Understanding the Developing Persuasive Writing Practices of an Adolescent Emergent Bilingual through Systemic Functional Linguistics: A Case Study
Keywords:
English language learners; Systemic Functional Linguistics; Genre based Pedagogy; Academic WritingAbstract
This article presents the findings of a qualitative case study
which stems from a teacher action-research project that analyzes the
persuasive academic writing practices of an adolescent, beginning-level
English language learner (ELL) and the teaching practices of a veteran
English as second language teacher (the author). The author, who is
also the teacher and researcher, details the implementation of a Systemic
Functional Linguistic (SFL)-based pedagogy designed to support ELLs
in increasing their control of the linguistic resources necessary to write
persuasive texts in school contexts. The SFL analysis of written
persuasive arguments composed by the focal student before and after
the implementation of the SFL-based pedagogy indicates the student’s
increased control of both discourse structure and register. This purpose
of the study is twofold: to present a detailed exploration of SFL
pedagogy in practice and to demonstrate how teachers can use SFL to
understand the developing writing practices of their emergent bilingual
students.
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