Introduction
The changing role of English as a global
language has placed new demands on
learners of English in Asian contexts.
These demands involve using English to
learn disciplinary knowledge,
communicate for scholarly exchanges,
carry out economic and political
transactions, and participate in various
communities of practice where varieties of
world “Englishes” are used for social,
academic, and professional purposes
(Pennycook, 2007, p. 30; see also Crystal,
2003; Hasan & Akhand, 2010; James,
2008; Matsuda & Matsuda, 2010;
Warschauer, 2000).
In response to these new demands,
policymakers have enacted reforms aimed
at improving students’ English proficiency
by pushing English education into earlier
levels of schooling and mandating teachers
adopt a more communicative approach to
English language teaching (Butler, 2011;
Hiep, 2007; Kirkgoz, 2008). However, to
date, it is unclear if these reforms are
enhancing students’ English proficiency,
especially their ability to read and write
academically. Rather, many EFL students
continue to graduate from high school and
even college with only the most
rudimentary level of English language
proficiency—a level that will not support
them as they enter global communities
where English is used to negotiate
disciplinary, social, institutional, and
professional goals. We argue that these
unsatisfactory results are due to a wide
variety of complex factors, one of which is
how the field of second language
acquisition has conceptualized grammar in
teacher education programs. In an attempt
to respond to this issue, we call for a
critical reconceptualization of how
grammar is understood and taught within
Asian contexts in elementary and
secondary schools. Specifically, we
suggest that Halliday’s understanding of
grammar as a meaning-making resource
provides English language teachers,
teacher educators, policymakers, and
researchers working in Asia with new and
potentially more productive ways of
providing English language and literacy
instruction.
Halliday’s conception of grammar as a
semiotic resource stands in contrast to a
Skinnerian perspective of grammar that
advocates teachers drill and practice
language forms or structural patterns (e.g.,
the audiolingual method). It also stands in
contrast to a Chomskian perspective of
grammar that maintains students develop
linguistic competence through natural
communication (e.g., the natural approach;
see Lightbown & Spada, 2013). Rather,
Halliday’s meaning-making perspective of
grammar shifts the focus of instruction
away from drilling and practicing
language forms or playing communicative
games onto supporting students in
developing a metacognitive awareness of
language patterns, variations, choices, and
styles as they make meaning with various
interlocutors, for multiple purposes, and
across different contexts. This awareness
is what Kramsch and Whiteside call
“symbolic competence,” which they argue
should be the goal for second/foreign
language education in today’s globalized
and multilingual world (Kramsch &
Whiteside, 2008, p. 667).
In making a call for a reconsideration of
what grammar is and how it develops
within second/foreign language
classrooms, we provide an overview of
Halliday’s theory of SFL and how scholars
such as Jim Martin (2009) have developed
an SFL based pedagogy to support L1 and
L2 students in negotiating the demands of
the types of texts students routinely are
required to read and write in learning
disciplinary knowledge in English in
school. Next, we report on a longitudinal
ethnographic case study of how a
Taiwanese teacher we call “Chenling”
attempted to make sense of SFL and genre
based pedagogy over the course of her
participation in a MATESOL program in
the United States and in her first year of
teaching in a rural Taiwanese middle
school. Aspects of this study were
previously published in Gebhard, Chen,
Graham, and Gunawan (2013). However
in this article we focus more specifically
on how Chenling used SFL to analyze
culturally relevant literary texts as a way
of teaching language, literacy, and culture
as she transitioned from her MATESOL
program to her first year in the classroom
in Taiwan. We conclude with a discussion
of the implications of this case study in
light of a call for a more functional
conception of grammar in EFL classrooms
in Asia.
Grammar as a meaning-making
resource
A functional perspective of grammar is
rooted in Halliday’s systemic functional
linguistics (SFL). This perspective
attempts to explain how people get things
done with language and other semiotic
means within the cultural context in which
they interact (Halliday & Matthiessen,
2004). As the name of Halliday’s theory
suggests, language is systemic in that it
involves users making functional semiotic
choices that operate simultaneously at the
phonological, lexical, syntactic, and
discourse levels depending on the cultural
context in which communication is
negotiated. In other words, when we use
language, we choose, consciously and
unconsciously, particular ways of
pronouncing or graphically rendering
words, making grammatical constructions,
and creating coherence across stretches of
discourse depending on the nature of the
content we are trying to communicate
(everyday or discipline specific), who we
are trying to communicate with (familiar
or unfamiliar), and the mode through
which interactions take place (oral,
written, or computer-mediated). These
choices reflect and construct the ideas we
wish to express, the social relations we are
trying to establish and maintain, and how
we wish to manage the flow of
communication to achieve the purposes of
interaction.
In articulating this context-sensitive
perspective of language, Halliday (1975)
maintains that all semiotic practices
involve three metafunctions that act
simultaneously. The ideational
metafunction realizes ideas and
experiences (e.g., the subject matter or
content of a text); the interpersonal
metafunction constructs social relations
(e.g., social status and social distance); and
the textual metafunction manages the flow
of information to make discourse cohesive
and coherent (e.g., weaving given and new
information together across extended
exchanges of information in conversation
or written text). Halliday and Matthiessen
(2004) summarize this perspective by
stating that “every message is both about
something and addressing someone” and
that the flow of information in a message
is organized to create “cohesion and
continuity as it moves along” (p. 30).
From this social semiotic perspective,
grammar is understood as a resource for
making meaning in context, not as a set of
decontextualized rules or list of fixed
edicts regarding correct usage. Rather,
grammar is a dynamic system of linguistic
choices that expands as language learners
are apprenticed to constructing a greater
variety of meanings in a wider number of
contexts. Halliday (1993) writes that this
view of grammar as a semiotic resource
“opens up a universe of meaning, a
multidimensional semantic space that can
be indefinitely expanded and projected”
(p. 97).
In drawing on Halliday’s conception of
grammar to theorize second language and
literacy development, Gebhard, Chen,
Graham, and Gunawan (2013) write that
not only do L2 learners physically and
cognitively mature as they grow up and
learn varieties of the same language and
additional languages, but the culture
contexts in which they interact also expand
and become more diverse as they move
back and forth among family, community,
peer groups, social media, school, and
eventually work. As these contexts
expand, the ideational, interpersonal, and
textual functions realized through
language and other semiotic means also
expand and become more syntagmatically
and paradigmatically diverse, creating
more meaning potential and choices within
the system. This diversification drives the
development of the L2 learners’ semiotic
resources in regard to
phonology/graphology, lexicogrammar,
and discourse semantics as well as the
evolution of the system as a whole
(Gebhard, et al., 2013, p. 109; see also
Halliday, 1993).
SFL based pedagogy
The expanding social contexts and
associated semiotic activities in which
language learners participate construct
what Martin calls different genres. Martin
(1992) defines genres as “staged, goal-oriented social process[es]” (p. 505).
Within the culture of schools, these social
processes include such activities as
reading literary narratives in English,
describing a classification system in
science, arguing a perspective regarding
historical events in social studies, or
explaining a statistical analysis in
mathematics. Following Halliday and
Martin, we maintain that as L2 learners
participate in these expanding social
networks in and out of school, they use
different genres in both their first and
second languages and are socialized into
new ways of knowing and being that
expand the semiotic resources available to
them. In describing Martin’s
understanding of genres, our goal is to
capture how learning English as a second
or foreign language reflects and constructs
cultural linguistic practices (Gebhard,
Shin, & Seger, 2011; Martin & Rose,
2008). For the purposes of this study, we
focus on two fundamental genres that
students encounter in learning a second
language and developing advanced
academic literacies (Byrnes, 2009; Brisk,
2014; Schleppegrell, 2004): the genre of
narratives and the genre of responses to
literature.
Each genre has a set of organizational and
structural features that are specific to that
genre. Narratives in English, for example,
typically have an “orientation” in which
the writer attempts to situate the reader in
a particular time, place, or social context,
and to introduce the main characters. They
also have a “sequence of events” or series
of “complications” in which the writer sets
up a series of problems the characters
confront. Through these events, the reader
develops a deeper sense of who the
characters are and how they have been
shaped by their experiences, or not.
Moreover, narratives typically have a
“resolution” stage in which the characters
come to terms (or not) with the problems
at hand. This stage often shows how the
characters have been changed (or not) by
their experiences and may contain an
evaluation or comment that signals the
overall meaning of the narrative as a
whole.
In contrast, responses to literature in
school are structured more like arguments.
They typically begin with an introduction
that identifies the guiding thesis of the
argument and provides a preview of the
supporting points the student will make.
The subsequent sections each consist of an
elaboration of these points that draws on
evidence from the literary text in the form
of quotes, which are then explicated. Last,
responses to literature typically conclude
with a reiteration phase in which the
author restates the main thesis and
summarizes the key points made in the
paper (Christie, 2012).
In addition to typical structural features,
any instance of a genre, including
narrative and literature response, is
constructed with a set of identifiable
lexical and grammatical features that are
functional for that specific genre. In
describing these linguistic features, Martin
draws on Halliday’s concept of register,
which consists of field, tenor, and mode
choices (see Martin & Rose, 2008, p. 11).
The field of a text refers to how a writer
uses the ideational grammatical resources
at his or her disposal to realize the content
of the text. These resources include the use
of verbal groups to realize different types
of “processes.” Unlike the traditional term
“verb,” the concept of a “process” captures
functionally the semiotic difference
between types of verbs such as material,
mental, verbal, and relational verbs that
construe different types of actions, ways of
sensing, ways of saying, and ways of
being. Likewise, the functional term
“participant” captures more precisely the
lexico-grammatical relationships that exist
between nominal groups and types of
processes within a text. Last, the term
“circumstance” captures how specific
grammatical resources support writers in
constructing meanings related to the time,
place, and manner in which events in the
text unfold (see Schleppegrell, 2004, p. 47,
for a detailed discussion of processes,
participants, and circumstances).
Second, the tenor of a text refers to how a
writer uses interpersonal grammatical
resources within his or her repertoire to
construct social relationships with readers.
For example, writers consciously and
unconsciously make “mood” choices by
using interrogatives, imperatives, or
declaratives to construct social distance
and power dynamics in texts (e.g., Why
don’t you close the window? versus Close
the window or You’ve left the window
open). Likewise, writers make “modality”
choices to express the degree of truth,
probability, or obligation of a proposition
(e.g., Would you mind closing the
window? compared to You must close the
window). Last, writers exploit “appraisal”
resources to construct attitudinal or
evaluative meanings (e.g., Would you be
so kind as to close the window versus Shut
the damn window!; see Schleppegrell,
2004, p. 47, for a detailed discussion of
mood, modality, and appraisal).
Last, the mode of a text refers to how a
writer uses different textual resources to
manage the flow of ideas and make a text
cohesive. These resources include how
writers grammatically weave together
given and new information to move a text
forward. In SFL terms, the given
information in a clause is referred to as the
theme and the new information is referred
to as the rheme. In addition, mode
resources include the use of cohesive
devises to construct logical relationships
between clauses (e.g., and, moreover,
because, as a result; see Schleppegrell,
2004, p. 48, for a detailed discussion of
theme/rheme patterns and cohesive
devices).
As a way of supporting teachers in making
the workings of different genres and
register features transparent to students,
Martin and his colleagues began
collaborating with teachers in the 1980s to
develop an SFL/genre based approach to
designing curriculum and instruction
(Martin, 2009; Rose & Martin, 2012). This
approach, known as the “teaching/learning
cycle,” was developed to apprentice
students to reading and writing the genres
they are likely to encounter in learning
specific subject-disciplinary knowledge
across grade levels in schools (Martin,
2009, p. 6). The goal of this cycle is to
expand students’ meaning-making
repertoires by providing them with model
texts, explicit instruction in genre and
register features of model texts, and time
for critical analyses of author’s
grammatical choices. The steps of this
cycle include: building students’
background knowledge through hands-on,
dialogic experiences to prepare for specific
reading and/or writing tasks;
deconstructing model texts using
functional metalanguage to name genre
stages and register features; jointly
constructing texts with students to make
linguistic know-how visible and the range
of linguistic choices available to students;
and gradually apprenticing students to
produce texts more independently by
providing less scaffolding as students
become more knowledgeable users of a
particular genre over time (Gebhard, Chen,
& Britton, 2014, p. 108; Gibbons, 2002;
Rose & Martin, 2012).
In sum, SFL/genre based pedagogy
provides a principled way for EFL
teachers to support language learners in
critically analyzing authentic texts as a
way of developing academic literacies and
exploring cultural issues simultaneously
(see Byrnes, Maxim, & Norris, 2010,
regarding learning German as a foreign
language at the university level in the
United States). However, despite literary
narratives being one of the most powerful
mediums for language learning and
discussing multicultural issues, many EFL
teachers have difficulty in engaging
students in critically reading literary
narratives and in writing literary
responses. These teachers lack an explicit
awareness of how language works in
constructing these two fundamental genres
and how to teach EFL students to
explicitly and critically identify the
linguistic features of these types of texts so
students might be better able to
comprehend culturally relevant texts as
well as develop the ability to construct
their own texts in English more expertly
over time.
To contribute to understanding how EFL
teachers make sense of SFL based
pedagogy and how their understanding
informs their approach to designing
literacy instruction, this case study
explores how a Taiwanese EFL teacher’s
conception of grammar took shape over
the course of her experiences in a
MATESOL program informed by SFL and
genre theory (Gebhard, Chen, Graham, &
Gunawan, 2013).
A case study: Chenling’s conceptions of
grammar and her teaching practices
The context of this study is a MATESOL
program in the United States that offers a
33-credit Master’s Degree in Education.
This program draws upon a sociocultural
perspective of language and literacy
development. It is also unique in that it
incorporates analysis of children’s
literature as a way of apprenticing teacher
candidates from both U.S. and
international contexts to teaching
language, literacy, and multiculturalism
simultaneously (see Gebhard, Willett,
Jimenez, & Piedra, 2011, for a description
of the program; Botelho & Rudman, 2009,
for a description of a critical approach to
children’s literature). In this context, we
attempted to make a critical and functional
perspective of language and academic
literacy development accessible and usable
to EFL teachers from Asia. These teachers,
many of whom were from China and
Taiwan, were enrolled in this program
with the goal of improving their English
and returning to their home countries to
teach EFL in a variety of contexts (e.g.,
elementary, secondary, and college levels).
In attempting to understand how Asian
teachers make sense of SFL and genre
based pedagogy we conducted a
longitudinal case study of how Chenling’s
conception of grammar changed (or not)
over the course of her participation in an
SFL informed graduate degree program. In
addition, we analyzed how her teaching
practices reflected an ability to implement
SFL based pedagogy (or not) once she
returned to teaching in Taiwan (Gunawan,
2014).
The methods used in this case study were
qualitative in nature, relied on multiple
sources of data, and were divided into
three distinct phases of data collection and
analysis between 2009 and 2011 (Gebhard,
Chen, Graham, & Gunawan, 2013;
Gunawan, 2014). Phase One focused on
documenting Chenling’s participation in a
14-week introductory course in SFL and
genre based pedagogy. Data collection and
analysis included observational fieldnotes
from seminar meetings, transcribed
seminar discussions, formal and informal
interviews and email exchanges with
Chenling, and an analysis of Chenling’s
midterm and final course papers. The
midterm required Chenling to conduct a
genre and register analysis of a section of a
literary text and design instruction that
would teach EFL learners to deconstruct
this text to support them in learning
language, exploring culturally relevant
topics, and improving their reading
comprehension. The final course project
required Chenling to conduct a genre and
register analysis of an L2 student writing
sample and design instruction to support
this student’s literacy development with
specific reference to the genre of response
to literature.
Phase Two consisted of documenting and
analyzing Chenling’s experience in all
other courses in her MATESOL program.
These courses included: Theory of Second
Language Acquisition; L2 Reading and
Writing Development; L2 Curriculum
Development; ESL/EFL Methods; Critical
Perspectives on Children’s Literature;
Multicultural Education; Assessment of L2
Language and Literacy Practices; Student
Teaching Practicum; and a course on
leadership in the profession. In reviewing
Chenling’s experiences in other courses in
her MATESOL program, we collected
final course papers and interviewed
Chenling about her use of SFL concepts
and SFL based pedagogy (if at all) through
formal and informal interviews as well as
email exchanges.
Phase Three consisted of collecting and
analyzing data regarding Chenling’s
teaching practices during her first year as a
full time teacher in a middle school in
rural Taiwan. Data collection and analysis
focused on samples of curriculum
materials and formal and informal email
exchanges with Chenling.
As reported in Gebhard, Chen, Graham,
and Gunawan (2013), there are several
limitations to this methodology. First,
during Phase Three, we were unable to
observe Chenling’s classroom practices.
Rather, we relied on an analysis of the
curricular materials she used and her
responses to formal and informal
interviews conducted over email.
Therefore, we have no first-hand accounts
of her actual classroom practices during
her first year of teaching in Taiwan. The
second limitation, as well as possible
strength, of our methodology relates to the
different roles we played over the course
of the study. For example, Wawan, an
Indonesian man, drew on his past work as
a teacher educator in his home country; I-An, a Taiwanese woman, drew on her
experiences as an EFL teacher in Taiwan;
and Meg, a white American woman, who
was the instructor of the 14-week course
focusing on SFL and genre based
pedagogy, drew on her experiences as a
researcher of L2 academic literacy
development and teacher educator in the
United States. These roles, as participant
observers, shaped our interactions with
Chenling and therefore data collection and
analysis in ways that are typical of
qualitative case study methods (Dyson &
Genishi, 2005). And finally, qualitative
case study methods do not lend themselves
to researchers making causal claims or
claims that are generalizable to other
contexts. Rather, these methods allow us
to gain insider and outsider insights into
how Chenling made sense of SFL as a way
of adding to the growing empirical work
regarding the knowledge base of L2
teacher education (Andrews, 2007; Borg,
2006; Freeman & Johnson, 2005; Johnston
& Goettsch, 2000).
A portrait of Chenling learning to use
SFL and genre based pedagogy
To present the findings from this
qualitative case study, we provide a
portrait of Chenling’s attempts to make
sense of SFL and genre based pedagogy
over the course of her participation in a
MATESOL teacher education program
and in her first year as a full time EFL
teacher in Taiwan. In providing this
portrait, we begin by describing how she
initially re-inscribed SFL metalanguage
with traditional conceptions of grammar
when she was first introduced to
Halliday’s theory of language and
Martin’s conception of genre theory and
the teaching and learning cycle. We then
detail how Chenling’s ability to use SFL
metalanguage more functionally
developed as she used SFL tools to
analyze children’s literature and L2
writing samples in ways that provided her
with insights into how to support the
academic literacy practices of L2 learners.
Last, we describe how Chenling was
ultimately unable to implement SFL based
pedagogy in Taiwan due to a number of
institutional constraints including
requirements that she adhere closely to a
traditional, form-focused textbook and
form-focused assessment practices used to
evaluate students and, ultimately, their
teachers.
Shifting toward a functional conception of
grammar through an analysis of children’s
literature and L2 writing
Chenling, like many international students,
entered her MATESOL program with a
very strong understanding of traditional
grammar and an ability to analyze the
structure of a sentence using formal
metalanguage. She also held a tacit, but
very firm belief in drill and practice
approaches to language teaching based on
her previous experiences as an L2 learner
and EFL teacher (Gunawan, 2014; see also
Borg, 2006). Therefore, analyzing how an
SFL conception of grammar might work to
construct meaning in longer stretches of
discourse, especially in literature, was new
to her. For example, early in her first
semester in the program when she enrolled
in the Introduction to SFL course,
Gebhard, Chen, Graham, and Gunawan
(2013) report that Chenling felt strongly
that “[Traditional] grammar is considered
the easiest way to teach English language.
When teaching, I usually follow a
textbook.” She further added, “It’s hard to
connect—I always think that grammar is
verb, noun—I think it is hard to think [of]
genre as part of grammar” (p. 116). As a
consequence, during the first couple of
weeks in the SFL course, her assignments
and participation in class discussions
reflected a pattern in which she translated
functional metalanguage into traditional
form-focused terms in ways that limited
her ability to develop a meaning-making
perspective of grammar. In analyzing
Phase I data, we coded this stage of her
trajectory in the program as “pouring old
wine into a new bottle.” We used this
metaphor to capture how Chenling, as well
as other students, used new SFL
vocabulary in ways that re-inscribed these
functional concepts with a formal and
structural understanding. For example, she
translated “process types” as “verbs that
come after the subject” and
“circumstances” as “adverbs that modify
subjects’ action” (Gebhard, Chen,
Graham, & Gunawan, 2013, p. 116).
In addition, Gebhard, Chen, Graham, and
Gunawan (2013) write that Chenling’s
ability to think of “genre” as well as
aspects of field, tenor, and mode “as part
of grammar” developed through her ability
to use SFL metalanguage as a tool to
analyze award-winning children’s
literature for her midterm project and a
writing sample produced by an
intermediate L2 learner for her final exam.
For her midterm she analyzed In the Year
of the Boar and Jackie Robinson (1984) by
Bette Bao Lord. Based on this analysis,
she then developed a plan for how she
would support L2 students in learning to
critically discuss, read, and write about
this potentially high interest and culturally
relevant children’s book. This novel
relates the experiences of a young Chinese
girl named Shirley who immigrated to San
Francisco in the 1950s. In her analysis,
Chenling identified the genre stages and
key register choices the author employed.
At the genre level, Chenling noticed that
the novel exhibited the genre stages
typically found in narratives, including an
“orientation, complication, and resolution”
(Gebhard, Chen, Graham, & Gunawan,
2013, p. 116).
Next, she selected a short, but important
passage from the novel on which she
conducted a register analysis. At this level
of analysis, Chenling elected to focus on
the interactions between the field and
mode choices in the text. Specifically, she
noted how the author used pronominal
referencing systems to create a lexical
chain that built up information about
Shirley’s feelings across the passage. For
example, Chenling used a highlighter to
mark personal pronouns and other lexical
items referring to Shirley in the following
excerpt:
It is so unfair. She thought, must I
drool like Chow Chow, eyeing
each mouthful until someone is
good and ready to toss a scrap my
way? If Father was here, he’d tell.
He would never treat me like a
child, like a girl, like a nobody.
In other words, by literally highlighting
pronouns and nominal groups in this
lexical chain, Chenling was able to
identify and track participants related to
Shirley and show how Shirley refers to the
pronouns she, I, and me; the family’s dog
Chow Chow; and the nouns a child, a girl,
a nobody. This “tracking of participants,”
according to Chenling, could be a key
teaching practice used to support L2
reading comprehension but is one that is
not used by EFL teachers who only focus
on traditional grammar. Chenling used this
insight to develop a plan for how she
would design future instruction, reporting
that she would use this passage to teach
pronouns and new vocabulary so students
could comprehend the passage, but also
she would teach students how to use
lexical chaining to support them in
interpreting the meaning of what they read
more critically.
For her final project, Chenling analyzed a
student writing sample produced by
“Adam,” a seventh-grade ESL student
from Malaysia who had been in the United
States for five years. Chenling observed
Adam in an American middle school
classroom, collected curricular materials
and samples of his writing, and
interviewed him as well as his teacher.
Chenling’s analysis focused on a unit of
study that required Adam to read a young
adult novel A Step from Heaven by An Na
(2001) and to write a “literary response”
regarding the experiences of immigrants in
America as depicted in this novel
(Gebhard, Chen, Graham, & Gunawan,
2013, p.116).
Before analyzing Adam’s text, Chenling
drew on Schleppegrell’s work (2004) to
identify the key genre and register features
of a literary response. Chenling found that
a literary response is usually realized in
the form of an argumentative or persuasive
essay where a writer presents a thesis
statement, provides arguments with
supporting examples taken from the novel,
and finally sums up his or her position. In
analyzing the genre stages of Adam’s
literary response, Chenling noticed that
this essay contained a thesis statement, and
each paragraph contained quotes cited
from the novel but overall lacked clear
arguments. Rather, she noted that he used
selected quotes to simply re-narrate a
summary of the novel (Gebhard, Chen,
Graham, & Gunawan, 2013, p.116).
Chenling further identified register
features in Adam’s text that made his text
read more like a narrative than an
argument. For example, Chenling noticed
that Adam’s text relied predominantly on
concrete participants in the theme position
rather than abstract ones related to
analyzing the main character’s experiences
as a Chinese immigrant (e.g., I, the
mother, the daughter). These linguistic
choices made his text “only tell a summary
of the story” rather than “tak[ing] a
position” and “show[ing] his critical
thinking” (Gebhard, Chen, Graham, &
Gunawan, 2013, p. 116). In addition,
Chenling commented that Adam could
have used nominalization, a rhetorical
strategy that turns concrete happenings
into abstract concepts and can be used to
pack more information into each clause.
As reported in Gebhard, Chen, Graham,
and Gunawan, 2013, Chenling wrote:
Adam did not build his arguments
from clause to clause, increasingly
re-packaging and re-presenting
information as nominalized
participants in the ensuing clauses.
Instead, he often remains focused
on the same participant, especially
concrete participants as theme, in a
way that is more typical of
narrative than expository writing.
(Gebhard, Chen, Graham, &
Gunawan, 2013, p.116)
To support ESL and EFL students like
Adam in developing the ability to write
more expert academic arguments,
Chenling articulated an instruction plan
that focused on building L2 students’
genre awareness of the differences
between narrating a story and persuading a
reader of a thesis. She planned to do this
by drawing students’ attention to the
typical genre stages of a narrative and
comparing these stages to the stages of an
argument as a way of supporting students
in writing more analytically. In regard to
register, Chenling’s instructional plan
focused on guiding students toward
understanding how to pack more
information into clauses and how to build
coherence between clauses by teaching
them to notice how expert writers use
nominalizations in model essays.
Specifically, she reported that she would
support students in “circling where noun
phrases and nominalization form abstract
subjects” (Gebhard, Chen, Graham, &
Gunawan, 2013, p.116).
Further exploration with SFL based
pedagogy in other MATESOL courses
In three subsequent required courses,
Chenling elected to further explore using
SFL and genre based pedagogy to support
EFL students’ abilities to critically read,
discuss, and write about culturally relevant
children’s literature about Chinese
immigration. These courses included a
curriculum design course, an L2
assessment course, and a short practicum
experience. In the curriculum design
course, she developed a unit based on the
illustrated children’s story titled I Hate
English (1989) by Ellen Levine. This book
also portrays the experiences of a young
Chinese immigrant who is frustrated with
adjusting to school life in the United States
and with learning a language she resents.
In her unit plan, Chen outlined how she
would develop students’ “genre
knowledge” by illustrating how narratives
typically have “an orientation, sequence of
events, a complication, and a resolution”
(Gebhard, Chen, Graham, & Gunawan,
2013, p.116).
In addition, Gebhard, Chen, Graham, and
Gunawan (2013) report that at the register
level, Chenling noted that she would
instruct students in using:
…linking word [connectives],
which make the story fluent; verbs,
which can specifically present how
the characters acted, felt, and
thought; descriptive words, which
can create the image of readers’
mind; dialogues, which will focus
on the format and the time tense;
time tense and explain the reason
why in some situation the time
tense will change to other than past
tense. (p. 117)
In the L2 assessment course she continued
to further develop this curricular unit by
creating a rubric to assess the degree to
which students demonstrated an ability to
produce texts that exhibited the genre and
register features of canonical narratives.
At the genre level, these features included
producing personal narratives that had a
clear “orientation, sequences of events,
complication, and resolution” modeled
after I Hate English.
In regard to register features, this rubric
assessed students’ narratives according to
the degree to which students used a variety
of action verbs to construct the plot of the
text, mental verbs to capture characters’
thoughts (e.g., thought, wondered,
worried), verbal verbs to support dialogue
(e.g., whispered, mumbled, yelled, cried),
and cohesive devises to support the flow
of the text (e.g., one day, next, all of a
sudden, in the end).
Last, Chenling had the opportunity to
implement her I Hate English unit with a
group of volunteer ninth-grade EFL
students in Taiwan in the summer of 2010
as part of meeting the practicum
requirements for her degree. For her
practicum, she was required to implement
a short unit of instruction and reflect on
her students’ learning using assessment
tools she developed in the L2 assessment
course. In addition, she was required to
reflect on her emerging teaching practices
in a course reflection paper.
Following the teaching and learning cycle,
Chenling began this unit by engaging
students in a discussion of their attitudes
toward learning English as a way of
building their background knowledge or
the “field” before asking them to read and
write. Second, she asked them to write a
short story about a memory they had
regarding learning English. Third, she
analyzed these baseline writing samples as
a way of determining the focus of her
instruction. This analysis revealed that
students were unable to produce coherent
simple narratives in English because they
appeared to lack an understanding of the
genre and the lexico-grammatical
resources needed to coherently and
cohesively weave simple sentences
together into a story. Based on this
analysis, Chenling established
instructional goals that focused on
developing “content, composing
processes, textual forms, and language
patterns to accomplish coherent and
purposeful writings” (Gebhard, Chen,
Graham, & Gunawan, 2013, p. 117).
Fourth, she guided students in reading I
Hate English as a whole class. Fifth, she
provided students with a model of a
personal narrative she had written based
on her experiences as an EFL student and
her analysis of the key linguistic features
of I Hate English. She used this model to
explicitly teach students to identify
targeted genre and register features in her
text. Sixth, she instructed students to
produce their own narratives modeled after
I Hate English and her text. Last, she
analyzed students’ final narratives as a
way of assessing their writing and her
lesson plan’s impact on their literacy
development.
Her analysis of changes in students’
writing samples and of her teaching
practices revealed concerns that are typical
of many novice teachers. For example, she
reported that she ran out of time and
planned too ambitiously given the amount
of contact she had with students (e.g., four
150-minute sessions). She also described
how students, based on their understanding
of what to expect in an EFL class, resisted
her speaking English in class as well as
being asked to write an extended text
rather than doing grammar and translation
exercises. She accounted for this problem
in her reflection by stating:
These students more or less know
the concept of writing a correct
sentence in English, but they do
not practice a lot, since they don’t
have a formal English writing
program and multiple choice is the
only type of assessments to
measure progress.” (Course
assignment, 2011, p. 31)
Despite these limitations, Chenling
reported some success. She reported that
the handout she made to scaffold genre
knowledge “may have [had] positive
influences on students’ writing structure,
since most of the students have clear and
properly developed genre moves in their
narratives.” In regard to register features,
Chenling’s reflection also provided an
accurate quantitative analysis of the
register features of students’ texts. She
reported that students:
…use an interrogative clause (e.g.,
Don’t you feel surprised?) to give a
more dialogic conversation in their
text, and imperative clause (e.g.,
don’t forget to keep learning
English) as a quote from the
character in the story. Additionally,
the students were able to use
various circumstances of time (e.g.,
before, after, now, in the future,
after class, in fourth grade) and of
places (e.g., in the school, at the
bus stop), adjuncts of frequency
(e.g., often, usually, always), of
manner (e.g., easily, happily,
about), and of degree (e.g., very,
more and more, not at all, really,
even). (Course assignment, 2011)
In sum, in reflecting on teaching this unit
in an interview, Chenling reported that
previously she did not enjoy anything
related to literature in English, but she
added, “I now have started to like reading
literary works in English, maybe it is good
for me as an English teacher, and you
know I changed…because honestly it
[these analyses] made me change”
(Gebhard, Chen, Graham, & Gunawan,
2013, p. 117).
Despite this new interest and some
observable gains in students’ abilities to
produce narratives, Chenling remained
skeptical about the feasibility of using SFL
in Taiwan, especially after her practicum
experience. She stated repeatedly that she
was interested in SFL and genre based
pedagogy and that she had used concepts
learned in the course to improve her own
ability to write academic papers in English
(e.g., use of nominalization in constructing
theme/rheme patterns). However, she
reported that in the future, she would base
her own planning on the kinds of exams
her students need to pass, indicating that
assessment systems used in Taiwan were
never far from her mind despite the
investment and gains she had made in
understanding and applying a more
meaning-oriented literature based
approach to EFL teaching and learning
(Gebhard, Chen, Graham, & Gunawan,
2013, p. 116).
Drifting back toward a traditional
conception of grammar after graduating
Upon completion of her MATESOL study,
Chenling returned to Taiwan in
September, 2011, and began to teach EFL
at the same middle school where she
previously had taught as a summer intern.
In December of that year, she reported in
an email exchange that she had not made
any attempt to incorporate children’s
literature or SFL/genre based pedagogy
into her teaching practices. Rather, she
described following the mandated EFL
textbooks to teach “vocabulary, dialogue,
focus sentence pattern (oral practice),
reading, listening exercises” (Email
exchange, 12/26/2011).
In accounting for why Chenling did not
draw on work she developed in her
MATESOL program, the data suggest that
institutional forces, related to how students
and, therefore, teachers are assessed in
Taiwan, constrained her ability to teach
academic literacy using SFL and genre
based pedagogy. Namely, the education
system in Taiwan tends to reward EFL
teachers for teaching traditional grammar
as efficiently as possible. As a result,
Chenling reported that she must “finish the
textbook by the end of the year” and
“prepare students for passing the exam”;
therefore, she did not “have time for SFL”
(Email exchange, 12/26/2011). Moreover,
the kinds of assessment her students are
required to pass focused almost
exclusively on vocabulary memorization
and sentence-level grammatical
correctness rather than the ability to
deconstruct and construct meaning
critically in extended discourse. Therefore,
Chenling reported spending most of her
instructional time explaining, drilling, and
practicing the decontextualized rules for
sentence construction such as the correct
usage of “auxiliary verbs,” “verb tenses,”
and “adjective modifiers.”
Another force that discouraged Chenling
from designing and implementing SFL and
genre based pedagogy in Taiwan was the
lack of institutional attention given to
extended discourse competence and
written communication abilities at the
middle school level. She remarked that the
mandated curriculum for middle school
English classes highlighted developing
students’ “spoken language abilities”
through the use of “fun learning activities”
such as songs, games, movies, and role
play (Email exchange, 3/10/2012). These
activities focused on introducing students
to the terms and dialogues that they might
encounter when they travel to English-speaking countries. Moreover, the reading
and writing activities that were part of this
curriculum tended to focus on reading
short comic books, fill-in-the-blank
worksheets, and English-Mandarin
sentence translation.
Conclusion and implications
In response to the changing nature of
English language teaching in a globalized
world, this study reveals opportunities and
challenges regarding re-conceptualizing
grammar based on a Hallidayan
perspective in EFL teacher education. The
findings from this study indicate that
Chenling was able to make sense of SFL
and genre based pedagogy and use the
teaching and learning cycle to design and
implement academic literacy instruction in
a Taiwanese middle school during her
practicum experience. In sum, the data
suggest that over the course of Chenling’s
MATESOL program her conceptions of
grammar shifted from a form-focused,
sentence-level perspective to a more
functional understanding of how language
works in interconnected ways across
lexico-grammatical and discourse
semantic features of specific genres
essential to advanced language learning.
This shift occurred as she developed an
ability to use SFL metalanguage to analyze
the genre and register features of published
children’s literature focusing on the
Chinese immigration experience, and L2
students’ attempts to produce their own
narratives or literary responses to these
authentic texts. The insights Chenling
gained from these analyses enabled her to
design instruction to support EFL students
in reading and writing academic texts
about culturally relevant issues.
However, the degree to which Chenling
was able to use SFL based pedagogy in
classroom practices was influenced by a
number of institutional forces shaping the
teaching of English in Taiwan. These
forces included a mandated form-focused
textbook and aligned assessment system
that discouraged Chenling from designing
instruction based on an SFL conception of
grammar and constructivist perspective of
learning. Therefore, despite asserting
repeatedly over the course of her
MATESOL program that she believed an
SFL based approach to instruction would
most likely benefit her EFL students,
Chenling ultimately chose to teach English
in ways that were more reflective of a
traditional conception of grammar and a
behaviorist perspective of learning. This
disconnect between Chenling’s ability to
design SFL based instruction and her
reported teaching practices supports
findings from other studies that highlight
how institutional contexts shape L2
teachers’ work (Andrews, 2007; Borg,
2006). For example, the data regarding
Chenling’s compliance with mandated
textbooks during her first year of teaching
corroborate Borg’s (2006) findings that
“contextual factors can constrain what
teachers do, particularly in the work of
novice teachers whose ideals about
language teaching may need to, at least
temporarily, be put aside while they come
to grips with the instructional and social
realities they face in schools” (p. 275).
The implications of these findings relate to
three issues in EFL teacher education.
First, SFL based pedagogy has been
critiqued as too theoretical and technical to
be accessible and usable to classroom
teachers (e.g., Bourke, 2005). This study
supports other investigations that indicate
pre-service and in-service L2 teachers are
capable of making sense of a Hallidayan
perspective of grammar and using SFL
metalanguage to analyze texts and design
academic literacy instruction for
elementary, secondary, and tertiary second
language learners (Aguirre-Muñoz, Park,
Amabisca, & Boscardin, 2008; Brisk,
2014; Byrnes, Maxim, & Norris, 2010;
Harman, 2013; Moore & Schleppegrell,
2014). Therefore, this study highlights that
the difficulty of implementing a
Hallidayan perspective of language and
learning in EFL teacher education may not
be rooted in teachers’ abilities to act as
applied linguists, but in the field of second
language teaching, which has historically
been shaped by a Skinnerian approach to
L2 teaching and learning (Lightbown &
Spada, 2013).
Second, this study highlights the benefit of
pre-service teachers learning to design
curriculum and instruction using authentic
children’s literature to critically teach L2
reading, writing, listening, speaking, and
culture simultaneously in ways that
parallel the work of Byrnes and her
colleagues in Georgetown University’s
German Department (see Byrnes, 2010;
Byrnes, Maxim, & Norris, 2010). Byrnes’
department engaged in a highly successful
curriculum renewal project that created a
genre based program of study for
undergraduate learners of German across
all levels of proficiency. This program
integrated the learning of language and the
study of culturally authentic multimodal
texts and has demonstrated the success of
this approach using both qualitative and
quantitative measures of gains in students’
academic literacy development. This
present study regarding Chenling’s ability
to use SFL pedagogical tools to analyze
children’s literature and design academic
literacy instruction for EFL students
suggests that Byrnes’ approach has
promise for the teaching of English in
Asian contexts in secondary schools.
However, additional research beyond this
single study is needed to explore the
potential of this proposition.
Last, this study highlights the ironies
created by conflicting policies and
practices within institutional contexts
(Gebhard, 2004, 2010). For example,
many Asian countries have strongly
advocated for communicative approaches
to English language teaching as a way of
promoting higher levels of English
proficiency to support their citizens in
participating in global communities where
world varieties of English are increasingly
used. However, curriculum materials and
assessment practices in these countries still
tend to focus on the mastery of sentence-level grammatical structures in ways that
do not necessarily lead to successful
comprehension and production of
extended oral and written texts for
authentic real-world purposes. Therefore,
the gap between EFL educational aims,
policies, and practices in Asian contexts is
an essential issue for teachers, teacher
educators, policymakers, and researchers
to address if the field of EFL is to make
progress in supporting Asian students in
using English as a world language to
negotiate social, academic, economic, and
political goals.
