Narrative Text

PURPOSE

• It is used to amuse/entertain the readers that is to gain and hold the reader’s interest in a story.
• It is used to teach and inform the writer's reflections on experience
• It can be imaginary or factual (fairy tales, mysteries, fables, romances, adventure stories, mythhs and legends), or it can also be a complicated event that leads to a crises that finally find a solution

GENERIC STRUCTURE
1. Orientation: introduces participants/character (who) ; sets the scene (when & where)
2. Complication: Development of a Crises: a crisis arises, something happened unexpectedly
3. Resolution: Solution of the crisis: for better or for worse
3. Re-Orientation: closing to the narrative (optional)
4. Coda: changes of characters, lesson taken from the story (optional)

LANGUAGE FEATURES

• Certain nouns are as pronoun of person, animal, certain thing in a story. e.g.: Stepsister, house work.
• Adjectives that form noun phrases, e.g.: long black air, two red apples, etc.
• Time connectives and conjunction to arrange the events, for example: then, before that, soon, etc.
• Adverb and adverbial phrase to point the place of event, for example: here, in the mountain, happily ever after.
• Action verbs are past tense: stayed, climbed, etc.
• Saying verbs that refer to what the human participants said, told, promised; and thinking verbs indicating thought, perception or feeling of the characters in a story, for example: felt, thought, understood
• Dialog often included and the tenses change according to the circumstances

Example of Narrative Text / Contoh Narrative Text

Snow White and the 7 dwarfs 

Orientation

Once upon the time the live a little girl named snow white.

Complication

One day she heard her uncle and Aunt talking about living snow white in the castle because they both wanted to go to American and they didn’t have enough money to take snow white.

Resolution

Snow white did not want her uncle and Aunt to do this so she decided it would be best if she run away. The next morning she ran away into the woods.

Complication

Then she saw this little cottage. She knocked but no one answered so she went inside and fell asleep.

Resolution

Mean while, she seven dwarfs were coming home from work they when inside. There they found Snow White sleeping. Then Snow White woke up she saw the dwarfs said, “What is your name? Snow White said, “My name is Snow White” and, one of the dwarfs, said, “If you wish, you my live here with us. Snow White said, “Oh could I? Thank you.” Then Snow White told the dwarfs the hole story and Snow White and the 7 dwarfs lived happily ever after.

Example/Contoh Narrative Text lainnya: