Thesis advisor: Maria E. Brisk / This action research study examines the impact instruction informed by Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) with a particular focus on tenor and socio-cultural theory has on sixth, seventh and eighth grade English language learners in an urban school. Over the course of seven and ½ months I used Systemic Functional Linguistics with a focus on tenor to teach both the fictional narrative and persuasive genres. In each genre, students wrote a piece for three different audiences where the expected tenor ranged from personal to impersonal to semi personal. My instruction focused on the context, purpose and tenor and the particular structural elements and language features of each genre. Student writing and pedagogical strategies were examined using selective coding and triangulation. Evidence from this study suggests that writing instruction informed by SFL in combination with a socio-cultural model helps English language learners' writing. When students wrote for a distant audience the quality of the students' writing improved. Students increased the amount of text, adjectivals, and made some improvements in terms of structure. Students also included formal language, descriptions and in some cases altered the mood and modality. Students also improved the quality of their pieces as they looked more like writing and less like oral language. After students worked hard to make their pieces more formal they resisted making changes for the less sophisticated audiences indicating that while students were developing awareness of tenor, more work and instruction was needed. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BOSTON/oai:dlib.bc.edu:bc-ir_101649 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Holmgren, Katherine Hayes |
| Publisher | Boston College |
| Source Sets | Boston College |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, thesis |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf |
| Rights | Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. |
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