The Genre of
Describing
Group 5 - 6A2
Syifa Zahra Kamila (2088203004)
Tazqia Aulia Zakhra (2088203070)
Witri Kholisah (2088203091)
What is the genre of describing?
One of the fundamental functions of any
language system and one of the first skills
emergent language-users learn to control.
Describing is also used extensively in many
text types:
information reports descriptive recounts
literary descriptions in the opening paragraph
Describing is a central feature of narrative
texts providing the means for developing
characterisation, sense of place, and key
themes.
Examples:
writing about a character or place
‘Theo in James Valentine’s book Jump Man is an interesting
character. He has spiky hair that changes colour all the time
and he wears a coat that speaks.
writing about a character or place
‘A platypus is a monotreme. It has a bill and sharp claws. It
lives in and near streams and is not seen by people very
often.’
Grammatical
Features of The present tense is predominantly used, for
examples: has, eats, sings, lays, swim
Describing The past tense that tends to dominate, for
examples: had, was, enjoyed, seemed, sparkled
Relational verbs are used when classifying and
describing appearance/qualities and
parts/functions of phenomena (is, are, has, have):
My favorite toy is a teddy bear because it is cuddly
and friendly.
Action verbs are used when describing
behaviors/uses, for example: An ant has three body
parts. Some ants have wings. The queen ant lays the
eggs. Ants live in colonies.
In literary and commonsense descriptions, action
verbs are used metaphorically to create effect, for
example: Mia bubbled with enthusiasm. Declan
smashed the record.
Mental verbs are used when describing feelings in
literary descriptions, for example: She felt unhappy.
He liked dancing.
Adjectives are used to add extra information to
nouns and may be technical, everyday or literary,
depending on the text , for example: Possums are
nocturnal (Technical); It is grey and brown
(Everyday); Her appearance was majestic (Literary)
Adjectives can be used on their own, as above, or as
part of a noun group, for example: Turtles are covered
with a hard, box-like shell (Technical); He has a cool
hairstyle (Everyday); His luminous, dark coat gave him
an eerie quality (Literary)
Adverbs are used to add extra information to verbs to
provide more detailed description, for example:
Turtles swim slowly; She was always hassling her
mother; He could think clearly
Adverbial phrases are used in descriptions to add
more information about the manner, place, or time:
Walruses have hair on their lips. (Place); The student
only worked diligently just before exams. (Time)
Structure of
Formal
Descriptions Formally, describing orders things into
various ways of knowing them. The
ordering process works in several
ways ; first, it generally names the
thing, then it classifies it, and then it
deals with its attributes, behaviours,
functions and so on.
Classification
Classifications can be technical or
commonsense, depending on the context
within which the topic or phenomenon is
being described.
Personal & Commonsense
Description
A young writer’s description of her toy, for
example, might classify it as a particular
type of toy (animal, doll or car).
Literaly Description
Note how these types of descriptions
have an informal structure, although they
do tend to have the classifications up-
front
Animal Report
Such animal reports are somewhere in
between personal descriptions and
scientific reports and are an excellent way
of teaching
· Information Reports
Description in information reports is
formalised. That is, specific aspects of
the phenomenon are systematically
described
(for example, appearance, parts,
functions, behaviours, habitat).
GRAMMAR OF
DESCRIBING Verbs
An ant is an insect.
The following examples of
student descriptions have been
An ant has six legs.
annotated to demonstrate some An ant has three body parts.
of the key grammatical features. Some ants have wings.
Relational verbs — italics
The queen ant lays the eggs.
Action verbs — bold Ants live in colonies.
Mental verbs — bold italic
Theme — underlined
Theme
This animal report includes
information about the
functions of some of the
turtle’s attributes, and there
are two action verbs in the
appearance paragraph.
Reference
as a grammatical term, refers to the way in
which established information is introduced,
maintained and expanded upon in a text.
Adjective
Adjectives are thegrammatical class that
tend to carry much of the responsibility for
describing.
(as opposed to grammatical items-
conjuction, preposition, pronouns, and
articles)
In short, describing text is a text which says what a
person or a thing is like. Its purpose is to describe and
reveal a particular person, place, or thing. It can be said
that the descriptive text is a text that explains about
whether a person or an object is like, whether its form,
its properties, its amount and others. The purpose of
the descriptive text is clear, that is to describe,
represent or reveal a person or an object, either
abstract or concrete.
Thank you!
GENRE-BASED ANALYSIS OF STUDENT'S DESCRIPTIVE TEXT
IN THE TENTH GRADE STUDENTS OF MAN 2 SEMARANG
The design of this study uses descriptive qualitative which aims to describing student descriptive
writing with genre analysis in class X-D MAN 2 Semarang. The research instrument was students'
descriptive text writing. Researchers analyzed student worksheets by identifying the generic
structure and language features in writing descriptive text. The results of the analysis showed that
75% of the total percentage of students could write the identification part correctly and 100% of
students can apply the description section in writing text descriptive. The results of language
features analysis show that 100% of the total percentage students can apply the use of specific
participant, simple present tense, and adjectives. While 97% of students can apply the use of being
verbs and noun phrases successfully. These results indicate that genre analysis in class X-D MAN 2
Semarang obtained satisfactory result.
Source: https://media.neliti.com/media/publications/145489-EN-genre-based-analysis-of-students-descrip.pdf
