Journal of Asian Pedagogies and Teacher Formation

Descriptive detail plays a crucial role in journalistic writing by enhancing reader engagement, enriching narrative quality, and strengthening the writer’s voice. However, despite its recognized importance, early journalism education often provides limited structured training on the effective integration of sensory elements, which may contribute to student outputs that lack vividness and genre-appropriate expression, particularly in feature and editorial writing. This action research investigated the effectiveness of Project TENSE (Teaching Expressive Narratives Through Sensory Elements) in improving the writing skills of primary student journalists. The research included seven student journalists (five feature writers and two editorial writers) from Grades 5 and 6 at Don Bosco Technical Institute in Makati. A mixed-method pretest-posttest design was utilized. The writing outputs were evaluated using an analytical criterion set by the researcher, emphasizing voice, vividness, relevance, structure, and sensory detail. A post-intervention survey subsequently identified the sensory categories students found most accessible and the problems they encountered. Results indicated an increase in average writing scores from 11.86 (pretest) to 16.71 (posttest), signifying improved descriptive quality and reader engagement. Visual and auditory features were most successfully deployed and exhibited the greatest improvements, whereas olfactory and gustatory components were least utilized. Identified issues were restricted vocabulary and difficulties in including non-visual sensory elements, especially in editorial writing. Significantly, five contestants secured premier positions in a later writing competition. The findings indicate that systematic education in sensory-detail integration is a viable and efficacious approach for enhancing primary students' journalistic writing. The study addresses the instructional deficiency in teaching sensory-based descriptive skills within early journalism education.