Text types

Overview

What is a text?

A text is a meaningful stretch of spoken or written language. When we listen or read we are interpreting texts, for example listening to a conversation or reading a recipe. When we speak or write we are creating texts, for example giving someone directions or writing a story.

We use texts to achieve real life purposes, for example telling what happened yesterday or explaining how something is made. To construct a text, a speaker or writer organises language into meaningful patterns. As the language patterns unfold, the whole text emerges with a distinctive shape or structure. Listeners and readers recognise the structure and thus recognise the text's purpose.

What are text types?

Most texts belong to a recognisable text structure, or text type. Texts which belong to the same text type have the same general language patterns organised into predictable stages. A description of a text type is a description of the stages of texts of that type.

How are text types different from each other?

Speakers and writers use the same general text structure for all texts which achieve the same general purpose. For example, each time a speaker or writer tells a story, even if the setting, characters and events are completely original, listeners and readers recognise that the purpose of the text is to tell a story (ie, not to instruct or to explain) because the text’s structure is a story structure (ie, not the structure for instructions or explanations).

Each different text type has its own structure and is used for a particular purpose.

How can these files help me?

Over time a language develops text types which remain fairly stable. People who know how to speak and write a language are able to predict and recognise the structure of the different text types used in that language. Speakers and writers use these language patterns to help them organise words and grammar into effective texts, that is, texts which make sense and achieve their purpose.

Teachers can use text type descriptions to help students construct English texts more effectively. If students work with texts which belong to the same text type and learn to recognise the language patterns of that text type, they have models they can use as a guide when they construct their own texts.

The following seven directories are the general categories of text types in the Text types component of PrimeGram. In these sets of files we illustrate the purpose, structure and typical grammatical features of each general text type, using sample texts. We also suggest how they can be used in the classroom.

	descriptions (general and particular)
	recounts (factual and personal)
	instructions (recipes, 'how to')
	stories (traditional tales, fables)
	reviews (books, films, plays)
	explanations (explaining how and explaining why)
	arguments (persuading and discussing)

The following three directories are collections of more specific types of texts referred to in the KS2 syllabus. You will find many of these text types in the PrimeTeach teaching activities:

	conversational text types (phone calls, shopping)
	multimedia text types (advertisements, timetables)
	text types for enjoyment (songs, riddles)