Theoretical Basis
Learning a language is not just learning vocabulary and grammar!
(Much of the description given here is based on concepts taken from chapter 10 of the book 'Using Functional Grammar' by David Butt et.al. [ISBN 1 86408 550 9] which can be recommended as further reading on SFL.)
To speak and understand a foreign language the learner should know which wordings (or grammatic structures) are appropriate for expressing meaning in a particular situation, context or 'genre'. Linguist and emeritus Professor M.A.K. Halliday incorporated these considerations in his Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) theory and an ever increasing number of linguistic researchers and language teachers continue to expand and eloborate on his work. Professor Halliday has often written that learning a language is actually ‘learning how to mean in context’. The correct use of language can thus be seen as learning how to make choices from varying language forms appropriate to various contextual situations or 'genres'. Methodically learning traditional school-book grammar does not alone offer very much help in making these choices. Systemic Functional Grammar can, however, be most useful in considering the idea of choice which otherwise remains an intuitive human skill we learn by real language exposure and practice.
In SFL the scope of language choice and form can be broken into three important areas as follows:
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FIELD
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The experiences of human beings or the ideational meaning.
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TENOR
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The interpersonal relationships, interactions and mood between human beings.
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MODE
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The various roles given to language and communication by human beings.
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Using a language is about making meaning in social contexts in which all three of these dimensions play a role and this ‘learning how to mean’ (Halliday, 1975) can be compared to the extended and natural social processes a human child will go through to learn, expand and develop its own first language skills in relationship to family, friends, peers, strangers and even surroundings or objects.
So what implications does this have for second language tuition?
Genre based Teaching Strategies
‘…the content of a language program might usefully be organised around the teaching of whole texts or media in individual contexts.’ These 'texts' might in reality actually be a broad range of media such as video or audio and not exclusively written materials. Students are then simultaneously: 'learning language, learning through language and learning about language'. (Halliday, 1980) This is because the focus is on the text as a whole in context rather than single rules of grammar and word meanings.
However, most teachers want their students to be both accurate and fluent, so the language teacher faces an educational paradox:
- If learning activities focus only on correct language use, there is a risk of limiting the language varieties available and students will often be restricted to minimal responses or even no response at all.
- If learning activities focus only on simple communicative phrases, students may spontaneously respond with more confidence but never learn the more abstract, accurate and effective use of the language.
One way of addressing this paradox is to design cycles of teaching and learning around the use of whole texts in context. The cycle takes students through a range of activities which addresses both accurate and fluent language. This method of tuition is often referred to as 'genre based tuition' (See 'The Sydney School' and Martin, 1993) and 'text modelling' (Burns, 2001).
Genre Type : Recall - An example based on a TV video teen sit-com called 'extr@'
A sample teaching cycle is illustrated below and has been used successfully with adolescent students with low literacy skills and who had previously shown little motivation with traditional course materials. The author's version is based upon a specially made video series called 'extr@' from Channel 4 TV (UK) in the style of popular commercial US TV productions. Such material has proven engaging for typical adolescent learners as it is based on social contexts and media they comprehend and are familiar with. Any media or text genre may actually be used for the modelling depending on social contexts best suited to the particular students. The activities will then involve four kinds of social interaction which support the learner's language development through a combination of:
- context exploration - View the film, pictures and/or play key vocabulary games
- explicit instruction - Read script text, teacher demonstrates sentences
- guided practice and joint construction - Teacher and Student build sentences together using functional constructions.
- independent application of newly acquired knowledge - Student attempts to build sentences alone on which the teacher will give feedback.
http://www.channel4learning.com/sites/extra-english/english_flash_home.html
The roles of teacher and student may shift during the learning process between collaboration, direct teaching, strategic guidance and independent work. It might be useful to investigate the general ideas on "proximal learning" (L.Vygotsky ,1978) and "scaffolding" (Bruner,1978) in order to understand this mechanism.
Students in this example have learnt to construct recounts of the film material they have watched using functional building blocks to construct basic sentences. These describe and recall experiential events in the film which relate to their own social and experiential contexts. (SFL: field) They will thus typically use past tense verb forms right from the start.
The vocabulary games presented on this site are designed to stimulate semiotic learning as an integral part of such a teaching cycle. The use of representative graphics and audio files avoids the traditional non-contextual word to word translated vocabulary lists.
