Teaching to mean, writing to mean: SFL, L2 literacy, and teacher education

This study analyzes how ten linguistically and culturally diverse candidates in a TESOL master's degree program used systemic functional linguistics and genre-based pedagogy to design curriculum and instruction. Using case study methods, the findings indicate that participants’ conceptualizations of grammar shifted from a traditional sentence-level, form-focused perspective to a more functional understanding operating in interconnected ways across lexicogrammatical and discourse semantic features of texts. However, participants’ constructions of what SFL is and how they might use genre-based pedagogy in the future were highly influenced by their previous schooling experiences and the contexts in which they taught or envisioned teaching. The implications of this study relate to reconceptualizing grammar in the knowledge base of language education.