Explanation Text

What is Explanation Text?

An explanation is written to explain how and

why something in the world happens. It is

about actions rather than about things.

Explanations play a valuable role in building and

storing our knowledge.Technical and scientific

writing are often expressed in this form.

There are three types of explanations text

• Sequential – These detail the stages in an event eg: how a caterpillar turns into a moth.

• Causal - Details what causes the change from one stage to the next ie: How a president is elected.

• Theoretical - Details the possible phenomena behind a natural or created process that is not fully understood. eg What caused the Nazi's to lose World War II.

An explanation text is similar to a procedural text and these two can often be confused, however an explanation text explains the how and why behind a process, meanwhile a procedural text is generally instructs how to make or do something such as recipe. 

Structure of Explanation Text

Explanations have the following structure:

• title

• general statement introducing or identifying

the phenomenon

• series of sequenced paragraphs

• concluding paragraph

• labelled diagrams and flow charts.

The Language Features on explanation Text are....

• The use of technical terms such as evaporation, degradation if writing about the water cycle.

• Action verbs and present tense such as runs, develops and becomes

• Cause and effect terms such as because of.., due to.., therefore, and as a result

 

Example of Explanation Text 

How Does a Tsunami Happen?

General Statement

We all know that tsunamis are a series of destructive waves and powerful. Tsunami is the deadliest wave because the wave speed is incredibly fast. But do you know how a tsunami can happens?

Explanation

Tsunami originated from Japan, “tsu” meaning harbor and “nami” meaning wave. They are normally caused by landslides, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions in, or close to an ocean. After some sort of underwater disturbance, this causes energy to rise up to sea level pushing the water high into the air. Gravity kicks in and pulls it down again and then consequently causing the water to filter out into many different directions.

When a tsunami begins to approach the shore the energy in the wave is compressed. As a result, the water is pushed up into the wave, resulting in a powerful tsunami. If the trough hits the shoreline first, it then causes the tide to drastically retreat.

Conclusion

So, tsunamis happen because of natural disasters such as earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. People who live near the shoreline have to be careful because they are threatened by tsunamis whenever there is an earthquake.