Using a functional linguistics metalanguage to support academic language development in the English Language Arts

• Functional linguistics offers concrete ways to support academic language development.
• SFL-based metalanguage supports meaningful dialogic interaction about literary texts.
• Elementary teachers and ELLs used functional metalanguage to interpret literature.
• ELLs produced extended discourse that analyzes text and relates it to their own lives.

This article reports on a design-based research project that used grammatical metalanguage from Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to support primary level English Language Learners’ engagement with academic language in English Language Arts. Researchers and teachers developed lessons to support students’ ability to interpret and evaluate characters’ attitudes in literary texts through an explicit focus on language. An analysis of classroom conversations shows that SFL metalanguage has the potential to support students’ content learning in the context of dialogic interaction during meaningful curricular activity supported by scaffolding artifacts. We show that the metalanguage supports elaboration and enactment of meaning and exploration of patterns in language and author's purpose in the texts students read. This results in extended discourse by students in which they also connect text meaning to their personal experiences. We suggest that this approach offers new affordances for supporting ELLs’ engagement in challenging curricular tasks at the same time they develop academic language.