B. RECOUNT

B. RECOUNT 

    

Purpose:

• IT IS USED TO TELL PAST EXPERIENCE (what we or someone did, what took place) that is aimed at informing and entertaining

       TYPES:

• Personal recount ( retelling of an activity that the speaker/writer has been personally involved) e.g. oral anecdote, diary entry, biography
• Factual recount (recording the particulars of an incident e.g. police report, news report)
• Imaginative recount (taking on an imaginary role and giving details of events) e.g. a day in the life of ………

GENERIC STRUCTURE OF RECOUNT TEXT

A. ORIENTATION:

• It provides information about the setting (when & where) and introduces participants/character (who)

B. EVENTS:

• It  tell what happened, in temporal sequence(personal comment/expression of evaluation)

C. RE-ORIENTATION (optional):

• Its closure of events (e.g. comments or conclusion)

LANGUAGE FEATURES: 

• Noun and pronoun as substitution of person, animal, involved thing, E.g.: David, the Monkey, We, etc.
• Specific participants (Mr./Mrs ……, our dog, the thief)
• Using Past Tense
• Action verbs/material processes (went, slept, ran, caught, arrived, bought, looked at) E.g. He went to the zoo; She was happy. 
• Temporal sequence (on Friday, one day, at the beginning, in the end, first, then, next, before, later, finally, etc)

Narrative and recount in some ways are similar. Both are telling something in the past so narrative and recount usually apply PAST TENSE; whether Simple Past Tense, Simple Past Continuous Tense, or Past Perfect Tense. The ways narrative and recount told are in chronological order using time or place. Commonly narrative text is found in story book; myth, fable, folklore, etc while recount text is found in biography.

The thing that makes narrative and recount different is the structure in which they are constructed. Narrative uses conflicts among the participants whether natural conflict, social conflict or psychological conflict. In some ways narrative text combines all these conflicts. In the contrary, we do not find these conflicts inside recount text. Recount applies series of event as the basic structure.

sample:

Orientation: I was driving along to the coast road when the car suddenly  lurched to one side.

Series of events: 

Event 1         :At.first,I.thought.tire.had.gone
Event 2         :Then,I.telegraph.phones.collapsing.like.sticks.
Event 3         :The rocks came tumbling across the road and I had to abandon the car     

Re-orientation : When I got back to the town, well, as I said, there wasn’t    much   left