2.3 Teaching Descriptive Text at Tenth Year Students
English language is a means to communicate both written and spoken. For that reason, Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan KTSP for SMAMA prepares
the students in order to achieve competencies that make them able to reflect their experience and other experience, to show their idea and feeling and to understand
various meanings. Although the students of senior high school especially tenth year have to
be able to communicate both written and spoken, in this study the researcher only focuses in one form of communication that is in the spoken one. The students of
senior high school should be able to communicate in various texts. One of the text types that should be taught in Senior high school especially
in tenth year is descriptive text. As stated before, every text-type has its own characteristic and purpose. In
a descriptive text, its purpose is to describe a particular person, place or thing. The schematic structures of descriptive texts are as follows:
a. Identification : identifies the person, place or thing to be described
b. Descriptive
: describes parts, qualities and characteristics Meanwhile, the significant grammatical patterns of descriptive texts are as
follows: a.
Focus on specific rather than generic participants b.
Simple present tense c.
Verbs of being and having d.
Use of descriptive adjective to build up long nominal group
The following is an example of descriptive text:
Adjective
Borobudur Temple
Borobudur is a great Buddhist temple. The temple is located in Magelang on the island
of Java in Indonesia. Built in the 9
th
century under the Syailendra dynasty of Java, it was
abandoned in the 11
th
century and partially excavated by archeologists in the early 20
th
century. Influenced by the Gupta architecture of India,
the temple is constructed on a hill 46 m 150 ft high and consists of eight step-like stone
terraces, one on the top of the other. The first five terraces are square and surrounded by
walls adorned with Buddist sculpture in bas- relief, the upper three are circular, each with a
circle of bell-shaped stupas Buddhist shrines. The entire edifice is crowned by a large stupa at
the center of the top circle. The way to the summit extends through some 4.8 km of
passages and stairways. The design of
Borobudur, a temple-mountain symbolizing the structure of the universe, influenced temples
built at Angkor, Cambodia. Borobudur was rededicated as an Indonesian
national monument in 1983 following extensive reclamation, aided by the United Nations.
Identification
Being Verb
Noun Phrase Simple
Present Tense Simple
Present Tense
Being Verb Specific
Participant
Description
Microsoft .Encarta, Reference. Library 2005, quoted by Hartono, 2005:53
2.4 Pre, Whilst, and Post Strategy PWPS