This month, we would like to showcase a real-life example of how a teacher implemented a language-based pedagogy in the classroom. Here, grammar is not taught in isolation but as part of a wider framework of teaching and learning about language.
This example describes the work of a science teacher, Julie McPhee, who attended the Language and Literacy Course (now 3L: Language and Literacy for Learning), and set out to support her 12-year-old students improve their written arguments.
The class was looking at the issue of deforestation and, as part of their activities, the students were put in the position of taking a stance, pro or con, with regards to this issue. Time was spent developing the students’ field knowledge so that they had more than a commonsense understanding of the main arguments. It was clear that, while the students had a lot to say about the topic, they were unable to organise their ideas into a clear argument. As a consequence, there was a focus on two aspects of the lexicogrammar in this particular teaching-learning cycle:
- introducing the notions of macrotheme (introduction) and hypertheme (topic sentence) (Martin 1992) as a way of teaching the organisation in the argument genre, and
- teaching nominalisation as a way of moving students’ writing to the more written end of the mode continuum.
The before-intervention text below is a typical example of a written argument that the students were producing before any explicit work had been done.
| BEFORE-INTERVENTION TEXT I’m for deforestation. I believe that we rely on the destruction of rainforests for more land. Land will provide opportunities for farmers and other farming issues including crops which provide food and medicines. Land is also used for housing. The trees of the rainforests provide building products so as trees are cut down, the land provides area for houses which are built from the trees cut down. Houses need to be built for the growing population so that they can have shelter away from the cold winter conditions and the hot summer conditions in Australia’s climate. For children to have a good education they need to go to school to learn. To learn you need paper to write on and read from. Paper is made from trees which need to be cut down. Fuel is also provided from the destruction of rainforests. Trees are cut down by loggers. If there was no destruction of rainforests then loggers would be out of a job and would not get paid. Deforestation helps Australia’s economy with they buying and selling of rainforests products. Therefore deforestation can benefit many people. |
This student has presented many of the issues around deforestation but the organisation of the text is not as we would expect to see in a written argumentative essay. There is no significant ordering of ideas in the first paragraph that signals to the reader the arguments that will be taken up in subsequent paragraphs. Within the paragraphs, the ideas are not organised in an orderly manner with the writer rather expanding on her reasons for supporting deforestation in a superficial way. Also, the student tends to write in a more spoken way. For example, there is a focus on tangible objects (e.g. land, trees, houses), people (e.g. children, they, you, loggers) and actions (e.g. build, go, cut down) rather than issues to be argued.
In addressing these concerns, the class spent a number of lessons analysing their writing, discussing it, deconstructing it and playing with various spoken texts to make them more written. After a number of lessons, the structure of the students’ texts improved as did the degree of abstraction.
| AFTER-INTERVENTION TEXT It is necessary for some rainforest areas to be removed to enable employment opportunities to increase and enable people to support themselves and their families. The clearing would provide more land for farming and housing and countries would benefit economically by the exportation and selling of products such as timber, furniture, medicines, food, firewood, fuel and other products which are produced. An exceeding amount of employment opportunities would arise with the removal of timber from some rainforest areas. It is essential that people be employed for the removal and processing of the timber. Once the removal and processing of the timber has taken place, the designing, building and supervision of the houses or roads or the planting of the crops and the research of the plants removed needs to be achieved. This requires more people to be employed for these various tasks. The removal of trees in some parts of the rainforests would produce efficient amount of land for farming and housing. Housing provides homes and farming can provide a wide range of meat, milk, wool and other foods and products. These are all necessities that are very important to the society. … |
What is clear is the improved organisation of the second text where, unlike the first one, there is a clear macrotheme with clearly linked hyperthemes. The opening paragraph signals that the main arguments centre around employment opportunities, more land for farming and housing and that countries would benefit economically.
Each of these arguments is taken up in the following paragraphs and the student has made good use of nominalisation to synthesize her ideas. So, we see abstractions such as opportunities, removal and clearance as head words in nominal groups. In contrast with the first text, this text unfolds more according to the issues to be taken up in the argument. Further analysis of these two texts shows, for example, the overuse of nominalisation (an exceeding amount, the exportation and selling), but there is no doubt that, in a short space of time, the students in Julie’s class made significant progress in their understanding of how a written argument works.
This example highlights what many teachers have found when teaching students about writing arguments; that even a brief exploration of these key linguistic resources is extremely productive in improving students’ writing.