a. Description of Things
In descriptive text, you will occasionally need to describe an animate subject, such as a person, animal, or insect. Meanwhile, you can describe a
person‟s appearance in many ways. You can tell about the person‟s style of clothing, manner of walking, color and style of many facial appearance, body
shape, and expression. You can also describe the person‟s way of talking. Just what you select to describe depends on your topic and purpose. For example, how
would you begin to describe your girlfriend to your cousin? her hair? her eyes? her voice? The following are some useful vocabulary words and expressions of a
person.
Table 2.1 Vocabulary Words and Expression
15
Facial Expression
Facial Shape
Eyes Voice
Mouth Eyebrow
Scowl Frown
Smirk Worried
Pained Blank
Peaceful Round
Broad Narrow
Oval Flat
Beady Smiling
Snapping Empty
Hard Bulging
Staring Booming
Growling Deep
Melodious Full-lipped
Thin-lipped Set
Sensuous Thick
Arched Neatly
plucked uneven
b. Description of Place
The description must be organized so that the reader can imagine the scene being described. To make the paragraph more interesting, it can be added a
controlling idea that states an attitude or impression about the place being described. “Descriptive text must include the arrangement of the details in your
description depend on your subject and purpose.”
16
15
Smalley, R.L., Reutten, M.K. Kozyrev, J.R. Refining Composition Skills: Rhetoric and Grammar 5
th
ed. 1997, p. 71.
16
Regina L. Smalley, Mary K. Ruetten, Refining Composition SkillsRhetoric and Grammar1997, p.69.
The purpose of descriptive texts in Junior High School is to describe current activities or events running commentaries and to
describe activities in the pictures. And the structure it‟s for
identification and description and the language features are specific participants, the use of present continuous tense and action verb.
17
c. Description of Person
When you describe something or someone, you give your readers a picture in words. To make this “word picture” as vivid and real as possible, you must
observe and record specific details that appeal to your readers‟ senses sigh,
hearing, taste, smell and touch. It is also said by Alice Oshima: Descriptive writing appeals to the senses, so it tells how something
looks, feels, smells, tastes, and or sounds. A good description is like a “word picture”; the reader can imagine the object, place or
person in his or her mind. A writer of a good description is like an artist
who paints a picture that can be “seen” clearly in the mind of the reader.
18
More than any other type of writing, a descriptive paragraph needs sharp, colorful details. Here is a description in which only the sense of sight is used.
“Sense impressions include sight thick, reddish-brown shag rug; laid wall to wall; walk through them in your bare feet; sneeze your toes into the deep covering;
push back, hearing whisper, and touch bare feet, soft fibers, spongy resilience.”
19
In every kinds of genres including descriptive text, it can be analyzed the two characteristics. Those are the schematic structures in which how the passages
are organized, and the linguistic features in which it functions to construct the text itself.
20
For further explanation such following:
17
Mukarto, Sujatmiko dkk, English On Sky For Junior High School Student Year VIII, Based On KTSP 2006, Bandung: Erlangga, PT. Gelora Aksara Pratama 2007, p.19.
18
Alice Oshima, Introduction to Academic Writing, Second Edition, Longman: Addison Wesley,
1997, p. 50.
19
Langan, English Skills with Readings, Fifth Edition, Atlantic Cape Community College, Boston
Burr Ridge: McGraw Hill Companies Inc, 2002, p. 243.
20
Mark Anderson and Anderson Kathy, Text Types in English 3, Sidney: MacMillan, 1998, p. 26
1. The Schematic Structures of Descriptive
The schematic structure of descriptive paragraph consists of identification and description.
21
Identification mentions phenomenon to be describe, while the description describes the parts, the qualities, and the characteristics of what has
been described. To construct a description usually uses an opening paragraph introducing a
subject of the description, followed by a series of paragraphs each describing one feature of the subject. There can also be a final concluding section that signals the
end of the description.
22
In sum up, the schematic structure is important to organize a good descriptive paragraph. It can help to see the organization of description clearly.
So, the reader can easy to get imagination of description.
2. The Linguistic Features of Descriptive
Descriptive paragraph usually include the following linguistic features such as verb in the present tense, adjectives to describe the features of the subject, and
the topic sentences to begin paragraph and organize the various aspects of the description.
23
Other resources mention that the linguistic features of description are: first, focus on specific participants. Second, use of attribute and identifying processes.
Next, use of epithets and classifier in nominal groups.The last, use of simple present tense.
24
In conclusion, the linguistic features play significant role to sustain in producing a good description. For instance, through specific participant, it tells the
readers exactly participant. Next, the use of adjective, it is relatively necessary to describe the characteristic and the phenomenon in order to get a vivid image.
Hence, all of the linguistic features are conveyed to construct vividly description.
21
Ibid, p. 7.
22
Mark Anderson and Anderson Kathy, Text Types in English 3,1998, p. 26.
23
Ibid. p. 26.
24
Rudi Hartono, SS, M. Pd. Genres of Text, Unpublished Paper, Semarang: Semarang State University, English Departement Faculty of Language and Art, 2005, p. 9.
Kategori