Bahasa Inggris SLTP dan SLTA : Penjelasan Tentang Teks Recount

Recount, according to Djuharie(2007: 44) is one kind of texts (genre) which the content tries to report incidents, events, or activities occurred to someone, or someone’s experiences. The purpose of this text is to inform and entertain the audience (listener or reader).

Recount text is nearly the same with Anecdote if we see from the purpose to expose certain activities or happenings passed. The main difference is that anecdote has funny and entertained part. Because of this difference, recount and anecdote also use different generic structure and its lexico-grammatical features.

Based on the book of English on Sky (EOS) 2, an English book for Junior High School students Year VIII, this text type is classified into three kinds of recount. They are:

1.   Personal Recount

            A personal recount usually retells an experience in which the writer/speaker was personally involved.

2.   Procedural Recount

      A procedural recount records events such as a science experiment or a cooking experience

3.   Biographical Recount

      The purpose of a biographical recount is to inform by retelling past events and achievements in persons’ life.

While Derewianka (1990) as cited in KBK English (2005) classifies 3 types of recount text, i.e.:

1.  Personal Recount is information of certain event where the writer is involved, did it by himself. e.g.; funny stories, experiences written in diary, etc.

            2.   Factual Recount

Factual recount is a report of certain incidents, e.g.; science experiment report, police report, the report in newspaper, history, explanation, etc.

            3.   Imaginative Recount

Imaginative Recount is an unreal story of events, e.g.; the passage for language learning, the story of slavery life, etc.

Below is the example of personal recount text

Last summer holiday, my family and I spent one night at the countryside. We stayed in a small house. It had a big garden with lots of colorful flowers and swimming pool. (Orientation)

First, we made a fire in front of the house. Then, we sat around the fire and sang many songs together. After that, we came into the house and had dinner. Next, we sat in the living room and watched a movie. Finally, everybody fell asleep there. (Sequence of events)

We woke up very late in the morning and had breakfast. In the afternoon, we went home. We were all very happy. (Reorientation).