Recount Text

Recount text is a text which retells events or experiences in the past.

Its purpose is either to inform or to entertain the audience.

Generic structure of recount text :

1)  Orientation --> tells who was involved, what happened, where the events took place, and when it happened.

2)    Events --> tell what happened and in what sequence. 

3)  Reorientation --> consists of optional-closure of events/ending.

Simple Past Tense

The simple past tense is used to talk about actions and states which we see as completed in the past.

Simple past tense is used to :

a)    Talk about a specific point in time.

• She came back last Friday.
• I saw her in the street this morning.
• I visited Berlin last week.

b)    Talk about a period of time.

• She lived in Tokyo for seven years.
• They were in London from Monday to Thursday of last week.
• When I was living in New York, I went to all the art exhibitions.

Signal Words of Simple Past:

• Yesterday
• three weeks ago
• last year
• in 2002
• from March to June
• for a long time
• for 6 weeks
• in the 1980s
• in the last century
• etc.

Verbs Transformations

Regular verbs

Infinitive (V1)	Past (V2)
walk	walked
push	pushed
open	opened
cover	covered
pull	pulled
wash	washed
order	ordered

Irregular verbs

Infinitive (V1)	Past (V2)
eat	ate
drink	drank
go	went
buy	bought
sell	sold
make	made
see	saw