Functional Language Analysis Response
In reading “Functional Language Analysis” it became very clear to me that this would be a challenging process for me to implement in the classroom because it is something that I have never before experienced or seen modeled. Much of my learning is best absorbed through observing someone actually implement a practice rather than just reading an explanation of what it should look like off a page. Another challenge is that while you gain so much experience working with texts in your discipline during your undergrad, you never consciously break down the process into clear and distinct steps that can be presented to students as a potential method that they can follow. It is very much like the feeling of being a fluent English language speaker and writer, but being unable to identify some of the key grammatical structures because they were not taught in the classroom, but rather through socialization and conversation. Being able to do something can almost hinder the process of learning how to do perform that task in a systematic way.
I found that the article certainly broke down the process of explaining and modelling analysis to students, and was very helpful in pointing out some of the practices that I employ when reading complex texts. Awareness of what you do as well as how and why you do it are the first steps to bringing that knowledge to the classroom and using it to teach students the tools they need to succeed in breaking down the increasingly complex language they encounter in secondary schools.