Narrative Text

 

What is Narrative Text? When we talk about a narrative text, it cannot be separated from a story and a past experience. When learning any kind of English text, the study will cover 3 important things. They are definition, structure and language characteristics. Narrative text is a story with complication or problematic events and it tries to find the resolutions to solve the problems.

A.   Definition of Narrative

Narrative is a text focusing on specific participants. Its social function is to tell stories or past events and entertain the readers.

 

B. The purpose of Narrative text

The Purpose of narrative text is to amuse or to entertain the readers, listeners, or audiences with a story.

 

C. The generic structure of Narrative text:

1. Orientation: It sets the scene and introduces the participants (it answers the questions: who, when, what, and where).

2. Complication: It tells the problem in the story and needs to be solved.

3. Resolution: The problem (the crisis) is resolved, either in a happy ending or in a sad (tragic) ending

4) Re-orientation/Coda: This is a closing remark to the story and it is optional. It consists of  a  moral  lesson or advice from  the writer.

 

D. The Language features:

1. Use action verbs: go, sit, visit, ran, leave, bring, cry, dream, eat, etc.

2. Use past tense.

3. Use conjunctions: and, then, after that, next, etc.

4. Use temporal conjunctions: once upon a time, one day, long time ago, …

4. Use the first person (I or We) or the third person (He, She, or They).

5. Use specific nouns.

6. Use adjective and adverbs.

 

D. Example of Narrative Text

The Ugly Duckling

One upon time, a mother duck sat on her eggs. She felt tired of sitting on them. She just wished the eggs would break out.

Several days later, she got her wish. The eggs cracked and some cute little ducklings appeared. "Peep, peep" the little ducklings cried. "Quack, quack" their mother greeted in return.

However, the largest egg had not cracked. The mother duck sat on it for several days. Finally, it cracked and a huge ugly duckling waddled out. The mother duck looked at him in surprise. He was so big and very gray. He didn't look like the others at all. He was like a turkey.

When the mother duck brought the children to the pond for their first swimming lesson., the huge grey duckling splashed and paddled about just as nicely as the other ducklings did. "That is not a turkey chick. He is my very own son and quite handsome" the mother said proudly.

However, the other animals didn't agree. They hissed and made fun of him day by day. Even his own sisters and brothers were very unkind. "You are very ugly" they quacked.

The little poor duckling was very unhappy. "I wish I looked like them" he thought to himself. One day, the ugly duckling run away and hid in the bushes. The sad duckling lived alone through the cold and snow winter. Finally, the spring flowers began to bloom. While he was swimming in the pond, he saw three large white swans swimming toward him. "Oh, dear. these beautiful birds will laugh and peck me too" he said to himself. But the swans did not attack him. Instead, they swam around him and stroked him with their bills. As the ugly duckling bent his neck to speak to them, he saw his reflection in the water. He could not believe his eyes. "I am not an ugly duckling but a beautiful swam" he exclaimed.

He was very happy. From that day on, he swam and played with his new friends and was happier than he had never been.