Title: Systemic Functional Grammar in a Teacher and Student Writing Conference: A Case Study
This study describes how an ESL teacher used the process-oriented model of learning to help a student from Taiwan to improve writing ability. Based on the concept of systemic- functional grammar, this study takes an inter-organism approach. The aim is to explore implications and pedagogic procedures for writing process.
A brief needs assessment was first conducted to find an approach to solving this student's writing problems. Sentence combining exercises were used to help him build syntactic awareness. And then the teacher helped him to write at the micro/semantic-function level (what the speaker wants to mean) and to rewrite at the macro-function level (what he can negotiate). In other words, the student was helped to see that he could make three different types of meaning--experiential, interpersonal, and textual meanings.
This study proves itself useful by meeting the student's academic needs in writing. It is hoped that the description and the observation of this ESL student's ability for processing revision would provide insightful information for ESL composition=
teachers.