Report Text

DEFINITION OF REPORT

Report text is one of the 13 types of English Texts (genres) that presents information about things like nature, animals, plants, products of human endeavor and social phenomena, as it is. The information presented in the Report Text is the result of systematic observation and analysis. A report text is essentially a description that classifies and describes things in general and spesific terms.

PURPOSE OF REPORT

• To inform (Hardy dan Klarwein, 1990)

• To provide information about natural and non-natural phenomena (Hammond, dkk., 1992)

• To document, organize and store factual information on a topic, classify and describe the phenomena of our world :

1. about a whole class of things (not about one specific thing)
2. about living things like plants and animals and non-living things like phones, bikes, or oceans. (Derewianka, 1990)

• To describe the way things are, with reference to a range of natural, man-made and social phenomena in our environment (Gerot dan Wignell, 1994)
• To describe the way things are, with reference to a whole range of phenomena, natural, synthetic and social in our environment (Callaghan dan Rothery, 1988)

There are the elements of usefulness of that can be extracted from the above statements.

• : Provide factual information to
• : Non – natural and natural phenomena
• : Whole class of Things
• : To classify
• : To describe

GENERIC STRUCTURE OF REPORT

-        General classification:

Stating classification of general aspect of thing; animal, public place, plant, etc which will be discussed in general.

-        Description

Describing the thing which will be discussed in detail; part per part, customs or deed for living creature and usage for materials. There are also some generic information about the report text structure, that is:

-        General information

The part that mentions the general information of literary themes.

-        Bundles of Specific Information

The elaboration of this general information.

LANGUAGE FEATURE OF REPORT

• -        Using conditional logical connection: when, so, etc.
• -        Using simple present tense
• -        Use of general nouns, e.g. hunting dogs, rather than particular nouns; e.g. our dog.
• -        Use of Relating verbs to describe features, e.g. Molecules are tiny particles
• -        Some use of action verbs when describing behavior, e.g. Emus can not fly.
• -        Use of timeless present tense to indicate usualness, e.g. Tropical cyclones always begin over the sea.
• -        Use technical terms, e.g. Isobars are lines drawn on a weather map
• -        Use of paragraphs with topic sentences to organise bundles of information; repeated naming of the topic as beginning focus of the clause.

DIFFERENCES IN THE REPORT AND DESCRIPTIVE TEXT

         1.   Report

-        Generic structure:

        a.      General statement

        b.     Description

         2.   Descriptive

-        Generic structure:

        a.      Identification

        b.     Description

v   Part of unity of thing

Description is a type of text that contains a description of something. To describe that describes the means, then type this text tells something obvious, so regardless of the object described, the reader or listener could almost see the object clearly. Almost similar to the text genre REPORT. But of course there are differences. Report tells something general, but DESCRIPTION text tells only one of the specified object.

In short, the Report Text describing something that usually refers to the phenomena of nature, animals, and scientific object. Report text written after getting careful observation. This scientific tekhnical makes a clear difference of Descriptive Text.

EXAMPLE OF REPORT TEXT

KANGAROO

        A kangaroo is an animal found only in Australia, although it has a smaller relative, called a wallaby, which lives on the Australian Island of Tasmania and also in New Guinea.

        Kangaroos eat grass and plants. They have short front legsm but very long, and very strong back legs and a tail. These are used for sitting up and for jumping. Kangaroos have been known to make forward jumps of over eight meters, and leap across fences more than three metres high. They can also run at speeds of over 45 kilometres per hour.

        The largest kangaroos are the Great Grey Kangaroo and the Red Kangaroo. Adult grow to a length 1.60 metres and weight ove 90 kilos.

        Kangaroos are marsupials. This means that the female kangaroo has an external pouch on the front of her body. A baby kangaroo is very tiny when it is born, and it crawls at once into this pouch where it spends its first five months of life.