Comparison Case

The following commentary is going to analyze and compare two texts. Text 1(a) is an extract from a short story named "The Test", written by Njabulo Ndebele (1983). It is about a young boy called Thoba and its passion for playing street football with his friends, before he heads home. Text 1(b) is a newspaper article (sports report) from the New York Times (2005) which writes about the World Cup, a real event happening every four years.

Both text 1(a) and text 1(b) share the same theme of football. They both have their own different approach to describe two types of football in very different manner. Text 1(a) talks about street football , which Thabo and his friends spent most of their school vacations on. While text 1(b) talks about professional football which players are paid to play the game and involved more skills. This two kinds of football are also different in the scale and system involved. Street football especially the one talking in text 1(a) is only a one game match and the game is over while the professional football is a division group competition involving teams representing countries of 32 contenders. Thus the scale is much complex than street football and so the system.

Although the two text share the same theme ,despite having a totally different approach, they are completely two types of text. For text 1(a), it is a part of a short story while text 1(b) is a sports report. They can be generalized by saying that text 1(a) is a fiction and text 1(b) is a non-fiction. A fiction usually involves people, time and places which are the essential settings for fiction text while non-fiction text can include more likely informative contents or formal notification. Analyzing the stylistic difference such as genre, tone, and structure of the texts can differentiate them easily with wordings extract from the texts.

Firstly, talking about the general usage of word types of the texts. To show that text 1(a) is a fiction , clear settings can be found in the text. It talks about a boy called Thabo and a bunch of boys from Mayaba Street was playing street football on a rainy day. On a contrast to text 1(b),, clear didn't show the settings of what a fiction should be but showing information and statistics about the World Cup together with reference to the history of analyzed teams involving in the World Cup. Moreover, text 1(a) uses a lot of "movements" and adjectives in order to emphasize the fact that this is a fiction. Examples such as "shivered briefly" "teeth chattered" "shaking their fists" can all illustrate the characteristics of what a fiction will contain.

Secondly, talking about the tone of both texts. Text 1(a) has a narrative tone which is more emotional and rich. The text talks about a the thoughts of characters and described the flow of the text in details while with rich tone describing the settings. Examples from the txt such as "should I" "swept into the action as he dribbled his way" are some detailed description of the text , while for rich tone, line 7 o line 11 actually can be concluded as the weather is getting worse, but the writer exaggerated the meaning by enriching the descriptions and using rhetoric such as sniffing the weather. These are all techniques happened in fiction in order to enrich the content and entertain the readers. While on a countary, text 1(b) has a plain tone when informing readers the information about the World Cup which comparatively more formal and thus makes it a characteristic and evidence of a non-fiction.

Thirdly, talking about the structure of both texts. Text 1(a) apparently has three long paragraphs and they illustrate the flow of the whole story. From the beginning till line 9 , it talks about the feelings of Thabo, and the second one talks about his struggle and the intense of the match , and finally the game end with a victory on Thabo's side and the boys went home. This structure makes it a fiction. While for text 1(b), the text is divided into many short paragraphs by giving information to teams included in the World Cup, this gives the evidence to prove that this is a news article.

Further more by analyzing the aim of the texts, the writer actually use different techniques to attract the readers and together achieve their aims. Text 1(a) aims to entertain and somehow educate