposed to do in such a situation? Imagine or make things up as you go along? Probably not – there is always an opportunity to say something silly, even if you do your research.

No, in this case it is better to stick to the facts and avoid talking as if you actually experienced what you are describing. Let’s take an example – you have to write a descriptive essay about Canadian food but you have never been to Canada, eaten any Canadian dishes, or given these dishes any thought whatsoever (that’s not a problem if you’ve already seen our interesting facts on Canadian food).

Normally, a descriptive essay is based on your own five senses: sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. You recount something from your memory (or, better yet, something you have in front yourself at this very moment) and try not so much to tell about it but to show it to the reader.

Enumerate its qualities, give a detailed description of each of them and try to make the reader feel as if they see the object in front of them.

When it comes to something you’ve never seen, the task becomes different. You should collect all the information about the object (concept, person, situation, experience) you are about to write, all the factual data, and try to use it to formulate a most complete and detailed description of the subject at hand.

  • First you need to choose the topic which can be selected from the suggested list. If you’ve decided to describe a particular dish of Canadian cuisine, you should find its photo; learn what ingredients it consists of, if there are any regional variants and so on. You’ve never seen, tasted or smelled it in real life, so you should be content to give the most detailed description based on your vicarious knowledge of the subject.
  • Make sure every paragraph pursues its own goal and is connected with the preceding and following ones logically and in terms of pacing. If you notice that your essay jumps forwards and backwards, touching upon the appearance of the object, going on to describe your own emotions about it and then continuing with outward description, try to rearrange the text so that it makes for a better composition.
  • Ideally, you should start writing with a plan, detailing which points you are going to mention and cover in each paragraph and what logical connections you are going to use to connect parts of the essay with each other.

Of course, there is no ideal way to write a descriptive essay about something you have no actual experience of. However, vivid imagery and liberal use of verifiable facts are going to be of great help – and who knows, perhaps you will be capable of writing an even better description than those who were limited with actual memories of the subject. Feel free to get descriptive essay writing help on any topic you need. Visit our website!

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