Entry #9: Systemic Functional Linguistic in the EFL class


What is SFL?
  • It was  developed primarly by Michael Halliday in the 1980s
  • It is a descriptive and interpretative framework for viewing language as a strategic, meaning making resource
  • It explores how people use language in different contexts
  • It explores how a language is structured as a semiotic systemic as well as analytical methodology
Why use SFL in the classroom
  • ELL struggle academically
  • Lack of empathy for ELLS
  • Content area teachers believe it's not their responsability
  • Misconceptions about second language acquisition
  • ELLS are often inadequately accomodated and risk exclusion
  • Teachers often take the language of instruction for granted
  • Teachers often don't have specific training
  • Teachers often reflect about teaching methods or academic language
  • SFL accomodates ELLS by providing metalanguage and helping determine how writers create meaning in texts
Introduction to SFL theory
CONTEXT
CONTEXT OF CULTURE (GENRE): 
  • Represents all the potential ways we can use language to exchange meaning in socially recognizable ways
  • serves as a virtual catalog of genres that we can choose from to accomplish tasks with language in a particular culture
  • Discourse communities are created when large number of language users construct, interpret and use oral and witten language in agreed-upon and socially recognizable ways
CONTEXT OF SITUATION (REGISTER) :

Demonstration of SFL analysis
SFL is useful in many content areas and it emphasizes the significance of CONTEXTS

READING
  • Who wrote the text?
  • When was it written? What is the political/ social/ economic situation?
  • Where was it written? What is the impact of setting?
  • Why was it written? What is the author's motive?
  • What kind of text is it? (book, play, poem, lyric, postcard, article, newspaper)

WRITING
Students must write about topics...
  • they find interesting
  • they understand
  • thet relate to their lives
  • they usually write about in their mother tongue
When students read a text they should consider its PURPOSE (narration, argumentation, explanation, description, exposition, procedure, recount, report). The purpose of the text will reflect its shape.

How to implement SFL in the classroom
When teachers plan an activity for the students, they have to consider the idea of reaching different types of learners:
  • VISUAL LEARNERS: Prefer to see info and to visualize the relationships between ideas
  • AUDITORY LEARNERS: Prefer to hear information rather than reading it or seeing it displayed visually
At the same time, students can apply 'BUILDING BLOCKS' technique based on:

Participants+ process+ circumstance
who or what+ the doing or being words+ when, where and how

Example: Cathy and George live in London


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