Plenaristas invitadas:
- Dra. Ann Montemayor-Borsinger
- Dra. Eija Ventola
RESUMEN DE PLENARIAS
Dra. Ann Montemayor-Borsinger
Language education and Systemic Functional Linguistics to language in education: What can Systemic Functional Linguistics offer to second language teachers?
The tripartite framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics allows for a delicate characterization of the challenges inherent to the reconstruction of meanings in different languages, and offers powerful tools for their resolution. This study examines how SFL provides valuable concepts for a contrastive analysis of options within each of what the theory considers as “metafunctions” of language, in a variety of source texts and their translations. A focus on the ideational metafunction shows how changes in the representation of concepts in academic discourses affects the transmission of knowledge from one language to another. For the interpersonal metafunction we examine how ineffective word choices change significantly the Tenor of literary discourses. For the textual metafunction we discuss how changes in word order may affect the rhetorical force of a text. The capacity of SFL to focus on certain strands of meaning according to the genres encountered promotes a deeper understanding of the relations between form and function, and between the lexico-grammatical and discourse-semantic levels. This in turn draws our attention towards the challenges posed by the successful reconstrual of meanings from one language to the other, in order to make texts that effectively comply with their social and cultural functions.
Dra. Eija Ventola
Challenges or opportunities for foreign language teachers and learners when teaching and learning goes on-line?
Learning a foreign language has always been thought to be a matter of achieving ‘communicative competence’in that language. That usually meant that students were expected to learn to speak and write the language in question fluently. First, the focus was on the competence of producing well-construed clauses and sentences/utterances and later an understanding of the appropriate situational and cultural context was espected, i.e. the learners were expected to have also ‘situational and cultural competence’.
In systemic-functional linguistics these aspects of theorising and learning ‘how to mean’ in a foreign language have been covered well by setting the focus on the three levels of language – phonology/orthography – lexicogrammar – discourse semantics and the stratal organization of language as a social phenomenon – language - the register (field, tenor and mode) as context of situation and genre (the social activity type) and its unfolding as a generic structure.
The most important modal resource realizations in foreign language learning were first written and then spoken dialogic texts that were published in textbooks and then on audio- and later videotapes linked with the textbooks and exercise books and of course classroom practice. From the theoretical research perspective we had individuated research on textlinguistics and discourse analysis.
Today we accept that there are also other modal resources that are important for communication within a foreign culture (gestures, proximity, haptics, facial expressions, etc.) and we also accept that in addition to old technologies (the book, the audio- & videotapes) we have new media that are widely used for foreign language teaching. This paper discusses specifically the new challenges and opportunities for learning a foreign language that the medium of internet and the various technological devices bring to foreign language learning. We can now conveniently combine texts with images and video clips and make ever more intriguing combinations of meaning-making. Textbooks are said to die out because of the internet? Is that so? What about teachers – are they still needed? What about our functional model of language? Is it also to die out, or is it able to face the challenges of visualization and ‘internettization’? How are teachers and students suppose to cope with these changes? These are the questions that will be explored in this paper.
Dra. Ann Montemayor-Borsinger
Language education and Systemic Functional Linguistics to language in education: What can Systemic Functional Linguistics offer to second language teachers?
The tripartite framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics allows for a delicate characterization of the challenges inherent to the reconstruction of meanings in different languages, and offers powerful tools for their resolution. This study examines how SFL provides valuable concepts for a contrastive analysis of options within each of what the theory considers as “metafunctions” of language, in a variety of source texts and their translations. A focus on the ideational metafunction shows how changes in the representation of concepts in academic discourses affects the transmission of knowledge from one language to another. For the interpersonal metafunction we examine how ineffective word choices change significantly the Tenor of literary discourses. For the textual metafunction we discuss how changes in word order may affect the rhetorical force of a text. The capacity of SFL to focus on certain strands of meaning according to the genres encountered promotes a deeper understanding of the relations between form and function, and between the lexico-grammatical and discourse-semantic levels. This in turn draws our attention towards the challenges posed by the successful reconstrual of meanings from one language to the other, in order to make texts that effectively comply with their social and cultural functions.
Dra. Eija Ventola
Challenges or opportunities for foreign language teachers and learners when teaching and learning goes on-line?
Learning a foreign language has always been thought to be a matter of achieving ‘communicative competence’in that language. That usually meant that students were expected to learn to speak and write the language in question fluently. First, the focus was on the competence of producing well-construed clauses and sentences/utterances and later an understanding of the appropriate situational and cultural context was espected, i.e. the learners were expected to have also ‘situational and cultural competence’.
In systemic-functional linguistics these aspects of theorising and learning ‘how to mean’ in a foreign language have been covered well by setting the focus on the three levels of language – phonology/orthography – lexicogrammar – discourse semantics and the stratal organization of language as a social phenomenon – language - the register (field, tenor and mode) as context of situation and genre (the social activity type) and its unfolding as a generic structure.
The most important modal resource realizations in foreign language learning were first written and then spoken dialogic texts that were published in textbooks and then on audio- and later videotapes linked with the textbooks and exercise books and of course classroom practice. From the theoretical research perspective we had individuated research on textlinguistics and discourse analysis.
Today we accept that there are also other modal resources that are important for communication within a foreign culture (gestures, proximity, haptics, facial expressions, etc.) and we also accept that in addition to old technologies (the book, the audio- & videotapes) we have new media that are widely used for foreign language teaching. This paper discusses specifically the new challenges and opportunities for learning a foreign language that the medium of internet and the various technological devices bring to foreign language learning. We can now conveniently combine texts with images and video clips and make ever more intriguing combinations of meaning-making. Textbooks are said to die out because of the internet? Is that so? What about teachers – are they still needed? What about our functional model of language? Is it also to die out, or is it able to face the challenges of visualization and ‘internettization’? How are teachers and students suppose to cope with these changes? These are the questions that will be explored in this paper.