Language in Action - SFL Theory across Contexts - María Estela Brisk

Language in Action - SFL Theory across Contexts - María Estela Brisk

7. Scaffolding the Wave: Supporting Student Teachers in Professional Academic Writing Through LCT and SFL

Language in Action - SFL Theory across Contexts - María Estela Brisk

Anna-Vera Meidell Sigsgaard [+-]
University College of Copenhagen
Anna-Vera Meidell Sigsgaard is Associate Professor PhD, in Danish as a Second Language in the Department of Education at the University College of Copenhagen, Denmark. She teaches pre- and in-service teachers in the areas of second language education, literacy development, and language teaching pedagogy. She also teaches courses in academic writing for non-native English PhD students. Her research interests include exploring connections between language, knowledge and teaching/learning in the contexts of both elementary school and teacher education, as well as developing language-based (second language education) pedagogy in mainstream classes. In collaboration with Susanne Karen Jacobsen, current work includes developing modules in teacher education to support student-teachers in writing academic texts. This work draws on both Legitimation Code Theory and systemic functional linguistics, exploring how analytical tools from both these theoretical frameworks complement each other in an academic writing context and how these can be used to inform pedagogy at the tertiary level.
Susanne Karen Jacobsen [+-]
University College of Copenhagen
Susanne Karen Jacobsen is Associate Professor in English as a Foreign Language and Danish as a Second Language in the Department of Education at University College of Copenhagen, Denmark. She teaches pre- and in-service teachers, primarily in the areas of English as a foreign language and second language education. She has written a resource book for teachers and contributed to numerous anthologies on language education, literacy and pedagogy. Most of her work draws on systemic functional linguistics and genre pedagogy. In collaboration with Anna-Vera Meidell Sigsgaard, her current work includes developing modules in teacher education to support student-teachers in writing academic texts. This work draws on both Legitimation Code Theory and systemic functional linguistics, exploring how analytical tools from both these theoretical frameworks complement each other in an academic writing context and how these can be used to inform pedagogy at the tertiary level.

Description

Like many students, pre-service teachers in Denmark often exhibit difficulty writing about practice in a theoretically informed way. This chapter employs Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) and SFL analyses in conjunction to illustrate how students in a tertiary education setting are able to connect what they know (theory and theoretical concepts) with what they see (in this case, examples of educational practice and teaching materials). In analyzing examples of analysis-sections from student teachers’ written exams, we show how some students are more successful in presenting their analyses as emerging professionals while contrasting these with less successful examples. More specifically, semantic gravity and the notion of semantic waves from LCT identify where in analysis-section texts students make the connections between theory and practice, while resources from lexico-grammar and discourse semantics (including Appraisal theory) from SFL demonstrate how this can be done more or less successfully using genre-appropriate academic language. Insights from the analyses presented suggest that teaching students these same analytical tools from LCT and SFL more or less explicitly will help to both improve their academic writing and support their emerging professional identities.

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Citation

Sigsgaard, Anna-Vera Meidell; Jacobsen, Susanne Karen . 7. Scaffolding the Wave: Supporting Student Teachers in Professional Academic Writing Through LCT and SFL. Language in Action - SFL Theory across Contexts. Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. p. 177-205 Jun 2021. ISBN 9781800500044. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=40632. Date accessed: 29 Mar 2024 doi: 10.1558/equinox.40632. Jun 2021

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