MEEHAN PATRICIA VERÓNICA
Congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
SFL: As a Pedagogical Tool for the Improvement of EFL Writing at Upper-intermediate Level
Lugar:
São Paulo
Reunión:
Congreso; 33rd ISFC. SFL and Interdisciplinary Dialogue: Politics, Education and Business; 2006
Institución organizadora:
International Systemic Functional Linguistic Association
Resumen:
One of the most frequent worries facing upper-intermediate EFL teachers lies in the fact that even though many students reaching this level are capable of producing pieces of writing which are almost error free, they are, at the same time, often incapable of making their written texts effective and meaningful. The great challenge for teachers at this level is how to turn these ´accurate´ writers into effective ones. Experience has demonstrated that the sole application of a structuralist approach is not enough. Halliday and Hassan (1976) claim that a text is not just a string of well-formed sentences, and that it should be best thought of not as a grammatical unit at all, but rather as a unit of a different kind: a semantic unit.
How can teachers working in the classroom actually help those students who despite their accurate language, write texts which hardly ever produce any effect on the reader; texts which say a lot but hardly mean anything? It is here that SFL comes into play. I am convinced of the feasibility of applying SFG in the ESL/EFL classroom and of the pedagogical usefulness of making learners see grammar as a network of interrelated systems, each containing a set of options from which the speaker selects according to the meanings he or she wishes to make. It is worth pointing out, though, that at this level the learner is by no means expected to master SFG but simply to be familiar with the staples of the theory.
As regards how teachers should go about it, I believe it would be a good idea to begin by defining what SFG mainly focuses on. For instance, Graham Lock in Functional English Grammar? states that the focus of this approach is usually on the appropriateness of a form for a particular communicative purpose in a particular context (1996). Bearing this concept in mind will help students never to lose sight of language as source of making meanings with a particular purpose in a particular context.The purpose of this paper is to share a ?Student?s Descriptive Functional Guide? (SDFG) (see appendix) I have designed and whose main aim is that once the learners are familiarized with the three levels of meanings or metafunctions in Systemic Functional Grammar: IDEATIONAL, INTERPERSONAL AND TEXTUAL, they can make use of the SDFG to analyse their own written production from a functional perspective.
How can teachers working in the classroom actually help those students who despite their accurate language, write texts which hardly ever produce any effect on the reader; texts which say a lot but hardly mean anything? It is here that SFL comes into play. I am convinced of the feasibility of applying SFG in the ESL/EFL classroom and of the pedagogical usefulness of making learners see grammar as a network of interrelated systems, each containing a set of options from which the speaker selects according to the meanings he or she wishes to make. It is worth pointing out, though, that at this level the learner is by no means expected to master SFG but simply to be familiar with the staples of the theory.
As regards how teachers should go about it, I believe it would be a good idea to begin by defining what SFG mainly focuses on. For instance, Graham Lock in Functional English Grammar? states that the focus of this approach is usually on the appropriateness of a form for a particular communicative purpose in a particular context (1996). Bearing this concept in mind will help students never to lose sight of language as source of making meanings with a particular purpose in a particular context.The purpose of this paper is to share a ?Student?s Descriptive Functional Guide? (SDFG) (see appendix) I have designed and whose main aim is that once the learners are familiarized with the three levels of meanings or metafunctions in Systemic Functional Grammar: IDEATIONAL, INTERPERSONAL AND TEXTUAL, they can make use of the SDFG to analyse their own written production from a functional perspective.
