Recount Text | SAC by Satrih

Recount text
General Features of Recount
Social Purpose
Recounts ‘tell what happened’. The purpose of a factual recount is to document a series of events and evaluate their significance in some way. The purpose of the literary or story recount is to tell a sequence of events so that it entertains. The story recount has expressions of attitude and feeling, usually made by the narrator about the events.

Structure
Recounts are organized to include:

an orientation providing information about ‘who’, ‘where’ and ‘when’;
a record of events usually recounted in chronological order;
personal comments and/or evaluative remarks, which are interspersed throughout the
record of events;
a reorientation, which ‘rounds off’ the sequence of events.

Grammar
Common grammatical patterns of a recount include:

use of nouns and pronouns to identify people, animals or things involved;
use of action verbs to refer to events;
use of past tense to locate events in relation to speaker’s or writer’s time;
use of conjunctions and time connectives to sequence the events;
use of adverbs and adverbial phrases to indicate place and time;
use of adjectives to describe nouns.

Example:

The History of Electronic Communication

In the past, people used different ways to communicate over long distances, such as smoke signals, drums, and flags. Inventions such as the telephone, the radio, and television made communication over greater distances possible.
In 1837, Samuel Morse invented a system that transmitted sound pulses through a wire. These sounds were sent and received by an operator who knew the special Morse code. This allowed communication over long distances.
On 10 March 1876, Alexander Graham Bell invented the first telephone. A human voice was sent along a wire using magnets and electric currents. He spoke to his friend and fellow inventor, Thomas Watson, who was in another room.
Guglielmo Marconi discovered a way of sending and receiving radio waves at the turn of the century. In 1901 he amazed the world by sending a radio message across the Atlantic Ocean. Radio became a vital part of world communication, especially for ships and planes.
In the 1930s the first televisions were built. This was the first time that sound and pictures were transmitted together. Colour television was developed in the 1950s.
During this century many more forms of technology have been invented that allow people to communicate over long distances and even keep a record of that communication. Fax machines send printed information anywhere in the world. In the future, new technology will continue to make long-distance electronic communication even faster and more efficient.

Source: English Module, Board of Studies New South Wales.