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NARRATIVE PARAGRAPH

1. Introduction

Narrative paragraphs simply tell a story or relay a sequence of events. Generally, these
events are told in chronological order, that is the order in which they happened. However, a
narrative paragraph most often tells a story in order to illustrate or demonstrate a point. As a
result, this type of essay can be fun to read and even write. Usually personal and often
autobiographical, a narrative typically contains action, dialogue, elaborate details, and/ or humor.

Narrative paragraphs are a lot of fun to write. Here you can tell your reader a story from
beginning to end. You don't have to imagine anything out of the ordinary - only tell the story, tell
what happened. This alone usually allows the nervous writer to stop worrying about generating
ideas, and to concentrate on organizing the events in the story being told.
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2. Purpose and Appeal

following topic sentence stands in contrast to the one above:

Fishing at Hornings Hideout proved to be an enjoyable outing for Jeff and
his family.

This sentence sets out something to be proven in the paragraph and is more appealing to
the reader. Yes, the paragraph will tell the story of the familys fishing trip, but it will do so in a way
which proves the trip to have been enjoyable. Furthermore, establishing a contention improves
appeal by challenging the reader to respond to what is said. Finally, establishing this topic sentence
limits the perspective or angle which will be taken on the subject. Now supporting information
must be developed.

3. The Elements of Narrative paragraphs


All narratives have certain elements in common. There are kinds of narrative paragraphs,
but all of them have the same common that show that they are narrative paragraphs. Narrative
paragraphs is kinds of paragraphs that is enjoyable to read from a very younger one to the oldest
one and narrative is one of central to childrens learning. They use it as a tool to help them organize
their ideas and to explore new ideas and experiences. Composing stories, whether told or written,
involves a set of skills and authorial knowledge but is also an essential means for children to
express themselves creatively and imaginatively.

The range of narrative that children will experience and create is very wide. Many powerful
narratives are told using only images. ICT texts tell stories using interactive combinations of words,
images and sounds. Narrative poems such as ballads tell stories and often include most of the

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http://web.clark.edu/martpe/narrative%20parag.htm (oktober 01, 2014)
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generic features of narrative. Narrative texts can be fiction or non-fiction. A single text can include a
range of text types, such as when a story is told with the addition of diary entries, letters or email
texts.

The essential purpose of narrative is to tell a story, but the detailed purpose may vary
according to genre. For example, the purpose of a myth is often to explain a natural phenomenon
and a legend is often intended to pass on cultural traditions or beliefs.


Generic structure Language features Knowledge for the writer
The most common structure is:
an opening thatestablishes
setting and introduces
characters
a complication and
resulting events
a resolution/ending.

Effective writers are not
constrained by predictable
narrative structure. Authors
and storytellers often modify
or adapt a generic structure,
e.g. changing chronology by not
telling the events in order
(time shifts, flashbacks,
backtracking). Children can
add these less predictable
narrative structures to their
own writing repertoires.
Language features vary in
different narrative genres.
Common features:
presented in spoken or
written form, may be
augmented presented using
images ( such as illustrations
) or interactive/ multimedia
elements (such as
hypertext/ images/ video/
audio);
told/written in first or third
person (I, we, she, it, they)
told/written in past tense
(sometimes in present
tense);
chronological (plot or
content have a chronology of
events that happened in a
particular order);
main participants are
characters with recognisable
qualities, often stereotypical
and contrasting
(hero/villain);
typical characters, settings
and events are used in each
genre;
connectives are widely used
to move the narrative along
and to affect the
reader/listener:
o to signal time (later that
day, once);
o to move the setting
(meanwhile back at the
cave, on the other side of
the forest);
Decide on your intended style
and impact. Plan before
writing/telling to organise
chronology and ensure main
events lead towards the
ending. Visualise the setting
and main characters to help
you describe a few key details.

Rehearse sentences while
writing to assess their
effectiveness and the way they
work together. Find some
different ways of telling what
characters think and feel, e.g.
describe what they did or said.

Use some strategies to connect
with the reader/listener e.g.
use repetition of the same
phrase or the same language
pattern; ask them a question or
refer to the reader as you.
What on earth was happening?
Who do you think it was?

Show how the main character
has changed or moved on in
some way at the end.

Read or listen to the whole text
as if you are the
reader/listener or try it out on
someone else: check that it
makes sense and change
anything that could work
better.

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to surprise or create suspense
(suddenly, without warning).


a. Unfold over time

Time (chronological order) is most often the organizing principle in a narrative essay.
Stories and events happen in certain order, and this order must be communicated to the reader.
Events of experiences are listed in sequences of how they happened. Specific scenes are set-in
time and in-place and recreated for the reader.

b. Display Emotion

A good narrative essays connects readers to some sort of emotion felt by the essays subject.
They are many others, equally compelling emotions that merit elaboration: jealousy,
perseverance, loneliness, anxiety, and passion to name a few. Though these feeling are often
more subtle and harder to articulate, they are powerful, and if you can incorporate when into
your essay, your writing, will be stronger.

Choosing to start out with a direct statement, the event is difined straight away. Often the
emotion that is shared in a narrative- or really in any type of story is done to tell a bigger story.
The narrative part of the essay serves as a link to the big picture.

Anecdotes (short accounts of interesting events) are a good way to make your thoughts more
concrete to the reader.

c. Center on Events

As we have said, a narrative tells a story. But more precisely, it is a story that recounts
events as they happened in order to make a point. In order to do this effectively, you must focus
on events more than ideas.

Whether you start in the middle of story or at the beginning does not matter. You want to
focus on the events that were meaningful to you. The shorter the time-span you write about, the
narrower you focus will be.



It is important that you describe your story as it happened. The readers should understand
clearly how and when things happened. On the other hand, do not just recite the events in
sequential order as if you are reading a list.

As you describe your story in the manner it happened, make sure you keep your verb tense
consistent and clear. Reread your work several times to make sure that there is no confusion
about when things happened and what you might be feeling now.
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2
M. Syafii S, M.Fauzan Ansyari, Jonri Kasdi, The Effective Paragraph Developments : The process of Writing for
Classroom Setting (Pekanbaru: Kreasi Edukasi Publishing and Consulting Company, 2014), 55.
DO NOT TAKE THE CONCEPT OF AN EVENT TO LITERALLY
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When you write narrative paragraphs, use clue words and phrases to
help tell things in sequence.

The sentences in a narrative paragraph should move the reader along smoothly from action
to action. Clue words, such as those in the box, signal time order. They can help smooth out a
narrative paragraph by signaling when one action ends and another begins.

and first now before Later
Then Finally Yesterday soon today
After a while Last night last At first Next

Notice the clue words in the paragraph below. It tells of a Navaho girl listening to streams of
melting snow rushing down a mountainside.

I heard the first sound of their coming while I lay awake at night. At first it was a whisper, like
the wind among the dry stalks of our cornfield. After a while it was a sound like the feet of warriors
dancing. Then it was a roar that shook the earth. I could hardly wait until the sun rose.
from Sing Down the Moon by Scott ODell

The girl hears three different sounds, one after the other. The first is a whisper, like the
wind among the dry stalks of our cornfield. The writer uses the clue words At first to signal
this sound.


4. Developing Your Narrative Paragraph

Consider the following questions when you think about a topic. Maybe there was a time that
things did not turn out as expected. Maybe you recently had a great accomplishment. Maybe you
witnessed something troublesome.
What happened? In what order did it happen?
Who was involved?
Where were you?
How did you feel? Was there something to be learned from the experience?
According to Hornby (1973), narrative means story or orderly acaount of events. So, in
narration the essayist usually tries to write a composition based on his or her personal experience.
Dunbar (1985) has pointed out the narration, like description, particularizes rather than
generalizes; it deals with the concrete rather than abstract. An appropriate narratove can
strengthen and enliven almost anything you write. With it, you not only inform your readers but
also stimulate their imaginations.
The advantages of writing a narration is that you dont have to spend hours doing research
or gathering information since you already know the material and can concentrate on shaping it
into paragraph. Unless a narration is written carefully and thoughtfully, however, it can strike the
readers as dull as pointless.
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In order to write a good narrative paragraph, you will have to consider some important
points such as selecting an appropiate experience about which to write, deciding what sorts of
details to include, organizing your paragraph, and guiding your readers interpretation of the
experience.
1. Selecting an Appropriate Experience

Dunbar (1985) has stated the personal experiences always give the best source of
narrative material. When you are asked to write a narration about your personal experience,
the experience that come to mind most tidily are likely to be ones that you remember well
because you feel a certain emotion strongly (Langan, 1986) such as high school graduation trip
to Bali. Such experience, however, may not make the best topics for narrative paragraph. So in
selecting an appropriate experience for the topic of your paragraph, you must be sure that it has
a more profound significance that you can identify and communicate to your readers.

2. Deciding on Details

When you want to write your experience in a narrative paragraph, you dont need to
include every detail about that event. It would be too long and possibly boring. There are two
things worth considering in this case. First, determine what sort of central impression that you
wish to create in your paragraph. This major decision will the guide you to develop the details
of your paragraph. Second, be sure taht the details of your paragraph have a purpose.

Thus, whenever you have to decide whatever or not include a detail in anarraton, ask
yourself what it contributes to te overall impression you have in mind. If it doesnt contribute
anything leave it out, no matter how striking or amusing it may see.

3. Organizing a Narration

In writing a narration, you need to find an order that your reaers will be able to follow
and which will help convince them that your ideas are important and valid. Steven (1983) has
suggested there ways of organizing paragraphs namely the order of time, the order of space and
the order of importance. However the order of time of the chronological order is the natural
choice for narrative paragraphs (Dunbar, 1985 in Steven, 1983).

Narrative is assigned a central role in conceptualising and constructing both individual
and collective identity. The purpose of this article is to articulate a narrative vocabulary of
corporate identity in order to address its implications for analyzing and storying identity. The
central argument is that a narrative corporate identity vocabulary questions the usefulness of
integrated communication and consequently introduces polyphonic assumptions regarding
strategic organizational self-storying. Following a brief overview of existing corporate identity
vocabularies articulated within mainstream research, a narrative vocabulary is constructed
with reference to select contributions from organizational studies research. Third, an
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illustration of what corporate identity is when articulated from within a narrative point of view
is offered with reference to the storying of the Danish-Swedish dairy cooperative Arla Foods
during the controversy surrounding the 2006 Mohammed cartoon incident. Attention is given
to the narrative construction and negotiation of the organization's identity with Danish
consumers on its weblogs. In conclusion, focus is placed on the potential consequences a
narrative vocabulary has for strategic self-storying. The consequences include ambiguous,
collaborative and emergent storytelling practices.
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4. Guiding Your Readers Interpretation of The Experience

A narration should be have a plot or an outline of the events of a story. The narrative
paragraph should have an interest beyond whatever suspense is created by the incidents
themselves. We read not only to learn what happened but also to discover what significance the
author sees in the story.
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I remember when I first arrived in the United States. Even before the plane landed,
the little windows in the airplane revealed snow and ice-covered houses and buildings. As I
walked off the plane, cold air crept though the corrugated ramp that led to the airport
terminal. Some people inside the airport were wearing big coats and hats, which I had seen
on television, but never up close. I felt a little dizzy and needed to sit down, and then my cell
phone rang. It was my Aunt Sophia. She was waiting for me outside in the passenger pick-
up area, so I walked quickly to the exit, forgetting all about my luggage. When the sliding
glass door opened to the outside, there was my aunt--a woman I hadn't seen in over ten
years--wearing a parka and waving her arms frantically in my direction.
The topic sentence in this paragraph is the first sentence, I remember when I first
arrived in the United States. The supporting sentences that follow should be about this
experience and how it is still remembered. The concluding sentence in this kind of a paragraph
would lead to the action in the next paragraph--if there is one.
The sequence of activity can be implied or reassembled by the reader as demonstrated
in this paragraph:
Those of us who found out early that our teacher would be Mr. Fine shuddered
to think of having to spend an entire year in his classroom, trapped and subjected to
months of unending terror. We'd heard stories. We knew. Then a month before school
was to begin, a list mysteriously surfaced showing the names of all the sixth grade
students at Fairmont Elementary, their teachers, and their classrooms. Normally such
information wasn't known until the first week of classes, but John Patrick's mother was a
secretary at the school, and somehow this list appeared. It didn't matter how it was
found, or who exactly leaked the information. It was that cold list of names that would

3
http://www.academia.edu/2409000/The_Narrated_Organization_Implications_of_a_Narrative_Corporate_Identit
y_Vocabulary_for_Strategic_Self-Storying (october 01, 2014)
4
M. Syafii S, M.Fauzan Ansyari, Jonri Kasdi, The Effective Paragraph Developments : The process of Writing for
Classroom Setting (Pekanbaru: Kreasi Edukasi Publishing and Consulting Company, 2014), 56-58.
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cause a couple dozen eleven-year olds to panic. But as it turns out, we were all wrong
about Mr. Fine.
Or the activity can be clearly sequenced so that there's no mistake about what happens
first, second, third, and so on:
Theo's day began with a shock. As soon as he arrived at the office that morning,
he learned that his best friend was dead. Wasn't it just twelve hours ago that they were
eating chicken wings and tipping back beer in front of a baseball game at the Cooper's
Bar and Grill? After a long day of crunching numbers at the office, they stopped at a bar
for a Thursday afternoon happy hour. They saw a few coworkers there, and before they
knew it, it was closing time. Bill got in a car with someone he met just that evening and
that was the last time Theo saw him.
When you do the prewriting for a narrative paragraph, list the sequence of activity.
When you are ready to write, you can use this information in plotting out the events. It is not
necessary to always go directly in order. An event that happens last can appear first in the
paragraph. In fact, this is a good way to arouse interest in the reader. As long as the paragraph
seems fairly logical, you have a lot of creative freedom in writing this kind of a paragraph.
You could also just start writing the paragraph in a stream-of-consciousness sort of way
and let the ideas and action flow freely from your mind as you remember them.
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http://www.learnamericanenglishonline.com/Write_in_English/WL12_narrative_paragraphs.html (october 01,
2014)
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REFERENCES



1. http://web.clark.edu/martpe/narrative%20parag.htm (oktober 01, 2014)
2. M. Syafii S, M.Fauzan Ansyari, Jonri Kasdi, The Effective Paragraph Developments : The process of Writing for
Classroom Setting (Pekanbaru: Kreasi Edukasi Publishing and Consulting Company, 2014), 55.
3. http://www.academia.edu/2409000/The_Narrated_Organization_Implications_of_a_Narrative_Corporate_Id
entity_Vocabulary_for_Strategic_Self-Storying (october 01, 2014)
4. M. Syafii S, M.Fauzan Ansyari, Jonri Kasdi, The Effective Paragraph Developments : The process of Writing for
Classroom Setting (Pekanbaru: Kreasi Edukasi Publishing and Consulting Company, 2014), 56-58.
5. http://www.learnamericanenglishonline.com/Write_in_English/WL12_narrative_paragraphs.html (october
01, 2014)

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