Hello again! In my previous post i wrote about an overview of a recount text. As promised, in this post I will tell you about the structure and language features of a recount text. If you understand this pattern, it will be easy for you to understand and analyze the text.
The structure of a recount consists of:
- Orientation or Opening: Information about who, where and when
- Series of events in the order that they occurred
Sometimes a recount can also be literary. You may pay attention to:
- Personal comments and/or evaluation remarks (interspersed throughout the record)
- A reorientation, which ‘rounds off’ the sequence of events
A recount text usually uses the following language features:
- descriptive language
- past tense
- time words to connect events
- words which tell us where, when, with, who, how
The following checklist may be useful when you read and finally decide whether a text is a recount:
- Does it have an introduction giving a rough idea of what it is about? (The W’s)
- Is it in time order? (In the order in which things happened)
- Are there suitable time connectives such as next, after, finally?
- Does it have an ending that brings the writing a clear end?
- Is it in the past tense?
- Is it written mostly using ‘I’ or ‘we’? (if a personal recount)
- Have adjectives and adverbs been used effectively?
- Has it been written with an idea of who it was written for?