The Review Text That Reads Like a Summary
You are answering a Reading and Responding question based on a short Indonesian text: a review of a new café in Yogyakarta. The text describes the café's interior, its menu (including a traditional dish reinterpreted with modern presentation), the price range, and the writer's experience of waiting 40 minutes for a table on a Saturday night. The question asks: 'Apa nada (tone) teks ini terhadap kafe tersebut? Dukung jawabanmu dengan bukti dari teks.' (What is the tone of this text toward the café? Support your answer with evidence from the text.) Your first instinct is to answer 'positive' because the writer praises the interior and the food.
1. Why is 'positive' an inadequate answer, and how would you build a stronger response using evidence from the text?
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'Positive' is inadequate because it describes the topic rather than the writer's stance, and it ignores evidence that complicates it. The text mixes praise with a concrete complaint: the interior and the reinterpreted traditional dish are described favourably, the price range is presented neutrally, but the 40-minute wait on a Saturday night is a real negative detail. A tone answer must account for all of these, not just the flattering ones.
The stronger answer identifies a nuanced tone - for example, 'appreciative but critical' or 'generally favourable with a reservation about practicality'. Then it supports that characterisation with specific evidence. Praise: the description of the interior and the modern presentation of the traditional dish. Reservation: the 40-minute wait, which the writer chose to include and which signals that the experience was not seamless. Price: presented as information rather than as a complaint or a selling point, so it should not be forced into either category.
The method matters as much as the conclusion. Read for evaluative language - words that carry judgement - and separate them from descriptive language. Then ask whether the evaluative words cluster on one side or are mixed. Here they are mixed, so a one-word answer ('positive') will always be incomplete. A model response would be: 'Nada teks ini cenderung positif namun kritis. Penulis memuji interior dan penyajian makanan, tetapi menyertakan keluhan tentang waktu tunggu 40 menit, yang menunjukkan bahwa pengalaman tersebut tidak sepenuhnya memuaskan.' Notice that the answer names the tone, qualifies it, and cites two pieces of evidence in Indonesian. That structure is what the question is asking for.
2. The question asks you to support your answer 'dengan bukti dari teks'. What counts as acceptable evidence, and what common mistakes should you avoid?
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Acceptable evidence is material drawn from the text itself: a paraphrase of a relevant phrase, a short quotation, or a specific detail the writer included. For a tone question, the best evidence is evaluative language - words that carry judgement - plus details whose inclusion reveals the writer's attitude. In this text, the favourable description of the interior and the modern presentation of the traditional dish are evidence of appreciation; the 40-minute wait is evidence of a reservation. Citing the price range as evidence of either tone would be weak, because the text presents it neutrally.
Common mistakes to avoid. First, citing evidence that supports a different point than the one you are making - for example, quoting the menu description to prove the tone is negative. Evidence must match the claim. Second, quoting at length without explaining what the quotation shows; a quotation is not an argument. Third, importing outside knowledge: your own view of the café, or assumptions about Yogyakarta cafés in general, are not evidence from the text. Fourth, treating the writer's experience as the writer's opinion about everything - the 40-minute wait is one detail, and it should be weighed, not allowed to override the rest of the text.
A strong response pairs each claim with evidence and a one-line explanation of the link. For example: 'Penulis menyebut waktu tunggu 40 menit, yang menunjukkan bahwa ia menyadari kekurangan kafe tersebut meskipun secara umum memberi penilaian positif.' That sentence does all three jobs: claim, evidence, explanation.