Name : Salsabila Purnama Sari
Nim : 20216012012
LITERATURE TEACHING AND APPRECIATION
STUDY ON VARIETY OF TEXTS OF LITERATURE
A literary text is a genre of literature that transmits a message artistically and creatively.
Literary texts focus on both content and form. The authors of this kind of texts use a stylistic
language and idiosyncratic style to present reality or tackle phenomena. A literary text is a piece
of writing, such as a book or poem that has the purpose of telling a story or entertaining, as in a
fictional novel. Its primary function as a text is usually aesthetic, but it may also contain political
messages or beliefs. American schoolchildren and their parents are taught that literary texts
contrast with informational texts that have the purpose of providing information rather than
entertainment. Informational texts, such as science briefs and history books, are increasingly
receiving emphasis in public school curricula as part of the Common Core State Standards. As a
result, many parents have challenged the idea that literary texts are of less pedagogical value than
informational ones. Although literary texts have one common objective and work in the same
way, there are different types of literary texts.
Text refers to any written record of a communicative event. The event itself may involve
oral language (for example, a sermon, a casual conversation, a shopping transaction) or written
language (for example, a poem, a newspaper, advertisement, a wall poster, a shopping list, a
novel). Text consists of more than one sentence and the sentences combine to form a meaningful
whole that is convey a complete message. Mario Klarer (1999:1) stated that the word text is
related to “textile” and can be translated as “fabric” just as single threads form a fabric, so words
and sentences form a meaningful and coherent text. According to statement of Klarer it means
the text is coherent for the readers and language perceived to be meaningful, it is a discourse.
Discourse brings together language, the individuals producing the language, and the context
within which the language is used. Our purpose and our context will be shown from our choice
of word. There are two main categories of texts which called literary and factual. Every category
has various text types and each text types have different purposes. Each text types have a
common way of using language. Such these types are the narrative text, literary description,
literary recount, personal response text, and finally the review text.
Starting by the narrative text, it can be defined as a text that tells a story using a series of
events. Picture books, cartoons, fiction, and fairy tales are good examples of narrative texts. The
author encodes his message in a given context. The latter usually consists of a setting, such as
place and time, events of the story, characters, a situation, and a semantic field or what is called
by the co-text. These aspects make the narrative text distinguishable from the descriptive text
which describes people, characters, places, events and things in an imaginary way. Descriptive
texts can present a specific and detailed description of some features, physical appearance, or
landscapes and many other examples without even telling a story with events and situation.
Among other types of literary texts, there are literary recount and review. Literary recount
works retell events from stories, plays, films, and personal experiences to entertain others. To
make it more interesting as well as appealing, authors of literary recounts sequence their recounts
starting by background information, then, describing the events in time order, and finally, they
may end the retold story with a personal comment about the events or characters. Among the
well-known recount works, there is the fairy tale of Gingerbread Man. On the other hand, a
review text does not retell another text in different words, but it summarizes, analyzes, and
assesses the appeal of a novel, play or film, to a broader audience. Reviews usually tend to
describe features, such as characters, plot, situation, etc, that may or may not appeal to the reader.
For instance, comments on books, films, and plays are an example of reviews. However, a review
of a certain work differs from a personal response text. The latter is a literary text too, but, there is
a slight difference between the two of them.
If a review is a text that provides a comment or an evaluation of the whole work, a
personal response text gives a personal opinion on a novel or play or film focusing only on parts
of a specific passage. This entails a description of how the reader feels about the elements of the
context of a story and things that may or may not appeal to them. Personal responses can include
questions like ‘what did you like about the artwork and why?’ ‘Describe why you do or you don’t
like in the plot of the story…etc.?’
To conclude, literary texts can be represented in different types with different features and
characteristics. However, they all share the same aspects of creativity, freedom of choice of the
writer, features of innovation and power of imagination. It seems that literary works do not only
entertain readers but also can be used as support to teach in schools. They can noticeably improve
students’ level of creativity, imagination and intelligent quotient when it comes to language
learning.
REFERENCES :
https://aitoumgharelghali.medium.com/literary-texts-and-their-types-5e33b3c9ec43
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_types
Klarer, Mario. 1999. An Introduction to Literature Studies. London: Routledge
