A Systemic Functional Approach to Discourse Analysis of Group Interactions
Discourse analyses of EFL and ESL classroom interactions bring with them the potential to provide insights into the processes involved in the teaching and learning of English an additional language (EAL), a second language (ESL) or a foreign language (EFL). These processes have been studied from dif...
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| Tipo de recurso: | tesis de maestría |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2012 |
| País: | Chile |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:repositorio.anid.cl:10533/220614 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://hdl.handle.net/10533/220614 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Humanidades Lenguage y Literatura Lingüística |
| Sumario: | Discourse analyses of EFL and ESL classroom interactions bring with them the potential to provide insights into the processes involved in the teaching and learning of English an additional language (EAL), a second language (ESL) or a foreign language (EFL). These processes have been studied from different perspectives, including research which has looked at the structure and the patterns of interactions (Sinclair & Coulthard 1975; Mehan 1979), as well as research which have evaluated the effectiveness of the interactions in the learning process (Baker 1994; Cazden 1988; Wells 1996). These different foci have had the broad aim of bringing new knowledge and the possibility of improving teaching and learning processes. The focus of this study is on those interactions which are oriented to academic literacy tasks within one specific context, namely a Pre-Enrolment Program (PEP) classroom at Adelaide University. The PEP aims to develop the academic literacy skills of international students and the class is, therefore, considered an ESL classroom. The study analyses two “group discussions” using tools from the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) approach to discourse analysis (Martin &Rose 2003; Eggins & Slade 1997).The aim is to understand how learners interact with each as they endeavour to develop their written academic skills. These interactions are focused on four academic articles which form the basis of a discussion to be written by each student as an assessment task in the PEP. The analysis and interpretation of the interactions provide an account of the ways in which the students and the teacher interact in order to build common knowledge about the essay writing task. Specific attention is paid to the roles and functions of the speakers and their contributions and their evaluative comments about the four articles to shed light on the objective of the task which is to share information to facilitate the writing of an essay. The dissertation discussion centres on the structure of these commonplace classroom activities, as well as the challenges they present to learners and teachers in this context. |
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