scholarly journals The Role of Systemic Functional Grammar in the Expansion of Nominal Groups

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-112
Author(s):  
María Claudia Nieto-Cruz

This study presents the expansion of nominal groups in a systemic functional grammar class of an English language teacher program in 2016 at a Colombian public university. The participants were six student teachers. Nominal groups were first considered in a document written by the students before being exposed to the principles of systemic functional grammar and then in a revised version after the exposure to it. The study shows initial improvements in the enlargement of nominal groups between the two written productions and provides insights into the enormous potential for structural and meaningful expansion and the complexity of nominal groups. The gained awareness may become a cognitive framework for students to produce complex nominal groups in academic productions demanded in their studies and in the exercise of their professional practice.

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wilson Hernández Varona ◽  
Daniel Felipe Gutiérrez Álvarez

This paper presents a narrative inquiry study on agency development in student-teachers of an English language teacher program at a public university in the south of Colombia. Our goal was to understand how student-teachers develop agency when narratively inquiring their community by planning and conducting community-based pedagogy projects on issues they found pertinent to investigate. The data were gathered through semi-structured focus group interviews, individual journal entries, and video-recorded talks about their inquiries. As a conclusion, we acknowledge that certain social and narrative practices such as interacting within their inquiry groups, interacting with their communities, voicing their communities’ necessities, and acting upon the inquired necessities facilitated developing agency and contributed to rethinking their roles as transformative members of their communities.


Slovene ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 226-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasia V. Urzha

This research focuses on the functioning of praesens historicum forms which Russian translators use to substitute for English narrative forms referring to past events. The study applies the Theory of Grounding and Russian Communicative Functional Grammar to the comparative discourse analysis of English-language adventure stories and novels created in the 19th and 20th centuries and their Russian translations. The Theory of Grounding is still not widely used in Russian translation studies, nor have its concepts and fruitful ideas been related to the achievements of Russian Narratology and Functional Grammar. This article presents an attempt to find a common basis in these academic traditions as they relate to discourse analysis and to describe the role of praesens historicum forms in Russian translated adventure narratives. The corpus includes 22 original texts and 72 Russian translations, and the case study involves six Russian translations of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, focusing on the translation made by Korney Chukovsky, who employed historic present more often than in other translations of the novel. It is shown that the translation strategy of substituting the original English-language past forms with Russian present forms is realized in foregrounded and focalized segments of the text, giving them additional saliency. This strategy relates the use of historic present to the functions of deictic words and words denoting visual or audial perception, locating the deictic center of the narrative in the spacetime of the events and allowing the reader to join the focalizing WHO (a narrator or a hero). Translations that regularly mark the foreground through the use of the historic present and accompanying lexical-grammatical means are often addressed to young readers.


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qian Wang ◽  
Dan Zhang

Abstract City branding brings immense benefits for megacities to gain international prestige in an increasingly competitive global arena. City publicity films, as an effective method for selling the city through online dissemination, could reach and influence a wider audience. However, the deployment of different semiotic resources in the branding discourse in city publicity films remains under-explored, and in particular, the role of cultural attributes in the construction of meaning in the discourse of city branding through linguistic and nonverbal modalities remains unknown. This paper, drawing on theories of systemic functional grammar and visual grammar, examines the multimodal discourse of publicity films of Beijing and London in terms of representational and interactive meanings achieved through various semiotic resources. It is found that, in verbal and visual discourse, both films share similarities regarding enhancing persuasiveness via emotional branding but exhibit differences regarding how to achieve persuasiveness through different semiotic resources that co-construct meaning. The Beijing publicity film blends functional and emotional values while the London publicity film is prone to being more functional. In addition, possible reasons for the differences observed are discussed.


JET ADI BUANA ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-91
Author(s):  
Siyaswati Siyaswati ◽  
Dyah Rochmawati

The present study describes the development of a course module on Entrepreneurship-Based Translation and Interpretation Skills for the students of English Language Teacher Education Department. The module was inspired by empirical research findings about the knowledge base of student teachers. It was created and refined during its three-year application will be reflected upon here, including feedback collected from student evaluation sheets. In the end, the participants responded positively to the course module. The students stated that the module was interesting, relevant and valuable for their later profession. They also emphasized that they now felt more competent in the area of Translation and Interpretation Skills and entrepreneurship.


2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 252-270
Author(s):  
Mona Evelyn Flognfeldt

Denne artikkelen presenterer en studie av den type læring praktiserende engelsklærere i norsk grunnskole selv rapporterer etter et års videreutdanningsstudium i engelsk. Et pedagogisk utviklingsprosjekt på egen skole inngikk som en sentral del av studiet. Studien gir et innblikk i hvilke aspekter ved skolefaget engelsk som erfarne lærere definerer som hoved­utfordringer i undervisningen og utbyttet de har hatt av prosjektene sine. Artikkelen bygger på data fra den kritiske refleksjonen som lærerne gir uttrykk for mot slutten av prosjektene sine. På bakgrunn av kvalitativ innholdsanalyse av prosjektrapportene identifiseres vesentlige felles språkdidaktiske elementer i lærernes konseptualisering av sin egen rolle og egne prioriteringer overfor elevenes læring. Denne typen lærerforskning kan få viktige følger for opplæringen i studiefaget engelsk i lærerutdanningen. Relevante forestillinger blant praktiserende lærere kan kanaliseres tilbake til lærerutdanningen for på den måten å mediere studentenes profesjonsforberedelse og deres framtidige arbeid som engelsklærere. Sentrale språkdidaktiske tema blir trukket fram, som i sin tur kan fungere som analytiske begreper og verktøy for engelskstudentene i forberedelsen til de komplekse praktiske utfordringer i klasse­rommet. Kontakt med denne typen forskning på egen undervisning som erfarne lærere har gjennomført med fokus på det de opplever som engelskfaglige utfordringer, kan hjelpe lærerstudentene til å knytte sammen teori og praksis og bidra til å senke deres affektive filter når de starter som lærere. Denne artikkelen munner ut i en diskusjon om hvilke former denne tilbakemeldingen fra praksisfeltet kan ta.Nøkkelord: utdanning av engelsklærere, profesjonsutvikling, læreres forskning, læreres læring, språkdidaktikkAbstractThis article presents a study of the learning reported by practising teachers of English in Norwegian primary and lower secondary schools. The teacher reports were in connection with a year’s further-education course in English, which included a pedagogical development project at their own school. This study provides insights into what aspects of the subject the practising teachers defined as their main instructional challenges in the classroom and what their main learning outcomes were. The data for this article are critical reflections articulated by the teachers at the end of their projects. Based on qualitative content analysis, I identified salient language-pedagogical features and commonalities in the teachers’ conceptualisations of their role and priorities with respect to student learning. This kind of language teacher research can have important implications for the way English is taught in initial teacher education. Relevant teacher cognitions can be channelled back to student teachers to mediate their professional preparation in the teacher education programme and their future work as English teachers. The central language-pedagogical issues identified in their research can be used as analytical and reflective tools for student teachers in their preparation for the complex practicalities of the classroom. Exploring the research that practising teachers have conducted into challenges they identified can help students connect theory with practice as well as contribute to lowering the affective filter of novice teachers. This article ends with a discussion of possible forms that this professional feedback loop can take.Keywords: english language teacher education, professional development, teacher research and development, teacher learning, language pedagogy


2018 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 69
Author(s):  
Dolores Fernández Martínez

The purpose of the present paper is to contribute to the depiction of Martin’s role as a grammarian by analysing the preface to his grammar “An Introduction to the English Language and Learning” (1754). By using a Critical Discourse Analysis approach and a method based on systemic functional grammar, this study intends to describe the discourse structures used in the preface to fulfil its advertising function and persuade the addressee as a potential buyer or user of the grammar. Martin’s preface is characterised by a peculiarly exaggerated and aggressive tone and by a strong emphasis on the religious implications of education, all of which confer some distinction to Martin within the discourse community of eighteenth-century grammarians.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document