Response on Text Types

Afif Ikhwanul Muslimin

State Islamic University of Malang 

 

Understanding a text is one of the core skill which students of Indonesia must master when they want to pass their study. As just a simple example is when the students want to finish their study in each level, the English final examination (UAN) question which is provided with at least 12 texts (genres). The word genre comes from the French word for “kind” or “class” and according to Chandler (1997 in Zara-ee, 2009:45); it is widely used in rhetoric and linguistics to refer to a distinctive type of text. Genre is a functional relationship between text type and rhetorical situation. Since, Indonesia curriculum is based on Genre (text type), junior high school students must master five types of texts, they are: narrative, report, recount, procedure, and descriptive. While senior high school students learn more with the addition of some texts such as analytical exposition, hortatory exposition, spoof, and anecdote.  

Without understanding the text, students are not able to finish their test with maximum score. Consequently, students must understand well the kinds (types) and characteristics of the text to help them to comprehend the content and to simplify their technique to answer the questions about text. According to Hudson (2007) there are two kinds of schemata which help students to comprehend the text well, formal schemata and content schemata. While mastering the form and the physical features of the text means students applying formal schemata. According to Carrell & Eisterhold (1988) formal schemata are higher order structures containing knowledge of rhetorical organization structures, including knowledge of the general properties of text types and differences in genre. When students has already ha knowledge about the generic structures of the text and has the ability to guess the special features of the text such as the general tense used in the text, the diction used, the communicative purpose of the text, the position of the writer in the text, and the common questions are usually asked related to the text, they will be easier to catch the answer of the questions in the test. As an example, when Junior high school students are provided with a text and they recognize the text are in past form, students can identify that these text are may be in form of recount or narrative. Then, they know that it is narrative since at the first sentence there is a phrase “once upon a time” means that it is fiction and the generic structure are orientation-complication-resolution-reorientation. When students are asked to search about who are the characters in the text, in simple way they just need to search the orientation parts of the text and find some names there. When the students are asked about the conflict of the story, in simple way they just need to go to the middle of the text and grab the complication part in the text. When they are asked to find out the moral value of the story, just in easy way, they just need to visit the last part of the text and search for the resolution which always related to the content of the moral value of the  story.

In my opinion, understanding the text types is very important for the students not just for accomplishing their study in school only. According to Vygotsky (1986) language is used to solve the problems in daily life. It means that if students has mastered kinds of text (genre) students has an ability to create and use the correct form of text in correct situation and purposes. So, students will not go to the wrong directions in creating the correct text when they know that they want to tell their experience they must make recount text not report text. 

References

Hudson, Thom. (2007). Teaching Second Language Reading. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Zara-ee, Abbas. 2009. The Effects of Teaching Genre Moves on EFL Learners’ Performance in Letter Writing. In: Pazhuhesh-e Zabanha-ye Khareji, No. 49, Special Issue, English, Winter 2009, pp. 43-64.____:____