Functional Grammar

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Functional Grammar by and for teachers

• Dr Liz Walker
• HKIEd English Department

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Reminder

• We are LANGUAGE TEACHERS. We do not teach social
  science/issues or business. We teach the
  language use which makes social science/social
  issues etc. Without language use, social issues
  as a field/topic cannot exist.

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Sample only appropriate types of language use
for Social Issues English Lang Curriculum
Assessment Guide, 2007, pp 44- 46

• Pamphlet
• Editorial
• Letter to the editor
• Survey
• Report
• Expository essay
• In 50 hours, probably 5 8 genres can be taught,
  and successfully produced by students.
• Sample text grammar descriptions for the blue
  genres are provided.

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What is Genre (p.7 Christie Derewianka)

• Genre is everything we DO in speech and writing
  in a culture.
• A genre is a staged, goal-oriented social
  process which is predictable and therefore
  teachable.
• A text is an instance of a genre.
• Broad examples of schooling genres productive
  for life outside school are
• Recount Story particularly Narrative
  Procedure Report Explanation Exposition
  Discussion Response.

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Teaching language

• Our job as language teachers is to teach the
  genres, or USES of language, within a given
  domain of culture, e.g. social issues or
  business or sports etc.
• We thus need to teach the grammar of relevant
  TEXTS, not the grammar of sentences.

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Firstly, what is grammar?

• The meaning-making powerhouse of a language.
• A powerful semogenic resource which we all learn
  to control in mother tongue around our second
  year of life.
• A grammar is a theory of wording.

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What grammar do we teach?

• A language teachers mission is to help students
  to understand
• Why/how does the grammar of a particular text
  construe/construct meaning?
• What does a particular text reveal about the
  grammatical system of the language in which it is
  produced?

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Why is there not one grammar of English?

• Semiotic (meaning) systems are not yet cracked by
  human beings.
• The discourse of the study of language
  (linguistics) is horizontal, not vertical, as in
  the hard sciences. (Bernstein, B.1996.
  Pedagogy, symbolic control identity theory,
  research, critique. LondonTaylor Francis).

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Teaching-enriching concepts from a systemic
functional linguistics (SFL) view of language

• Meta-functions
• Refer to the most basic functions of language
  what is the message? who are the interactants
  what is their relationship? how does the message
  make meaning?
• The concept of meta-function is very useful
  for teachers to help students understand how the
  grammar of a language makes meaning in a given
  textin a given context the text architecture.

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Reminder What is text?

• When people speak or write, they produce text.
  A text is any instance of language .. in use,
  that makes sense to someone who knows the
  language (adapted from Halliday, revd by
  Mathiessen, 2004, p.3).
• A language teacher will always use text to help
  students to understand
• Why/how does the text mean what it means?
• What does the text reveal about the system of the
  language in which it is produced?

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Metafunctions performed SIMULTANEOUSLY by the
grammar of ALL texts

• Ideational Experiential logical meaning
• How the grammar construes information about a
  topic or about our experience of the world
  through noun groups (incl adjectives), verb
  groups, adverb groups and prepositional phrases..
• Interpersonal meaning
• How the grammar positions interactants, expresses
  interrelationships, attitudes, feelings through
  mood, modality, tense, pronouns, and appraisal
  resources.
• Textual meaning
• How the grammar builds up and organises the flow
  of the text in relation to its context through
  Theme choices and cohesion e.g. lexis, tenses,
  ellipsis, circumstantial adjuncts reference.
• .

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Example of meanings made in a TEXT

• Oxygen was first prepared by Joseph Priestley in
  1774. He prepared it by heating mercuric oxide,
  but nowadays it is produced commercially in large
  quantities by a process called fractional
  distillation. It is contained in both air and
  water and is given off by plants in their
  respiratory process.

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Take out nouns/verbs, no topic

• __________________by _______in ______.
  ___________by ____________, but
  _________________in ________by ___________________
  _. _________in both ______and ________and
  _________by ______in _________________.

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How the grammar of the sample text makes 3
meanings

• Because the nouns verbs (oxygen, prepared,
  mercuric oxide, produced, heating, process called
  fractional distillation, air, water, given off,
  plants) are chosen, the experiential field of
  science is construed.
• Because the declarative mood (SF) is chosen, the
  writer is giving information to the reader.
• Because remote/distant tense, passive voice
  without Actor, no modals, no you, are chosen,
  the text construes the message as factual,
  impersonal (not interactive, not involving the
  reader).
• Because the writer chooses consistent tenses,
  logical referring pronouns (it, he), logically
  interrelated vocabulary the text construes a
  coherent message.

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Experiential meaning an extra note

• In expressing experiential meaning, the clause
  represents experience.
• A clause usually comprises a participant a
  process a circumstance, eg. This group meets
  at Ning Po 2 school.
• The process (verb) carries most meaning in a
  clause, so we should analyse it first.
• Process types represent our experience too.

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Process types in SFL

• Process types represent our external world, our
  internal world, and how we relate bits of
  experience to another.
• External processes of the physical world of
  matter in doing, actions, events materialised
  
• Internal processes of the world of
  consciousness, sensing, perceiving, emoting,
  imagining mental
• Relating, identifying, classifying experience
  relational

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Lexical verb classifications correspond to human
experience
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Process types in SFL forming a circle of our
world.

• Processes between material and mental are
  behaviouralthe outer manifestations of inner
  workings, physiological states
• Processes between mental and relational are
  verbalsymbolic relationships constructed in
  the human consciousness but enacted in forms of
  language like saying
• Processes between relational and material are
  existential .things exist.

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Rememberin schooling

• no language no meaning, no school subjects
• grammar makes meaning in texts, not sentences.
• no teaching of text grammar no social or
  academic meaning making by students

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Useful References

• Butt, D., Fahey, R., Feez, S., Spinks, S.,
  Yallop, C. (2000). Using functional grammar an
  explorers guide. Sydney National Centre for
  English Language Teaching and Research
• Christie, F. Derewianka, B. (2008). School
  Discourse learning to write across the years of
  schooling. London and New York Continuum
• Polias, J.(ed) (2005). Improving language and
  learning in public sector schools. Hong Kong
  Quality Assurance Division, Education Manpower
  Bureau