Recent studies in language education have advocated the integration of language
and content learning, assuming that classroom discourse will display appropriate formfunction
relations. But Swain (1988) reveals that even good content teaching may result
in classroom discourse where form-function relations are neither appropriate nor
transparent, and calls for intentional teacher planning of classroom activities. Thus major
areas for research are intentional planning for integration and functional discourse
analysis. Approaches to the form-function analysis of discourse include register
(Halliday 1985), genre (Martin 1992) and knowledge structures (Mohan 1990). All three
provide a theoretical basis for functional discourse analysis and intentional planning.
In this qualitative, eight-month study of Chinese as a foreign language and culture
class for beginning elementary anglophone students, the teachers designed student tasks
around knowledge structures, using graphic representations to mediate between language
and content. Data included lesson plans, informal interviews, field notes, and discourse
data from student interactions and written work. The discourse was analyzed
lexicogrammatically with a view to form-function relations, particularly the formal
realizations of knowledge structures. Major questions were: how were foreign language
teaching and cultural learning intentionally organized around knowledge structures at the
level of both curriculum design and classroom implementation? What systematic formfunction
relations appeared in the discourse data. How are knowledge structures formally
realized in the interactions and written work of young foreign language learners?
The results throw light on the possibilities of systematic form-function relations in
the classroom, the integration of language and content learning, and on further directions
for intentional planning.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/4844 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Huang, Jingzi |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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