A. Concept of Narrative Paragraph Writing Ability 1. The Definition of Writing Ability
3. The Characteristics of Narrative Paragraph
Barli Bram defines paragraph as “a good one, as a group of sentences which contain relevant information about one main or central idea9.
According to Sanggam Siahaan narrative paragraph is a paragraph in which a writer recounts an event to his readers. It can be about
9 Barli Bram, write well, Kanisius, Yogyakarta, 1995, p.13
biographies, autobiographies, historical event, instructions, and processes10.
In adition Furaidah, et.al defines narrative as a present story such as your daily activities, or a past one such as your unforgettable experiences and all other events happening in the past11.
Narration is type in which the writer tries to recount an avebt (object) of his world experiences in order his readers can see, feel, smell, hear, and taste it as he can12.
Based on the statement above, the writer concluded that narrative paragraph is a paragraph that tell or recount us more about events in order to enable the reader as if can experience it as he or she does. In this case, the function of narrative paragraph is to recount what is being narrated to the readers.
Narrative paragraph describes the actions that occur within a story.
These consecutive groups of sentences help move the story along by explaining what happens next and why. They are written in such a way as to place the writer, the reader, or both rights in the center of the action.
When written in the third person (“he, “ “she,” etc.), the reader follows the character around, mentally visualizing the events and must always be written in an active voice and normally cover past tense.
The unity of narrative paragraph, it is called by narrative text.
Narrative text is the text which contains about a story or fairy tale (can be
10 Ibid, P.110
11 Furaidah, et.al, Advanced Writing, Universitas Terbuka, Jakarta, 2007, p.137
12 SanggamSiahaan, Issues in Linguistics, Graha Ilmu, Yogyakarta, 2008, p.217
folklore (folktale), an animal story (fable), the legend (legend), short stories, etc.). in it there is a conflict / top problem, followed by settlement.
The main function of this text is to entertain readers. Text organizations are:
a. Orientation (who are involved in the story, when, where).
b. Complication ( a problem arises followed by other problems).
c. Resolution ( solution to the problem)
In narrative paragraph has a language features as follow:
a. The use of noun phrases (a beautiful princess, a huge temple) b. The use of connectives ( first, before that, then, finally)
c. The use of adverbial phrases of time and place ( in the garden, two days ago)
d. The use of the simple past tense ( he walked away from the village) e. The use of action verb ( walk, sleep, wake up)
f. The use of saying verbs ( say, tell, ask)
g. The use of thinking verb, feeling verbs, verb of senses ( she felt hungry, she thought she was clever, she smelt something burning).
In conclusion narrative paragraph can be the easy way to produce our idea, expression, mind and everything we want to be submitted to the readers. In this case, students are expected to be able to express their ideas, feeling, and thought in written language especially in narrative paragraph.
Narratives are stories about person or a group of people overcoming problems. They also explain that narratives show how people react to experiences, explore social and cultural values and entertain the audience. It aims to entertain, to get and retain the attention of the reader or listener of the story.
According Anderson and Anderson propose that the structures of narratives includes orientation, complication, evaluation, resolution, and coda. Furthermore, like any other texts that have their own linguistic features also suggest that narratives have some linguistic features as listed below:
a. Specific often individual participants with defined identities.
Major participants are human, or sometimes animal with human characteristic.
b. Mainly use action verb (material processes), that describe what happens.
c. Many narratives also use thinking verbs (mental processes) that gives us information about what participants are thinking or feeling, such as wondered, remembered, thought, felt, disliked.
d. Normally use past tense.
e. Dialogue often includes and uses a number of saying verb (verbal process) such as said, asked, and replied. The tense may change to the present or future in the dialogue.
Sometimes these saying verbs also indicate how something is said.
f. Descriptive language is use to enhance and develop the story by creating image in the reader’s mind.
g. Can be written in the first person(I, We) or third person (he, she, and they).
As mentioned previously, narratives have several processes that exist in the story to draw the character’s experience. These processes can be classified into experimental sub function, a sub function of ideational met function, one of the met functions of language that SFL argues that all natural languages have. These experiential meanings are realized through the transitivity patterns of the grammar. 13
for example narrative paragraph:
It was July 21, 1969, and Neil Amstrong awoke with a start. It was the day he would become the first human being to ever walk on the moon. The journey had begun several days earlier, when on July 16th, the Appolo 11 launched from earth headed into outer space. On board with Neil Amstrong were Michael Collin and Buzz Aldrin. The crew landed on the moon in the sea of tranquality a day before the actual walk. Upon Neil’s first step
13 Dini Utami Mulyaningsih, “An analysis of Students’ Ability in Writing Narrative Texts”
,(Journal Of English And Edication,Vol 1/2rd Ed, 2013, P.16-17
into the moon’s surface, he declared, “that’s one smallstep for manm one giant leap for mankind.”It sure was!
B. The Nature Draw Label Caption Strategy