Content uploaded by Meg Gebhard
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Meg Gebhard on Feb 25, 2016
Content may be subject to copyright.
Grammar and literacy learning
... In the case of grammar instruction, the focus has usually been given to traditional grammar categories, such as parts of speech, tense, voice, participles, subject-verb agreement, and syntactic structure. Often conducted in a decontextualized fashion, such practice, as Gebhard and Martin (2011) pointed out, pays little attention to meaning or function, imposes rigid rules and conventions that proficient language users often violate, and does not truly empower readers and writers. ...
Learning in secondary content areas involves at least some interaction with complex disciplinary texts. The engagement requires discipline-specific reading/writing skills that go beyond those students have mastered in the elementary grades. This advanced literacy ability, or disciplinary literacy, is best fostered through a pedagogy that is informed by sound linguistics theory, responsive to student needs, and embedded in meaningful disciplinary experiences. Such a pedagogy, with its focus on how language is used in disciplinary meaning making, has the potential to promote knowledge building and advanced literacy development at the same time.
... The genre pedagogy approach to teaching writing is rooted in systemic functional linguistics (Halliday, 1978), a theory of language that emphasizes the relationship between the socio-cultural context of communicative events and the grammatical choices that speakers and writers make. Functional linguists focus on analyzing grammar as a meaning-making tool (Martin & Gebhard, 2011). In any communicative exchange, individuals make linguistic choices related to the three interconnected metafunctions of language-the ideational, the interpersonal, and the textual. ...
This qualitative study examined writing instruction in two linguistically diverse fourth-grade classrooms in order to determine the genres taught and the instructional practices favored by teachers. Researchers observed writing instruction and interviewed teachers in a culturally and linguistically diverse elementary school in Southern California to study how teachers worked with children to develop their capacity to negotiate different writing tasks. Findings revealed that students were engaged in content-area expository writing, and the writing assignments were influenced by assessment requirements. Both teachers evidenced explicit instruction of academic language, attention to genres, and scaffolding for writing. Observations revealed that teachers tended to focus their feedback on word and sentence level discourse during classroom instruction. For lengthier pieces, teachers used mentor texts and heavy scaffolding to ensure that every student in the class would be able to produce the writing required. Implications for professional development are discussed.
... Further, this study provides evidence that knowledge of SFL and genre-based pedagogy can support the professional practices of teachers who have conflicting feelings about the role of traditional grammar instruction in schools (Hillocks and Smith, 2003). The degree to which these middle schoolers, including students who were institutionally deemed "low" achievers, were successful in using SFL metalanguage in powerful ways demonstrates that SFL is neither too complex nor too technical to be a resource for students or teachers. ...
Purpose
This paper aims to analyze how middle schoolers developed a critical awareness of language while participating in a curricular unit informed by systemic functional linguistics (SFL). This unit was developed to understanding and taking action to protect a local bat population in the context of school reforms shaping teaching and learning in the USA. It was designed to support a heterogeneous class of seventh graders in learning to read scientific explanations, write letters to government officials and develop a functional metalanguage to support them in analyzing how language simultaneously constructs ideas, enacts power dynamics and manages the flow of information in disciplinary texts. The questions guiding this study are: How do students use SFL metalanguage in text production and interpretation practices? Do their uses of SFL metalanguage support critical language awareness and reflection? And, if so, in what ways?
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses ethnographic methods to conduct teacher action research. Data include classroom transcripts, student writing samples and interviews.
Findings
The findings illustrate how students engaged with SFL, often playfully, to create their own student-generated functional metalanguage in highly productive ways.
Research limitations/implications
This study contributes to a growing body of scholarship that suggests SFL metalanguage can provide teachers and students with a powerful semiotic toolkit that enables them to navigate the demands of teaching and learning in the context of the Standardization and Accountability movement.
Practical implications
This study has implications teachers’ professional development and students’ disciplinary literacy development in the context of school reform.
Originality/value
To date, few studies have explored how students take up and transform SFL metalanguage into a tool for critical reflection, especially adolescents.
... This linguistic theory has become more prominent in educational research in recent years and enables new ways of working with and teaching language in the classroom that go beyond a focus on accuracy in production. SFL theory recognizes the meaning-making systems children bring to the classroom and offers teachers means to build on those ways of meaning to enable children to develop new language resources related to the learning they are engaged in (for discussion about SFL in relation to other approaches to language and literacy, see Gebhard & Martin, 2011). This functional approach enables teachers to recognize that learners come to classrooms with already developed language and other meaning-making resources that they can draw on as they 'translanguage' (Hawkins & Mori, 2018) their way into adding relevant varieties of English to their repertoires. ...
English language teachers who work with children in schools need knowledge about how English works to construct and present knowledge. This article discusses three aspects of that knowledge: understanding variation in the registers needed to engage in different classroom tasks, being able to identify language features used in the disciplinary discourses of different school subjects, and being able to draw on meaningful metalanguage to raise children’s consciousness about the ways English is used in the texts they read and write. Examples of these knowledge bases and how they are relevant in elementary and secondary classrooms are presented here, drawing on the meaning-based theory of systemic functional linguistics (SFL). Implications of the need to develop such understandings for the work of teacher educators are acknowledged. However, achieving this goal is argued to be especially important in school contexts where English language teachers are increasingly being asked to collaborate with and support subject-area teachers as they work with children learning English.
Literacy is one of the most important instruments in advancing a country's education, not even in Indonesia. Research from developed countries has encouraged learners to access, understand, and use things intelligently through activities, such as reading, seeing, listening, writing, and speaking. In the Islamic education facility, even literacy is a duty for any Muslim, as the first Quran verse encourages Muslims to always be studious. It is precisely this research aimed at learning about the efforts of educators, particularly teachers of the history of Islamic culture, in improving literacy among educated people. The study used a qualitative method with a case study design approach. The data source was drawn from the three informants through deep interviews chosen using impressive sampling techniques. All the informers were teachers of the history of Islamic culture. The entire interview was analyzed thematically using nvivo software 12. Research shows the four attempts made by teachers to improve learners' literacy. The four are i) perform cooperative or group learning, ii) perform oral tests, iii) provide school reading or madding, and iv) make a ten-minute reading movement before beginning the lesson. The four attempts of teachers in this study can be set as an example for teachers in the history of Islamic culture, and schools to improve literacy cultures among learners.
Fluency with formal mathematical language is necessary for students in advanced mathematics. Yet, the language has been documented as being particularly challenging for students, motivating the need for more empirical studies that investigate the language and undergraduate students’ understanding of it. This study makes progress on this goal for the case of multiply quantified statements. By using Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar, I identified meanings that students had for quantified variables, connected these meanings to the grammar of the statements, and explained how such meanings impacted the full statement. I argue for the utility of Systemic Functional Grammar when investigating formal mathematical language and students’ thinking about it.
This bibliography compiles the references of literature related to the use of Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) in U.S. K–12 educational research. The ‘use of SFL’ has been broadly defined to include work that takes up one or more aspects of the theory as part of a conceptual framework, uses the analytical tools of SFL in its methodology, or draws on SFL as part to discuss the significance or implications of a study.
This article argues for expanded opportunities for metalinguistic dialogue and written response rounds in order to better understand students' needs. Encouraging students to reflect on their compositions can invite multiple stylistic approaches and inform a more participatory composition process. The writing explores theoretical underpinnings, makes a case for metalinguistic dialogue, and remarks on the use of written exchanges between students and teachers. Copyright © 2017 by the National Association for Multicultural Education.
The purpose of the present study was twofold. First, it examined the effect of a register-based approach to writing instruction based on the insights gained from Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). Second, it attempted to examine the perceptions of the participants toward the register-based approach to writing. To this end, 100 intermediate and advanced students were selected and assigned to two experimental groups (advanced and intermediate ones) and two control groups. Prior to any instruction, the participants of all groups were assigned a writing task as a pre-test. The experimental groups were treated with SFL-oriented register knowledge for 20 sessions while control groups were exposed to the traditional method of teaching writing. Following the treatment, a post test was administered to the groups. The results revealed that the participants in the experimental groups surpassed their counterparts in the control groups. The results of qualitative analysis also disclosed that learners held positive attitudes towards this approach as it heightened their interest in writing.
In the United States, English language learners (ELLs) now account for over 10% of K-12 public school enrollment. This demographic shift coincides with a succession of school reforms, such as No Child Left Behind legislation, English-only mandates, and the adoption of the Common Core State Standards, which place new demands on all students and their teachers (Brisk, 2015; Gebhard, Chen, & Britton, 2014; Palincsar & Schleppegrell, 2014). These demands are prompting a renewed interest in how teachers can support students in simultaneously developing academic language proficiency and disciplinary content knowledge. As teachers, administrators, teacher educators, and policymakers attempt to respond to the demands of these reforms, a new national discourse regarding the relationship between language and content learning is emerging. This new discourse is one many teachers are struggling to grasp in their attempts to design more effective instruction, particularly for the growing number of ELLs in their classes (Bunch, Kibler, & Pimentel, 2012; Burke & de Oliveira, 2012).
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.