the ISFC39 Proceedings - International Systemic-Functional ...

Papers from the 39th ISFCDeveloping an approach to teaching grammatical metaphor toESL writersDevo Yilmaz DevrimUniversity of SydneyDepartment of Linguistics Transient Building F12 2006 NSWdyil0551@uni.sydney.edu.auAbstractThis paper presents the theoretical foundations and findings of an action research project conducted within theSLATE (Scaffolding Literacy in Adult and Tertiary Environments) project, which was jointly managed by theCity University of Hong Kong (CityU) and the University of Sydney (USYD). The action research projectreported in this paper specifically focuses on how undergraduate students develop their grammatical metaphor(GM) use with the help of tutors’ online language support, and aims at developing an approach to teaching GM.GM, which was suggested by Halliday (1985a), is a fundamental characteristic of registers of science,bureaucracy, and academia, and its mastery can lead to success in academic and educational environments.Therefore, developing an approach to teaching GM to second language users is essential. This project is framedas action research, which spanned a period of three years, based on the action research cycle suggested byKemmis & McTaggart (1988).1 Research ContextThe research project aims to develop an approach to teaching GM within the SLATE project.The SLATE project was a joint project between CityU and USYD that aimed to provideonline literacy support to undergraduate students. USYD was contacted by the CityUniversity of Hong Kong to help their undergraduate students’ academic writing skills. Theproject was called Language Companion Course (LCC) in Hong Kong, and the title given tothe project at the USYD end was the SLATE project.The SLATE research team trained tutors on online feedback provision using a toolcalled the 3 x 3 matrix (Humphrey, Martin, Dreyfus & Mahboob, 2010). The matrix consistedof nine squares that intersect metafunctions (i.e. ideational, interpersonal, textual) and varioustext levels (i.e. whole text, paragraph, clause). This helped tutors provide online feedback andunderstand what roles metafunctions play at various text levels. Therefore, the feedbackprovided by the SLATE tutors covered a wider range including content, organization,lexicogrammar, text formatting, spelling and punctuation in comparison to the LCC tutors’feedback. In other words, the feedback instances provided by the SLATE tutors was notlimited to corrective feedback that focuses on grammatical accuracy (see Ellis, 2009 forcorrective feedback).The research study that is reported in this paper focused on GM feedback. The GMfeedback refers to the SLATE tutors’ online comments that helped their students use GMsmore effectively. The following example shows how a student was supported on the use ofGM. The feedback is in curly brackets.Lastly, the 0.1K-ohm resistor converts the current to voltage, enabling us to measure {You coulduse the grammatical metaphor in this spot eg : the measurement of...} the output voltage across it.In the above example, the tutor supports a student by suggesting him/her to use GM. Thetutor also suggests a phase to the student.2 Grammatical MetaphorGrammatical metaphor is defined as the resetting of the relationship between discoursesemantics and lexicogrammar that creates tension between these strata. The model that was45