Text Deconstruction for Language Teaching: a Systemic Functional Linguistics Analytical Grid

Summary In this talk, I’ll show a simple and systematic way to deconstruct texts to extract teachable content for students. This is based on systemic functional linguistics/genre approach to literacy and has a long history and demonstrated impact in language teaching, in several contexts such as EAP, EAL and EFL. The approach is a coherent analysis of meaning at whole text, paragraph, and sentence level. In this session we’ll focus on a text taken from a Science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) discipline.

Knowing this basic text deconstruction approach is empowering because it makes visible the typical features of specific genres, it can be applied to any text by teachers and students and can become a habitual lens through which to see texts. The talk will enable us to discuss language as a resource for meaning-making, and to consider the deliberate choices writers make to achieve their communication goals. This approach…