When handled well, description can give poetry and prose a quality of immediacy and accessibility by creating a dramatic context in which the writer's ideas and feelings can be shared by the reader. The use of perception stimulation can aid the student in producing effective images that lead to this dramatic context. To begin this learning process, students need to develop into accurate and sensitive perceivers by realizing, first, that people often do not perceive carefully enough and, second, that they perceive differently. A number of exercises can demonstrate these points. One exercise tests the students' ability to read carefully by asking them to follow a series of directions. Another exercise asks the class to reproduce a geometric configuration through verbal directions. After students realize that people perceive differently and often not well enough, exercises can be used to encourage them to strive for accurate and sensitive perception, which leads to effective images--images that are specific, concrete, and unique, and that create a clear picture of an object as well as convey an attitude or impression toward it by using figurative language and connotations. Finally, the Zen perspective on perception can be used to help students acquire and use the skills just learned by focusing the quality of their observations. (Sample exercises are included.) (HOD)