There are words in the English language that mimic a natural sound. When these sounds the words make directly reflect the meaning of the word, we refer to this an example of onomatopoeia. When onomatopoeia is used it can help build the mood and tone of the story or even a sentence. For example if we looked at an example of a sentence that employs this technique versus one that does not, it is evident. What if we look at the difference between two sentences, one that uses this technique and one that does not. Sentence 1: The car drove by. Sentence 2: The car whizzed by. In both sentence we know a car is in motion, but the second sentence tells us that thing is moving fast. This is all achieved by just changing one word.

Onomatopoeia is often found in many great works of literature. It can help create worlds and a sense for characters of a story like no other. Any work that draws upon and elicits an emotional response from a reader will often use this technique to achieve it. These worksheets will help students learn to identify and use onomatopoeia in their own work. This series of worksheets can help you learn how to apply this in your writing. The worksheets start out by learning to identify the usage in other writer’s work. We start out by working with sentences and transition to multi-sentence groups and ultimately land on working in a paragraph environment. We eventually work up to constructing our own sentences which leads us to paragraph writing as well. I would encourage students to brainstorm words by saying them aloud. I often find that when you explore at least five word choices, you have a much better outcome. This is one of those skills that may require you to look up a few words at first. As you gain experience, it will come easy for you.