Kinds of Texts - A Recount Text

Just like the meaning of the word ‘recount’, a recount text aims to tell an experience of a person or to tell the story of an event that happened in the past. So, a biography is a recount text because it tells the story of someone's life.

The aim of a recount text is to entertain or to inform the readers.

The generic structure of a recount text:

1.    Orientation: this part tells who are involved in the story. It tells where and when things/events happened. And the story is told by using the first person point of view.

2.      Events: this part tells what happened and in what sequence.

3.      Re-orientation:  this part tells how the story comes to an end.

The language features of a recount text:

1.      Using first persons: I or We

2.      Using past tenses: past simple, past continuous, past perfect, past future

3.      Using adverbs of sequence: then, before, after that, finally, at last

Examples of recount texts:

My first date

When I was in the first year of senior high school, I met this girl, named Lucy. She was an interesting girl and I had a crush on her. The first time we met, we were eating at our school’s cafeteria. She was sitting alone, So, I approached her and asked if I could sit beside her. After that first meeting, we often met and ate together at break times. One day, it was my birthday. I thought it would be the right moment to express my true feeling on her. So, I planned a small party for the two of us. I invited her to eat at a romantic restaurant. After some usual chit-chat while eating our dinner, under the ceiling of stars, I gathered all my courage and took out the bouquet of flowers I have prepared at home. I gave her the flowers and said that I loved her. She was surprised and did not say anything for some time. Fortunately, she finally said ‘I love you, too’. She smelled the flowers happily with her sweetest smile ever. That was my beautiful first date.

I was a hero

That afternoon, there were three of us. We were playing in the neighborhood like usual. Feeling rather bored doing the same things again and again, one of my friends invited us to go for a swim. So, we all ran happily to a little pond not far from my house. My friends and I jumped into the pond and swam. I was not very good then but I was OK. After swimming for a while, we thought we needed more excitement. So, we decided to play a chasing game in the pond. It was my turn to chase my friends when suddenly I heard a ‘Boom!’ in the water. It turned up that someone had jumped into the water to join us. It was great I thought. But, I felt strange with this guy. He was flapping here and there like he was unable to swim. “Oh my God!”, I talked to myself. He was actually drowning. I, immediately, swam close to him and pushed him to the side of the pond. After two or three pushes, he was already at the shallow part. Then, I grabbed him and lifted him up, just to make sure he did not drink more of the pond water. He looked shocked but he was OK. This boy, he was a friend, but apparently he thought the pond was not deep so he just jumped in although he knew he could not swim. Thank God everything was alright. And, I felt like I was a bit of a hero.