Reading Flipping Book: Example of Spoof Text with Generic Structure

English Admin – We are now learning an example of spoof text. What is spoof text in English genres? The text consists an amusing story. Do you know why a spoof text is considered amusing? Yes, the existence of twist is what make the spoof text funny.

Now we are learning and trying to understand an English stories. Do you like reading  a funny story? Let’s see the following short sample of spoof text. If you enjoy reading the twisting story, you can read more in my previous post in examples of spoof text. Here is the story today

Percaya diri itu harus tapi jangan lepas kontrol jadinya baca bukupun menjadi terbalik

Reading a Flipping Book
There was a student. He studied at a college. The student was was deeply in love with his girl classmate. Unfortunately he did not know know what to do to get the girl’s attention.

One day, the student got assignment. He planned to attract the girl. So he asked the girl for help with his assignments. The day was his fortunate as the beautiful girl agreed. So he came to sit next to the girl happily. He built an impression as a diligent student and took out a book pretending to read.

After while, the girl was curious and asked: “You must be a genius. How can you read a book upside down?” She continued: ” I am impressed”
Well, what do you think about the short text? I think it is easy to understood why the text is labelled as spoof text. However before going further more on generic structure, let’s see the translation
Membaca Buku Terbalik
Ada seorang mahasiswa. Ia belajar di sebuah perguruan tinggi. Mahasiswa itu adalah sangat mencintai gadis teman sekelasnya. Sayangnya dia tidak tahu tahu apa yang harus dilakukan untuk mendapatkan perhatian gadis itu.

Suatu hari, mahasiswa itu mendapat tugas. Ia berencana untuk menarik perhatian gadis itu. Jadi dia bertanya kepada nya untuk membantu mengerjakan tugas-tugasnya. Hari itu ia beruntung karena gadis cantik itu yang menyetujui. Jadi dia datang untuk duduk di sebelah gadis itu dengan bahagia. Dia membangun kesan sebagai mahasiswa yang rajin dan mengeluarkan sebuah buku dan pura-pura membaca.

Setelah beberapa saat, gadis itu penasaran dan bertanya: “Kamu pasti sangat jenius. Bagaimana kamu bisa membaca buku terbalik “Dia melanjutkan:” Saya terkesan “
Note on Generic Structure of Spoof Text

So what is the structure of that short spoof text? Reading it and knowing the translation make us easy to get the points on how the spoof text is organized
1. Orientation: Of course the participants are the student and the girl
2. Events: Some events in that story are asking help, approaching her, sitting next to her, and reading book
3. Twist: The last impressed comment from the girl is very unpredictable. The student was worried that he did not know how to read.

So don’t you think that reading spoof text is interesting? I think so. Learning English in this way is more attractive. By reading a spoof text, of course we also learn past tense, direct and indirect speech, action verb, etc which all are the language feature of spoof text.

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