As an experienced reader, you have already encountered many different types of texts. For instance, you've read (and written) essays and poems as well as magazine articles and stories. However, you may not realize that almost all prose writing can be placed in one of four broad categories: narrative, informative, persuasive, or expository. Each of these types of writing is focused on a different purpose, and each is associated with different features or characteristics. Watch the video to review the four main types of texts.
Writing is usually divided into four main types: narrative, informative, persuasive, and expository. These types sometimes go by other names as well, but the basic elements and ideas remain the same. Fiction writing usually falls into the narrative category, while nonfiction or academic writing can fit into all four. Let's go over these four types in greater detail.
Narrative writing:
This type of writing is used to tell a story. It can be either fiction or nonfiction. It tends to focus on characterization and follows the standard plot structure: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.
Informative writing:
Just as the title would suggest, this type is meant to provide information. It can be written in a variety of styles.
Persuasive writing:
This is meant to convince someone of something. It uses persuasive techniques to argue and support a point or a cause.
Expository writing:
Expository and informative are similar but a little different. Expository is used to explain something specifically. While informative may explain events that happened, expository writing explains why the events happened.
Can you recognize each of these types of text, based on how it is written? Read the passage below, and see if you can identify what kind of writing it represents.
The harder Tom tried to fasten his mind on his book, the more his ideas wandered. So at last, with a sigh and a yawn, he gave it up. It seemed to him that the noon recess would never come. The air was utterly dead. There was not a breath stirring. It was the sleepiest of sleepy days. The drowsing murmur of the five and twenty studying scholars soothed the soul like the spell that is in the murmur of bees. Away off in the flaming sunshine, Cardiff Hill lifted its soft green sides through a shimmering veil of heat, tinted with the purple of distance; a few birds floated on lazy wing high in the air; no other living thing was visible but some cows, and they were asleep. Tom's heart ached to be free, or else to have something of interest to do to pass the dreary time. His hand wandered into his pocket and his face lit up with a glow of gratitude that was prayer, though he did not know it. Then furtively the percussion-cap box came out. He released the tick and put him on the long flat desk. The creature probably glowed with a gratitude that amounted to prayer, too, at this moment, but it was premature: for when he started thankfully to travel off, Tom turned him aside with a pin and made him take a new direction.
Question
What type of writing appears in this passage? How could you tell?
