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:

Describing
has, eats, sings, lays, swim
• 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 An ant has six legs.
descriptions have been annotated to
demonstrate some of the key An ant has three body parts.
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.
 GENRE-BASED ANALYSIS OF STUDENT'S DESCRIPTIVE
TEXT IN THE TENTH GRADE STUDENTS OF MAN 2
The design of this study uses descriptiveSEMARANG
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
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