Narrative Text

The Mouse, the Frog, and the Hawk

A Mouse who always lived on the land, by an unlucky chance, formed an intimate acquaintance with a Frog, who lived, for the most part, in the water.

One day, the Frog was intent on mischief. He tied the foot of the Mouse tightly to his own. Thus joined together, the Frog led his friend the Mouse to the meadow where they usually searched for food.
After this, he gradually led him towards the pond in which he lived, until reaching the banks of the water, he suddenly jumped in, dragging the Mouse with him.

The Frog enjoyed the water amazingly, and swam croaking about, as if he had done a good deed. The unhappy Mouse was soon sputtered and drowned in the water, and his poor dead body floating about on the surface.
A Hawk observed the foating Mouse from the sky, and dove down and grabbed it with his talons, carrying it back to his nest. The Frog, being still fastened to the leg of the Mouse, was also carried off a prisoner, and was eaten by the Hawk.

"Choose your allies carefully"

Narrative Text

Principally, to tell a story means to make other people “enjoy, listen to, and think” the things we tell about. According to Derewianka (1990), the main goal of telling a story is to entertain, to get and to pay the attention of the readers or the listeners for what we tell them. However, telling a story can also have a function to educate or to inform, to express the author’s reflection about his experiences, and the last but not at least is to arouse the readers imagination.In our daily activities, we often tell something to our friends or our family, don’t we? We tell good news at our school or in our neighborhood, we also read or listen to news or story from others, we tell everything to friends, family and our relatives.

There are some kinds of narrative text. Narrative text is usually imaginative, but sometimes can be factual (really happened). Those belong to narrative text among others are fairy stories, mysteries, science fictions, romaines, horrors etc.

How is narrative text composed? Or what is the generic structure of Narrative text? Generally, a Narrative starts with Orientation, where the writer describes “the world” of his story. In this phase, the readers are acquainted to the characters or the participants of the story, and sometimes they are informed where and when the story took place. An atmosphere is created to make the readers curious to follow the story. Orientation can be shortly written, or can also be some pages of length.

In the middle of a narrative there will be a complication or a problem. Complication will make the story more interesting to enjoy, because on this phase the characters will face some handicaps to achieve their goals. Complication reflects reality life, and it makes the readers sure that there are always resolutions for any problems.

A good narrative gives a resolution for the complication. The resolution will finish the complication, even though there are also stories which let the readers think about the end of the stories or how the stories are resolved.

So we can conclude that the generic structure of a narrative text is :
• Orientation (the beginning or introduction) introduces main characters, setting and time.
• Complication ( middle ): the problem happens among the characters.
• Resolution (ending) : the problem is resolved.
A narrative text usually has moral value.

Based on the significant lexical grammatical, here are the characteristics of Narrative text :

• A specific participant, sometimes can be individual
• Uses many action verb (material processes) and also verbal and mental processes
• Often uses past tense
• Uses many linking words related to time
• Uses dialogues so the tense can be possibly changed
• Descriptive language is used to create imagination in the mind of the readers

• Can be written as the first person (I), or the third person (He, She, They). The use of the singular second person (you) is often used in the story of “choose-your-own-adventure”.

Cultural Notes

 

1.     About meals in Britain. The main meal of the day for most British people is the evening meal. Seven out of ten families with chidren sit down at a table for their weekday evening meal. What about Indonesian people? Which meal is the main meal of the day? 

2.     The U.S. government have strict rules about what things you can throw into the garbage and what things you cannot. People who break the rules have to pay large fines. What about in Indonesia?

Simple Sentence Using Be (Present)

I am busy.

You are tired.

She is sad.

No	Subject Pronoun	Be (am, is, are)	Adjective
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.	I You He She It We They	am are is is is are are	busy tired sad diligent big happy kind

Make your own sentences using S + be!

Pronoun

PRONOUN

	Subject Pronoun	Object Pronoun	Possessive Adjective	Possessive Pronoun	Reflexive
	... did it.	Show...	...book	It is ...	Hurt...
Sing.	I you he she it	me you him her it	my your his her its	mine yours his hers	myself yorself himself herself itself
Plural	we you they	us you them	our your their	ours yours theirs	ourselves yourselves themselves

Cultural Notes

In the U.S. culture, people keep pets, such as dogs on leashed. Dogs should not be left wander. There is a strict rule on keeping dogs. What about in Indonesia. Is there a strict rule on keeping dogs? What animals are kept as pets in Indonesia?

Kinds of Recount

The social function of Recount text is to retell past event or something which happened in the past. The purpose of this text can be only to inform or even just to entertain. Derewianka (1990) identified three types of Recount text, namely Personal Recount, Factual Recount, and Imaginative Recount. Personal Recount exposes an event in which the writer or the author got involved or acted in the event himself. Belong to this type among others are daily funny incidents, entries of a diary, etc. Factual Recount is a note of an event, such as scientific experiment report, police report, newspaper report, history explanation, etc. Imaginative Recount is an unreal event or story, like reading texts for language lesson, a story about a life of a slave, etc. Hardy and Kalrwein (1990) divided two kinds of Recount, namely Personal Recount and Historical Recount.