WRITING III

Anecdote Text
Compiled By :

EXT/13/A

Faisal Putra
Licha Asmaira
M. Fajar Kurniawan
Pajar Daniel Manalu
Ranto Nicolius Turnip
Rizki Triananda Harahap
Lecturer :
Johannes J. Gultom

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
LANGUAGES AND ART FACULTY
THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF MEDAN
2014

What is Anecdote text ?

An anecdote is a type of spoken or written text that deals with past
incidents. The function is to retell an account or story of unusual or amusing
incident. The incident happened in the past. The purposes are sharing with
others an usual or amusing incident and entertaining others.
The generic structure of anecdote text usually has five components and
one is optional: (1) Abstract, (2) Orientation, (3) Crisis, (4) Reaction and (5)
Coda(optional).
Generic Structure of Anecdote
1. Abstract
incident
2. Orientation
3. Crisis
4. Reaction
5. Coda (optional)

: Signals the RETELLING of an unusual or amusing

: Sets the scene
: Provides details of the unusual incident.
: Reaction to the crisis
: Reflection on or evaluation of the incident

Generic Features
1. It uses exclamation, rhetorical question and intensifiers (e.g. really, very,
quite etc). They are used to point up the significance of the events.
2. It usually uses Simple Past Tense.
3. Past continuous tense is sometimes used
4. Use of temporal sequencers to show the sequence of story. They are:
Before
After
When
While
until
During
As
At that time
At that moment
After that
After then
Firstly

Secondly
Finally
To get better comprehension about anecdote text, here is the summary:
1. Social Function
to share with others an account of unusual, uncommon or amusing incident.
2. The text organization or generic structure of anecdote is
a. ABSTRACT
signals the retelling of unusual, uncommon or amusing Incident
b. ORIENTATION
introduction or sets the scene
c. CRISIS :
provides details of unusual, uncommon or amusing incident
d. INCIDENT
reaction to the CRISIS
e. CODA (OPTIONAL),
a reflection or an evaluation of unusual, uncommon or amusing
incident
3. The language features of anecdote text are:
a. using exclamation (e.g great!, what a bad day!, a very strange incident!
etc)
b. using of rhetorical questions (e.g what do you like to do when you
make wrong thing? , oh no, it is a stupid thing, isnt?)
c. using intensifiers (e.g very, so + adjective , much etc)
d.using material processes (e.g protected, employed, spoke etc)
e. using temporal conjunctions (e.g then, afterwards, ever since, while,
before, after etc).
NOTES:
Exclamations, rhetorical questions and intensifiers are used to point up
the significant of the events or incidents. And Material processes and
temporal conjunctions are used to tell what is going on or happened.
Material processes are verbs that show us what happened and what
someone do or what is done.

Temporal conjunctions are conjunctions that show the time sequence of

events.
Example of Anecdote :
Become Rich
Soon after Dave left college, one of his uncles, who was rich died and left Dave
a lot of money.So he decided to set up his own real estate agency.
He had only been there for a few hours when he heard some voice coming
towards the door of his office.
Its my first customer! he thought. He quickly picked up the telephone and
pretended to be very busy answering an important call from someone in New
York who wanted to buy a big and expensive house in the country.
The man knocked at the door while this was going on, came in and waited
politely for the agent to finish his conversation. Then he said to me, Im from
the telephone company, and I was sent here to connect your telephone.

Blessing Behind Tragedy

There was a black family in Scotland years ago. They were Clark family with
nine children. They had a dream to go to America. The family worked and
saved. They were making plan to travel with their children to America. It had
taken several years but finally they had saved enough money. They had gotten
passport. They had booked seats for the whole family member in a new liner to
America.
The entire family was full of anticipation and excitement with their new life in
America. However few days before their departure, the youngest son was bitten
by a dog. The doctor sewed up the boy. Because of the possibility of getting
rabies, there were being quarantined for long days. They were in quarantine
when the departure time came. The family dreams were dashed. They could not
make the trip to America as they had planned.

The father was full of disappointed and anger. He stomped the dock to watch
the ship leaved without him and his family. He shed tears of disappointment. He
cursed both his son and God for the misfortune.
Five days latter, the tragic news spread throughout Scotland. The ship, the
mighty Titanic, had shank. It took hundreds of passenger and crew with it.
Titanic which had been called the unsinkable ship had sunk. It was unbelievable
but it was.
The Clak family should have been on that ship, but because of the bitten son by
a dog, they were left behind. When the father heard the news, he hugged the son
and thanked him for saving the family. He thanked God for saving their lives. It
was a blessing behind a tragedy. (Adapted from Look Ahead 2)
Generic Structure Analysis
Abstract
Everybody has a dream. You have and so do I. When the dream will come true,
there is something wrong last minute before it. What will we feel? What will we
do?
Orientation:
the Clark family lived in Scotland. They had dream to travel to America. They
prepared well for their plan
Crisis
few days before they went to America, his youngest son was bitten by a dog. It
made they were being quarantined. They had to forget their plan.
Incident
the family was full of disappointment and anger. The father was angry with his
son and God. The family failed to travel to America and the father could not
accept it.
Coda
the father thank to his son when he hear the ship sank. He thank to God because
of saving the family from sinking. He thought leaving behind the ship was not a
tragedy but a blessing.

Referances
http://enes-ainenglish.blogspot.com/2011/01/anecdote.html
http://smp3lembang.blogspot.com/2013/01/generic-structure-and-exampleof.html