Narrative Text

Narrative Text, adalah teks yang isinya merupakan cerita atau kisah tentang sesuatu. Contoh narrative text: cerita rakyat (folktale), cerita binatang (fable), Legenda (legend), cerita pendek (short story), dan sejenisnya. Di dalamnya terdapat konflik/puncak masalah yang diikuti dengan penyelesaian. Fungsi utama teks ini adalah untuk berkisah atau menghibur pembaca.

Ciri-ciri narrative text:

1. Generic Structure:

• Orientation: berisi pengenalan tokoh, tempat dan waktu terjadinya cerita (siapa atau apa, kapan dan dimana)
• Complication: Berisi puncak konflik/masalah dalam cerita. Sebuah cerita boleh memiliki complication lebih dari satu.
• Resolution: Pemecahan masalah. Bisa berakhir dengan kegembiraan (happy ending) bisa pula berakhir dengan kesedihan (sad ending).

Catatan:

Terkadang juga susunannya (generic structure): Orientation, Complication, Evaluation, Resolution dan Reorientation. Untuk “Evaluation” dan “Reorientation” merupakan optional; bisa ada bisa tidak. Evaluation berisi penilaian/evaluasi terhadap jalannya cerita atau konflik. Sedangkan Reorientation berisi penyimpulan isi akhir cerita.

2. Grammatical features menggunakan tenses “past”
3. Sering menggunakan kata penghubung waktu (temporal conjunction), misalnya: once upon a time, one day, long time ago, …

Contoh Narrative Text:

Ali Baba

Once upon a time there were 40 cruel thieves who put their stolen money and treasures in a cave. They went in the cave by saying ”Open Sesame” to the cave entrance. A poor person, named Ali Baba saw them while they were doing that, so he heard the opening word. After they left, he went toward the cave and opened it. Suddenly he found a very large quantity of money and golden treasures. He took some of it and went back home. After that he became a rich man and his brother wanted to know how he became rich.

Ali Baba turned into the richest man in his village. His evil brother was really jealous of him, and wanted to know how he could get such a lot of money. Therefore, when Ali Baba went to the cave again to take some more money, his brother followed him. He saw everything, and decided to go back the next day to take some money for himself. The next morning he found a lot of money in the cave, and he wanted to take all of them. Unfortunately, when he was busy carrying the money to his house, the thieves came. The boss of the thieves asked him how he knew about the cave. He told everything, but unluckily they killed him and went to Ali Baba’s house.

After finding Ali Baba’s house, they made a plan to kill him the following night. Some of the thieves hid in big jars, and the boss pretended that he was a merchant who wanted to sell the jars to Ali Baba. Ali Baba who was a kind man invited the boss of the thief to have lunch together.

After lunch they took a rest. Luckily, the house maid went out of the house, and found that there were thieves inside the jars. She finally boiled hot oil and poured it into the jars to kill all of them. The boss of the thieves was caught, and put into prison.

Ali Baba was saved from the danger, and he finally lived happily ever after with his maid who became his wife shortly after.