A narrative text is an imaginative(fiction) story to entertain people. Narrative text have vary of themes, such as fairytale, legend, myth, horror, etc.
It is different with recount text. A recount text is a text that telling the reader about one story, action or activity, its also retells event or experiences in the past.
Even though, they both tell about a story, but it's different. As we can see from the themes of narrative text, we can say that narrative text is totally a fictional story. In the other side, on the recount text definition it's written 'telling/retell past experiences' that means the story of recount text is a fact because the subject retell their past experiences by a recount text.
From their general structure also different.
The general structure of narrative text is
Orientation : It is about the opening paragraph where the characters of the story are introduced.
Complication : Where the problems in the story developed.
Resolution : Where the problems in the story is solved. Is it “happy ending” or “bad ending”.
Coda/reorientation: lesson from the story.
and the general structure of recount text is
Orientation : It gives the readers the background information needed to understand the text, such as who was involved, where it happened, and when it happened.
Events : A series of events, ordered in a chronological sequence.
Re-orientation :A personal comment about the event or what happened in the end.
From their language features also have a different
The language features of narrative text
– Using past tense
– Adverb of time (Once upun a time, one day, etc)
– Time conjunction (when, then, suddenly, etc)
– Specific character. The character of the story is specific, not general. (Cinderella, Snow White, Alibaba, etc)
– Action verbs. A verb that shows an action. (killed, dug, walked, etc)
– Direct speech. It is to make the story lively. (Snow White said,”My name is Snow White). The direct speech uses present tense.
The language features of recount text
-Using the simple past tense, past continuous tense, past perfect tense, and past perfect continuous tense.
– Using temporal sequence, e.g. On Saturday. On Monday, On Sunday
– Focus on specific participant, e.g. I (the writer)
– Using the time conjunctions, such as: then, before, after, etc.
– Using action verb, e.g. went, stayed
So what is the similarities ? The similarities is their main topic that is sometimes which happened in the past is the main topic to compose both of them. They both also have orientation as the part of their general structure. From their language features both of narrative and recount are use past tense, action verb, and time conjunction.
Example of recount text
Being Late
Last morning, Dinar, my roommate woke up late and she had to go to campus.
When she wanted to take her motorcycle, in fact she couldn’t move it because there were some motorcycles that blocked up her motorcycle.
She tried to move all of the motorcycles, so that her motorcycle could move from the garage. But she couldn’t do it.
Then, she called Adel who had that motorcycle which blocked it up. After that, her friend who had that motorcycle helped her. Finally, she could move her motorcycle and rode it to go to campus.
Example of narrative text
Cinderella
Once upon a time, there lived a girl named Cinderella. She lived with her step mother and two step sisters. The step mother and her two daughters didn’t like Cinderella. They treated Cincerella very bad. Cinderella usually did the hardest works in the house; such as scrubbing the floor, cleaning the pot and pan and preparing the food for the family, and so on.
One day, a ball was to be held by the royal family of the kingdom to find the Prince’s spouse. Cinderella wanted to go to the ball but her step mother asked her to stay at home and do the house works. Cinderella cried. Then there was a fairy godmother standing beside her.