Kinds of Texts - A Descriptive Text

Have you read story books or novels? I believe you have, at least once in your life. Now, try to remember. How did you feel when you were reading? Did you feel as if you were there witnessing the events? Could you see the places, the situations, and the characters described in your mind? And the answer is ‘Yes’. It’s because that’s the function of a descriptive text.

A descriptive text is a text that invites you to see the picture of the person, the place or the thing being described. So, the best example of a descriptive text is a storybook or a novel.

The generic structure of a descriptive text consists of two parts:

      1. Identification: identifying the object to be described

      2. Description: words used to define or to describe an object, usually by using adjectives and adverbs.

The language features of a descriptive text are:

      1.       Using adjectives and adverbs to describe an object

      2.       Using comparison words: like (He was lying helplessly, like a dead body)

      3.       Using simple present tense

      4.       Employing the reader’s five senses (how something feels, smells, looks, sounds, and tastes)

Examples of descriptive texts:

The morning air was crisp and sharp as Sean walked down the road.

The pavement was slippery and cold beneath his feet, like a slimy, wet fish.

The sunset filled the entire sky with the deep color of rubies, setting the clouds ablaze.

Examples of descriptive paragraphs:

Gregory

by Barbara Carter

Gregory is my beautiful gray Persian cat. He walks with pride and grace, performing a dance of disdain as he slowly lifts and lowers each paw with the delicacy of a ballet dancer. His pride, however, does not extend to his appearance, for he spends most of his time indoors watching television and growing fat. He enjoys TV commercials, especially those for Meow Mix and 9 Lives. His familiarity with cat food commercials has led him to reject generic brands of cat food in favor of only the most expensive brands. Gregory is as finicky about visitors as he is about what he eats, befriending some and repelling others. He may snuggle up against your ankle, begging to be petted, or he may imitate a skunk and stain your favorite trousers. Gregory does not do this to establish his territory, as many cat experts think, but to humiliate me because he is jealous of my friends. After my guests have fled, I look at the old fleabag snoozing and smiling to himself in front of the television set, and I have to forgive him for his obnoxious, but endearing, habits.

A Friendly Clown

On one corner of my dresser sits a smiling toy clown on a tiny unicycle--a gift I received last Christmas from a close friend. The clown's short yellow hair, made of yarn, covers its ears but is parted above the eyes. The blue eyes are outlined in black with thin, dark lashes flowing from the brows. It has cherry-red cheeks, nose, and lips, and its broad grin disappears into the wide, white ruffle around its neck. The clown wears a fluffy, two-tone nylon costume. The left side of the outfit is light blue, and the right side is red. The two colors merge in a dark line that runs down the center of the small outfit. Surrounding its ankles and disguising its long black shoes are big pink bows. The white spokes on the wheels of the unicycle gather in the center and expand to the black tire so that the wheel somewhat resembles the inner half of a grapefruit. The clown and unicycle together stand about a foot high. As a cherished gift from my good friend Tran, this colorful figure greets me with a smile every time I enter my room.

In this excerpt from Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier, notice the writer’s choice of adjectives, adverbs, and verbs. 

“It was a cold grey day in late November. The weather had changed overnight, when a backing wind brought a granite sky and a drizzling rain with it, and although it was now only a little after two o'clock in the afternoon the pallor of a winter evening seemed to have closed upon the hills, cloaking them in mist.”

You can see that the writer had to carefully choose his words so that the reader could almost see and feel the weather that was occurring.