Self-Access Language Learning

Narrative Text

Definition:

Narrative text is an imaginative story to entertain people.

Purpose:

The Purpose of Narrative Text is to amuse or to entertain the reader with a story.

Generic structure:

–      Orientation : It is about the opening paragraph where the characters of the story are introduced.

–      Complication : Where the problems in the story developed.

–      Resolution : Where the problems in the story is solved.

–      Coda / reorientation (optional) – lesson from the story.

Language Feature:

–      Past tense (killed, drunk, etc)

–      Adverb of time (Once upon a time, one day, etc)

–      Time conjunction (when, then, suddenly, etc)

–      Specific character. The character of the story is specific, not general. (Cinderella, Snow White, Alibaba, etc)

–      Action verbs. A verb that shows an action. (killed, dug, walked, etc)

–      Direct speech. It is to make the story lively. (Snow White said, ”My name is Snow White”). The direct speech uses present tense.

Kinds of Narrative Text

–      Fable                           

–      Folktales

–      fairy tales

–      myth

–      legend

Example:

True Friends

Once upon a time, there were two close friends who were walking through the forest together. They knew that anything dangerous can happen any time in the forest. So they promised each other that they would always be together in any case of danger.

Suddenly, they saw a large bear getting closer toward them. One of them climbed a nearby tree at once. But unfortunately the other one did not know how to climb up the tree. So being led by his common sense, he lay down on the ground breathless and pretended to be a dead man.

The bear came near the one who was lying on the ground. It smelt in his ears, and slowly left the place because the bears do not want to touch the dead creatures. After that, the friend on the tree came down and asked his friend that was on the ground, “Friend, what did the bear whisper into your ears?” The other friend replied, “Just now the bear advised me not to believe a false friend.”

Read the following text and identify its generic structure! Write it in the table below!

The Ant and the Dove

One hot day, an ant was seeking for some water. After walking around for a moment, she came to a spring. To reach the spring, she had to climb up a blade of grass. While making her way up, she slipped and fell unintentionally into the water.

She could have sunk if a dove up a nearby tree had not seen her. Seeing that the ant was in trouble, the dove quickly put off a leaf from a tree and dropped it immediately into the water near the struggling ant. Then the ant moved towards the leaf and climbed up there. Soon it carried her safely to dry ground.

Not long after at that, there was a hunter nearby who was throwing out his net towards the dove, hoping to trap it in this way.

Guessing what he should do, the ant quickly bit him on the heel. Feeling the pain, the hunter dropped his net and the dove flew away quickly from this net.