Car Accident at Setiabudhi Street Bandung

How to Write News Texts

Objectives

• Learners are able to comprehend the information given on the text.
• Learners are able to understand the aim of the news items.
• Learners are able to make news item text.

Learn about it!

What is a news item text?

News item is a text which informs readers/listeners about particular important events of the day.

What is the purpose of news item text?

To inform the readers/listeners about current and important issues.

How to make news item text?

The following are needed to be known if you want to make news item text.

1. Generic Structure.

• Main Event(s) / Newsworthy Event(s): Recounts the event(s) in summary form.
• Elaboration / Background Events: Elaborating what happened, to whom, in what conditions/circumstances.
• Source: Comments by witnesses to/participants or authorities experts in the event(s).

2. Linguistic Features.

• Focusing on current circumstances.
• Generally using material processes/action vocabularies to retell the event(s). Example: go, move, strike, open, etc.

To enhance your knowledge, pay attention to the following news item below.

Car Accident at Setiabudhi Street Bandung

Four people were killed and 5 people got injured in a collision between a minibus and a sedan at 2.30 A.M at Setiabudhi Street near UPI campus. The people killed in the accident were all passengers in the sedan and all the people who got injured were the passengers in the minibus. The accident happened due to human error. The sedan’s driver did not give a sign when he wants to turn left, at the same time a minibus coming from behind struck the sedan. A collision could not be avoided. The driver of the minibus said that he did not see any sign from the sedan so he did not know that the sedan would turn left.

Based on the information gotten from the police, it was clear that the fault was with the sedan. It should have given signs if the sedan wanted to change its direction.

The text entitled Car Accident at Setiabudhi Street Bandung belongs to news item because this text fulfill the three generic structures of news items. The following is the explanation:

Keypoints

A news item text is a factual text to inform readers of daily events.
The structure of a news item text consists of three parts:

1. Newsworthy events: Recounts the events in summary form.
2. Background events: Elaborates of what happened, to whom, and in what circumstances.
3. Source: Comments by participants. It can be a witness or an expert.

The language feature of a news item text focuses on the circumstances. So there is no exact use of tenses in this text.
You may read a lot of passive form sentences and reported speech in a news item text.