INTRODUCTION

WHAT IS SHORT FUNCTIONAL TEXT?

Short Functional Text or factual text is a short text that contains functional
purposes such as command, direction, prohibition, invitation, Greeting Cards
(written), short message, shopping list, warning (notice), announcement, and
others. Such texts are meaningful and used in everyday communication. Given
this definition, longer texts in the form of descriptive, narrative, recount, report,
and the procedure can be categorized into Long Functional Text. Although this
term is not commonly used.

This what differentiates short functional text than other texts. Typically, short
functional texts are consumed by a reader for the purpose of accomplishing
something or getting us to the next step of what we need to do.

According to Halliday and Hasan (1989), a text is always functional because it

performs a function within a particular context. For instance, if you are in a
railway station waiting for your train to Tegal, but suddenly there is an
announcement coming up:

“May I have your attention please. Those on platform 2B, we are sorry to
announce that the train service to Tegal has been cancelled. This is due to some
technical issues. It will approximately take 30 minutes to fix the issues. We
apologise for any inconvenience this may cause you”

What does the text above imply? Is it simply describing the train service to Tegal
– that it is located on platform 2B? Or is it asking for an apology? Or is it
announcing a cancellation of a train service that you have been waiting? The
answer is definitely the latter one as the communicative purpose of the text above
is to announce a problem with the train service.
We need to bear in mind that functional texts do not follow one rigid single
format, but you can recognize them based in part how we interact with them.

WHY SHORT FUNCTIONAL TEXT?

Conventional listening courses are usually based on comprehension. This

approach does not specify or categorize its listening materials, that is the texts.
Such an approach is actually useful as it focuses on one main principle in
listening, that is comprehension. However, short functional texts have specific
ways in recognizing and comprehending because they have particular generic
structures. Therefore, studying short functional texts would benefit us in
identifying short functional text. In addition, a more practical benefit of studying
short functional texts is that because they are widely used and they are very short
in duration, there are chances that we could not comprehend them. Students need
to be fluent and proficient to understand the meaning spontaneously. It is no fun to
miss a flight due to our inability to comprehend short functional texts.

KINDS OF SHORT FUNCTIONAL TEXT

According to their communicative purposes, there are at least 6 (six) kinds of

short functional text. They can be summarized in the table below.

Kinds of text Communicative purpose

Announcement To announce an event or news. This include

announcement and warning.

Short Description To describe a particular object

Short Classification or To classify and explain an object in general under

Short Explanation
investigation
Advertisement To advertise a product or service

Commercial To advertise a product or service

Short Review To review a service or product

Those genres will be further discussed one by one in each chapter.