Skip to main content

events

LinC SS 2012

5 September 2012

The 2nd LinC Summer School and Workshop 2012

It’s the final day of the summer school and although we are all tired, it’s been great!

The introductory course has covered the three main strands of meaning in the SFL framework. We have had people come from all over the world and it’s been a great opportunity for us all to learn from each other. The introductory course was taught by our resident SFLers: me (Lise Fontaine), Tom Bartlett and Gerard O’Grady. In addition to the basics of functional grammar, we also offered an introductory workshop on using the UAM CorpusTool.

The applied course focussed on education, including classroom discourse and literacy.

On Monday morning, Sheena Gardner gave a lecture and workshop on exploring university student writing through the BAWE corpus. Participants were given an opportunity to explore the BAWE corpus. Then on Monday afternoon, Geoff Thompson explored how interpersonal choices contribute to the construction of the reader-in-the-text in UK newspaper editorials. The workshop looked at how some of the interpersonal resources are deployed in specific text types, showing how they are used to engage readers and encourage affiliation with the opinions expressed.

Izaskun Elorza and Blanca García-Riaza from Salamanca looked at teaching ‘reported speech’ on Tuesday morning. Their emphasis was on how a systemic approach may help overcome the still existing bridge between a purely formal approach and the well-established communicative approach to the teaching of languages. Claire Acevedo introduced the Reading to Learn literacy acceleration program, which uses Systemic Functional Linguistics in education to dramatically accelerate literacy and learning.

this morning, Mick O’Donnell showed how to use the UAM CorpusTool to analyse classroom discourse, covering the basics of how to use the software and showing us how to get more out of it with some of the advanced features. This afternoon Margaret Berry will lead discussions of practical applications of SFL in education.

I’d like to give huge thanks to our volunteer helpers: Rowan Campbell, Katy Jones and Jaspal Singh. We’d have been completely lost without their contributions.

Watch this space to find out more about our next summer school!