Understanding the Developing Persuasive Writing Practices of an Adolescent Emergent Bilingual through Systemic Functional Linguistics: A Case Study

Joshua M. Schulze

Abstract


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.

Keywords


Systemic Functional Linguistics; Genre Based Pedagogy; Teaching Writing

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References


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