Sally,
I scanned through the very lengthy posting of Klaus and I take my hat of to him for his dedication to the teaching of SFG. I guess he has a captive audience - e.g. a high school or university where he can hammer home his objectives. One of his comments was particularly telling where he mentioned about "cementing into the brains of his students".
My students are all Japanese adults who need to be entertained and any serious teaching has to be carried out delicately; the word "grammar" has to be used sparingly. I would love to contact Klaus and find out if he has any textbooks or workbooks he uses for this basic and fascinating approach to SFL. I have tried in vain to find him in the forums and I would like to contact him. Sounds a veritable curmudgeon!
John Curran
Applied Systemic Functional Linguistics
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Stephen Jones
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Applied SFL
Stephen,
Your posting intrigued me.
Sally mentioned Klaus and his writings on SFL but where are they?
I checked through the Job Forum under China but could not locate them.
John Curran
Your posting intrigued me.
Sally mentioned Klaus and his writings on SFL but where are they?
I checked through the Job Forum under China but could not locate them.
John Curran
Applied SFL
PS Stephen,
I was impressed in several of your previous posts by your prodigious knowledge of grammar. You are obviously upper-crust from the south, while I am lower-crust Tyneside. However, that is not your fault!
Which reference book do you most frequently reach for? My most useful reference is the American grammar book "Understanding English Grammar" by Kolln & Funk.
John Curran
I was impressed in several of your previous posts by your prodigious knowledge of grammar. You are obviously upper-crust from the south, while I am lower-crust Tyneside. However, that is not your fault!
Which reference book do you most frequently reach for? My most useful reference is the American grammar book "Understanding English Grammar" by Kolln & Funk.
John Curran
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Stephen Jones
- Posts: 1421
- Joined: Sun May 18, 2003 5:25 pm
The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, by Pullum and Huddleston and A University Grammar of English by Leech and Svartik are my two standard reference books.
You should also read "The English Verb" by Michael Lewis because the basic ideas are sound, even if some of his interpretations are plain barmy.
North Wales and Manchester by the way, and not a crustie of any class
Klaus's posting is on the China offtopic forum, so you can't get to it by search, but have to log on to the Job Discussion forums to see the forum, and then search every post individually.
You should also read "The English Verb" by Michael Lewis because the basic ideas are sound, even if some of his interpretations are plain barmy.
North Wales and Manchester by the way, and not a crustie of any class
Klaus's posting is on the China offtopic forum, so you can't get to it by search, but have to log on to the Job Discussion forums to see the forum, and then search every post individually.
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Sally Olsen
- Posts: 1322
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- Location: Canada,France, Brazil, Japan, Mongolia, Greenland, Canada, Mongolia, Ethiopia next
Here is the email address that klaus gave for teachers who were interested. [email protected]
We had our final meeting for our Systemic Functional Grammar group for this year andt talked about Register. There are many meanings for Register it seems. Some people think it is the kind of language appropriate for the situation. If you are a teen ager and with your friends, swearing, newly created words, abbreviation, slang and so on are natural and expected. These things are not accepted in academic language and so you have to learn that register for school and another for work and so on. Register also has a more theorectical meaning but I will have to go over my notes again to be able to talk about it. The first meaning seems to be useful for teachers and we had a student teacher come to give us a power point presentation on two groups of students in grade 6. One group got the appropriate register for the assignment and did a great job with powerful visuals including a short video and so on. The other group didn't understand the register the teacher thought and so did a poor job and in fact told the students something that shouldn't be brought up in a classroom. They didn't follow the teacher's sample of what the assignment should look like and in addition, used everyday language and incorrect grammar. So we discussed at what point you would intervene as a teacher to help the students who presented the inappropriate material. The student teacher didn't intervene until after it had been presented and then talked to the supervising teacher who planned that the group offer an apology to the class. The student teacher thought that because he gave them a sample, the students would avoid the problem but he was incorrect. He didn't supervise this group during the construction of the power point presentation which the supervising teacher would have done. He didn't review the presentation before as the supervising teacher would have done. From research that we have heard, it seems that intervention at the very first stages is taken by the students without losing face and as instruction so it seems that would have been the best place to intervene or have extra help or make sure that the group had someone that was good at those particular skills. The student teacher thought it was a good lesson for the students though as they saw an excellent presentation and one not so excellent and he felt that the students would learn from that. The supervising teacher felt it was a good lesson for the student teacher to see that just saying something and even showing a sample doesn't guarantee that the students will be able to reproduce the assignment and that he needed to chose his groups more carefully and supervise at the beginning. This was a grade 6 class with 20 out of 26 students in the ESL category.
We had our final meeting for our Systemic Functional Grammar group for this year andt talked about Register. There are many meanings for Register it seems. Some people think it is the kind of language appropriate for the situation. If you are a teen ager and with your friends, swearing, newly created words, abbreviation, slang and so on are natural and expected. These things are not accepted in academic language and so you have to learn that register for school and another for work and so on. Register also has a more theorectical meaning but I will have to go over my notes again to be able to talk about it. The first meaning seems to be useful for teachers and we had a student teacher come to give us a power point presentation on two groups of students in grade 6. One group got the appropriate register for the assignment and did a great job with powerful visuals including a short video and so on. The other group didn't understand the register the teacher thought and so did a poor job and in fact told the students something that shouldn't be brought up in a classroom. They didn't follow the teacher's sample of what the assignment should look like and in addition, used everyday language and incorrect grammar. So we discussed at what point you would intervene as a teacher to help the students who presented the inappropriate material. The student teacher didn't intervene until after it had been presented and then talked to the supervising teacher who planned that the group offer an apology to the class. The student teacher thought that because he gave them a sample, the students would avoid the problem but he was incorrect. He didn't supervise this group during the construction of the power point presentation which the supervising teacher would have done. He didn't review the presentation before as the supervising teacher would have done. From research that we have heard, it seems that intervention at the very first stages is taken by the students without losing face and as instruction so it seems that would have been the best place to intervene or have extra help or make sure that the group had someone that was good at those particular skills. The student teacher thought it was a good lesson for the students though as they saw an excellent presentation and one not so excellent and he felt that the students would learn from that. The supervising teacher felt it was a good lesson for the student teacher to see that just saying something and even showing a sample doesn't guarantee that the students will be able to reproduce the assignment and that he needed to chose his groups more carefully and supervise at the beginning. This was a grade 6 class with 20 out of 26 students in the ESL category.
Applied SFL
Sally
Thanks for the email contact.
I read your report on Register with interest. Unfortunately with my level of students this is not relevant - but personally helpful with my final three units.
As mentioned previously I have to keep my private students happy and returning - to maintain my frugal lifestyle. I keep them amused and laughing and try to surreptiously squeeze in a little SFG when they are not looking. For the past year several of them have been cheerfully identifying the different categories of verbs - processes in SFL parlance.I think this is extremely useful and their writing and understanding appear to be improving. The next big leap will be to identify the Participants. But at first this will be limited to action verbs: in SFL - material processes. Slowly does it.
Stephen I was on the point of ordering "The English Verb" but hesitated on reading that some of it was 'barmy' ?
John Curran
Thanks for the email contact.
I read your report on Register with interest. Unfortunately with my level of students this is not relevant - but personally helpful with my final three units.
As mentioned previously I have to keep my private students happy and returning - to maintain my frugal lifestyle. I keep them amused and laughing and try to surreptiously squeeze in a little SFG when they are not looking. For the past year several of them have been cheerfully identifying the different categories of verbs - processes in SFL parlance.I think this is extremely useful and their writing and understanding appear to be improving. The next big leap will be to identify the Participants. But at first this will be limited to action verbs: in SFL - material processes. Slowly does it.
Stephen I was on the point of ordering "The English Verb" but hesitated on reading that some of it was 'barmy' ?
John Curran
Applied SFL
PS Stephen
Re "Barmy" I am off shortly for a holiday with my grown-up children and spouses in Adelaide. Will be joining the "Barmy Army".
John Curran
Re "Barmy" I am off shortly for a holiday with my grown-up children and spouses in Adelaide. Will be joining the "Barmy Army".
John Curran
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Sally Olsen
- Posts: 1322
- Joined: Thu Apr 08, 2004 2:24 pm
- Location: Canada,France, Brazil, Japan, Mongolia, Greenland, Canada, Mongolia, Ethiopia next
I have been trying to read the English Verb off and on for the past year. I must admit that I find it difficult because his examples of how Englis works seems to relate them to Mathematics and since I am completely at sea with Math, they don'[t make sense to me. I suspect that if you are good at Math, they may be excellent. I will try again in the New Year. If someone could give me examples from personal relationships - family situations in particular- I think that I would do better. I really want to read it.
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fluffyhamster
- Posts: 3031
- Joined: Tue Oct 26, 2004 6:57 pm
- Location: UK > China > Japan > UK again
Hi Sally! I hadn't spotted your post above until now (I was actually just intending to post a Japanese SFL link that I came across recently: http://www2.ocn.ne.jp/~yamanobo/index_contents.html ).
I know what you mean about TEV; Lewis can take a while to make his point, and often you can't be exactly sure what it was even after reading things through several times. I'd suggest skipping ahead until you find a section that looks more interesting (e.g. you could go straight to chapter 13, 'The Group of Modal Auxiliaries', an area has been at the centre of many a discussion here on the AL forum). But taking a quick look at the earlier "maths" bits of the book, it seems that Lewis's point there is mainly just that "rules" (that is, in the case of maths, verbalized procedures) such as 'To divide fractions, invert and multiply' (pg 16) may be as unclear and unhelpful to maths students as some of the things that less cautious/more uninformed ESL teachers say, and in searching for better ways to get to and explain the actual, real ("real"?) meanings of forms, we will almost surely arrive at a better pedagogy (better, that is, for "the average student easily confused or misled by often all-too-misleading rules") too in the process.
I know what you mean about TEV; Lewis can take a while to make his point, and often you can't be exactly sure what it was even after reading things through several times. I'd suggest skipping ahead until you find a section that looks more interesting (e.g. you could go straight to chapter 13, 'The Group of Modal Auxiliaries', an area has been at the centre of many a discussion here on the AL forum). But taking a quick look at the earlier "maths" bits of the book, it seems that Lewis's point there is mainly just that "rules" (that is, in the case of maths, verbalized procedures) such as 'To divide fractions, invert and multiply' (pg 16) may be as unclear and unhelpful to maths students as some of the things that less cautious/more uninformed ESL teachers say, and in searching for better ways to get to and explain the actual, real ("real"?) meanings of forms, we will almost surely arrive at a better pedagogy (better, that is, for "the average student easily confused or misled by often all-too-misleading rules") too in the process.