Example of Narrative Text and Most Dominant Language Features: Ant And Grasshopper

English admin – This example of narrative text about the story of ant and grasshopper is given along with generic structure analysis. Every narrative text should contain 3 basic elements of narration structure, they are:

1. Orientation: First information of the participants inside the story. From the story about ant and grasshopper below, we see the orientation as:
In a field one summer’s day a Grasshopper was hopping about. An Ant passed by…
2. Complication: What happens next among the participants of the story. This phase introduce a problem existing between or among the participants. From the example of narrative below, we see the complication is:
“Why bother about winter?” said the Grasshopper; we have got plenty of food at present.” But the Ant went on its way and continued its toil.
3. Resolution: The way a writer ends his story plot. It can be successful ending or failure one which leads to sad ending story. From the story about ant and grasshopper, we see the writer give the ending as follow:
When the winter came the Grasshopper found itself dying of hunger
This is the story about the ant and the grasshopper which belong to narrative text. The story has great a moral value to teach the readers. Most stories belong to narrative text and that is why they have a very dominant language feature. That what we are going to talk.

Learning text types in junior and senior high school is featuring the languages which are dominantly used to compose the narrative text. This language features are commonly relating to grammar and structure. Recently, studying grammar and structure can not separated with the contexts. That is why we find some grammar focus will be attached in the text. Here is the famous fable by Aesop from www.umass.edu

The Ant and the Grasshopper

Fable with a great moral value for narrative text

In a field one summer’s day a Grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to its heart’s content. An Ant passed by, bearing along with great toil an ear of corn he was taking to the nest.
“Why not come and chat with me,” said the Grasshopper, “instead of toiling and moiling in that way?”
“I am helping to lay up food for the winter,” said the Ant, “and recommend you to do the same.”
“Why bother about winter?” said the Grasshopper; we have got plenty of food at present.” But the Ant went on its way and continued its toil.
When the winter came the Grasshopper found itself dying of hunger, while it saw the ants distributing, every day, corn and grain from the stores they had collected in the summer.
Narrative text, since it told a story, is dominantly constructed in past tenses. It is logic because every story happened in the past time, happened before it is talking as a story. The past tenses can be simple past, past continuous tense, and past perfect tense. These three tenses of the past will dominate talking in a narrative text.

Further, due to exploration of the participants of the story, dialog among participant seem to be written in direct speeches. Why it is constructed in mostly direct speech is to lead the readers feel, think, and have any experience by them selves through the real dialog of the participant.

Now we learn the dominant language feature used in that story. Most story  feature direct and indirect speech to build the story along. From that story text, the conversations between the ant and the grass hopper are presented in direct speeches, some of them are listed below:

1. “Why not come and chat with me,” said the Grasshopper

2. “I am helping to lay up food for the winter,” said the Ant

From the two samples of direct speech above, can you make them into indirect speech? Well, here we will try to change them into indirect speech or reported stences

1. The grasshopper asked to the ant why he did not come and chatted with him

2. The ant said to the grasshopper that he was helping to lay up food for the winter

Well, have you caught the clue how to convert direct sentence to indirect sentence?. For more sample of narrative text, you can see HERE. Please pay attention to the bold words. They show you the clue on how to change direct speech to indirect speech. Happy leaning English narrative text!

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