The Principles of Teaching Reading

A procedure text is a text that gives an instruction to the reader for doing something. 34 This text helps the reader to make easy their work or activity in doing the activity. This text contains some steps, ways, or methods. The examples of procedure text are recipes, itineraries, instruction manual, or directions. A procedure text usually site on a piece of paper when we bought a television, refrigerator, radio, or a toys. It can also find in the backside of the noodle, instant coffee which tells the reader about how to make it. A procedure text could also find in the situation when some people ask someone how to make a clipart, book, table, or a direction to go to somewhere. A recount text has some language features which tells the reader the step, such as: first, second, next, then, and finally. In other hand, a descriptive text is a written text in English which describes about a concrete or an abstract object. 35 The object that describes in the descriptive text can be a person, an animal, a tree, a house, a building, or a place. It can also describe an abstract object such as wind or air. The descriptive text consists of two text structures: identification and description. 36 Identification tells the reader about the phenomenon that want to be described, and the description tells the reader about the part, characteristics, or the criteria of the phenomenon. The descriptive text can find in the museum; an explanation of a historical object. Next, a recount text is a piece of English text that retells the reader about the past events or past activity. 37 A recount text usually contains three generic structures: orientation, events, and conclusion or reorientations. 38 The orientation tells the reader about the background information about who, what, where, and when. Then, the events tell the reader about the series of events or paragraph. The events consists at least one paragraph or more. Then the last is 34 Mark Anderson, and Kathy Anderson, Text Types in English 2, South Yarra: Macmillan, 1997, p.50. 35 Sanggam Siahaan, and Kisno Shinoda, Generic Text Structure, Yogyakarta: Graha Ilmu, 2008, p.88. 36 Mukarto. et.al., English on Sky 2, Jakarta: Erlangga, 2007, p.19. 37 Mark Anderson, and Kathy Anderson, Text Types in English 1, South Yarra: Macmillan, 1997, p.48. 38 Ibid, p.50. conclusion. The conclusion or the reorientation tells the reader about the conclusion. In recount text, the reorientation or the conclusion could be the optional in this text. Narrative text is a text that tells a story. 39 The examples of the narrative text are myths, fairytales, science fiction, novels, etc. In Indonesia, the example story of narrative text are Malin Kundang, Timun Mas,Tangkuban Perahu, Sangkuriang, etc. The purpose of this text is to amuse, to entertain and to deal with the actual experiences from the writer. 40 The components of narrative text are orientation, evaluation, complication, resolution, and reorientation. The next type of English reading text in reading in the junior high school is report. Report is a text that has a function to report something. 41 It can be reported about an activity or process about something. The report text usually reports the description in general classification. The simple example of report text is news.

6. Recount Text a. The Understanding of Recount Text

There are several definitions about recount text from several language experts. Recount is a text that retells the reader the past events about the activity, action, or a story and its purpose is to entertain and informing the audience with a description of what occurred and when it occurred. 42 Another definition, recount text is one kinds of story or a text that tells about what happened in the past 39 Mark Anderson, and Kathy Anderson, Text Types in English 3, South Yarra: Macmillan, 1998, p.3. 40 Sanggam Siahaan, and Kisno Shinoda, op.cit., p.73. 41 Antono Wardiman, Masduki B. Jahur, and M. Sukirman Djusma, English in Focus for Grade IX, Jakarta: Pusat Perbukuan DEPDIKNAS, 2008, p.48. 42 Antono Wardiman, Masduki B. Jahur, and M. Sukirman Djusma, English in Focus for Grade VIII, Jakarta: Pusat Perbukuan DEPDIKNAS, 2008, p.61. and the purpose of this text is to document the past event in order to evaluate the events. 43 From the several definitions above, it can be concluded that recount text is a text tells about something occurred in the past in order to give information into chronologically of what had happened. In other words, recount text is a text type that retell past events chronologically in order to give information or to entertainment. This text also has a purpose to document the series of event or activity in order to evaluate it.

b. The Linguistic Features of Recount Text

A recount text is written in the past tense because it tells events that have already happened. A recount text uses the first person pronouns I and We, if the story is happening to the personal recount and uses the third person if an observer is telling the story. In addition, the linguistic or the grammatical features usually found in a recount text, they are: 1. Use of nouns and pronouns to identify people, animals or things involved 2. Use of action verbs to refer to events 3. Use of past tense to locate events in relation to writer’s time 4. Use of conjunction and time connectivity to sequence the events. 44

c. The Generic Structures of Recount Text

Even though there are several kinds of recount text, they have the same characteristics in the schematic structures. A recount text consists of three part, those are orientation, events, and reorientation. Those will be described as follow: 43 Joko Priyana, Arnys R. Irjayanti, and Virga Renitasari, Scaffolding English for Junior High School Students Grade VIII, Jakarta: Pusat Perbukuan DEPDIKNAS, 2008, p.69. 44 Joko Priyana, Arnys R. Irjayanti, and Virga Renitasari, loc.cit.