The Language of Schooling: A Functional Linguistics Perspective

This book is about language and how language is typically structured when it is used in the context of schooling. It demonstrates the ways that the variety of English expected at school differs from the interactional language that students use for social purposes outside of school, and provides a li [...]
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This book is about language and how language is typically structured when it is used in the context of schooling. It demonstrates the ways that the variety of English expected at school differs from the interactional language that students use for social purposes outside of school, and provides a linguistic analysis of the challenges of the school curriculum, particularly for nonnative speakers of English, speakers of nonstandard dialects, and students who have little exposure to academic language outside of schools. The Language of Schooling builds on current sociolinguistic and discourseanalytic studies of language in school, but adds a new dimension the framework of functional linguistic analysis.This framework focuses not just on the structure of words and sentences, but on how texts are constructed how particular grammatical choices create meanings in the different kinds of texts students are asked to read and write at school The Language of Schooling: provides a functional description of the grammatical differences between ordinary conversational interaction and the kinds of texts students are expected to read and write at school, based on a theoretically sound linguistic framework systemic functional linguistics; examines the relationship between research from other sociolinguistic and language development perspectives and research from the systemic functional linguistics perspective; focuses on contexts of advanced literacy (middle school through college) and the increasing linguistic demands that are placed on students at these higher levels; presents and discusses the genres typically encountered at school, with extensive description of the grammatical features of the expository essay, a gatekeeping genre for secondary school graduates; reviews the grammatical features of disciplinary genres in science, history, and mathematics; and argues for more explicit attention to language in teaching all subjects, with a particular focus on what is needed for the development of critical literacy in the content areas.This book will help researchers and students of language in education to relate the grammatical and discourse features of the language of schooling to the content areas, role relationships, and purposes and expectations it entails; to better understand the nature of language itself and how it emerges from and helps to maintain social structures and institutions; and to apply these understandings to creating classroom environments that build on the strengths students bring to school.