Genre of Narratives and Recounts: Activity 1

Activity 1

Today, we're looking at the genre of storytelling. Narratives and recounts are two ways of describing events.

What do you think is the difference between narratives and recounts?

Narratives and recounts both relate events that took place in the past and which occur in a logical order.

The difference is that narratives try to make sense of what happened and link the events through cause and effect. Also, recounts tend to be factual, but narratives are usually fictional.

Read the following text. Is it a narrative or recount?

Narrative or Recount?

• Yesterday I got up at 7.30, showered, got dressed and had breakfast of fried egg and bacon. Then I went to school. At school we had English and then Maths and then PE in the afternoon – the boys played football and we did netball. After school I had my piano lesson. I hate scales. I did my homework and after spag bol for dinner I watched telly. I went to bed at 9.

This text is a recount. It just tells us a series of unrelated events not linked by cause and effect. The only structure is the time sequence indicated by “then” and “after”.