LLED 360

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.

When reading through the article, I found it almost ironic that I was having a difficult time understanding some parts and phrases simply because I myself am not that well versed in the technical language that a paper about the study of the English language would employ.  I too am a learner of this particular discipline so I can understand the use and logic behind Functional Language Analysis.  Learning new facts always requires us to expand our brains to accommodate the new “bricks” and “mortar” words we come across.  The biggest challenge for me, and maybe for many others out there, is identifying and understanding the technical words that are used across a range of disciplines but mean something different in different contexts.  Some words that come to mind are “Postmodern and Baroque”.  Words that are discipline specific (photosynthesis, isosceles, vanitas), I find easier to grasp as they aren’t usually used in other contexts outside of their field.  Looking back to how I learned, I would agree with the author’s encouragement of subject area teachers to help his/her students in understanding the type of language that would be used in the classroom.  Instead of assuming that all students automatically know what certain words mean or how they relate to one another in a sentence, it is a safer for teachers to be pro-active and go through difficult terminology that may hinder a child’s comprehension of the subject.  Unfortunately, this rarely happened when I was in high school.  I would venture to say that by the time a student reaches their high school years, and especially when they enter post-secondary, his/her teacher would assume that the teaching of “language” and comprehension is no longer necessary.  Because Art is a very visual practice, I believe that many of the “bricks” would be better understood when accompanied by a visual.  For instance, I can describe what “impasto” is but without a visual, the learner may have a very difficult time perceiving what this is.  In this situation, what I know “impasto” to be is as accurate as how I can describe it to the learner because without the aid of a visual, it really is just up for interpretation.

I was at a dinner party a couple of nights ago and my friends started asking me about my courses.  As theatre people, they could not understand how I had a class that taught the discourses of theatre.  I began explaining how some students may not know what it means to be backstage, or to be in a theatre of the round, or part of the audience.  As I was explaining the bricks and mortar of my subject, my friends became even more confused.  In return, I tried to think of another way to explain it.

One of my friends at this party does not have facebook.  She has never had much exposure to the site either.  Thus I started talking about the discourse of facebook.  For someone who has never been on facebook they would have a hard time understanding a conversation where people click on a button to like something, can poke someone virtually, and where writing on their wall has nothing to do with graffiti.  Almost everything we do has its own discourse but explaining that language to outsiders can be difficult.  It was hard for my friends to understand that some people have never been exposed to theatre language.  However, when I put it in the context of Facebook they were able to see how difficult it could be.

Language success doesn’t end with accomplishing basic literacy; students must be able to efficiently continue to build their literacy and expand their language abilities. Theorists are beginning to return to the basic building blocks of language in order to better understand how to improve comprehension and composition ability further down the line. However,  secondary students are finding that the expectations placed upon them are progressing faster than their abilities currently allow. The current strategies being employed aren’t enough to close the gap.

Fang and Schleppegrell coin the term functional language analysis, which “enables students to identify language patterns and associated meanings specific to particular disciplines as they focus on how language works, helping them comprehend and critique the texts of secondary content-areas.” It categorizes text into three distinct but cohesive types of meaning: experiential, textual, and interpersonal. An analysis of these areas affords students a heightened awareness of which language to apply in a given context, as well as which patterns of language are bridged between disciplines.

Examining functional language analysis from an arts perspective, it can said that the development of technical or theoretical knowledge coincides with the development of the language that is used to describe it. In short: complex topics require complex language. I have certainly found this to be true in my own experience, and I believe that most anyone could relate to a situation with which they felt confined by the limits of their vocabulary to adequately express an idea, emotion, or experience. In art, we often like to consider how a work of art can articulate the ineffable: to express something that couldn’t be fully defined through language.

Fang and Schleppegrell go on to highlight several features of language in the secondary classroom, such as nominalization and multimodality. I find that the latter is the most readily applicable to the field of art education. Art is fundamentally multimodal in nature; it is constructed through various media and perceived in endless configurations. In my practice of art education, the use of multiple phrasings or analogies to critically frame a work is an invaluable tool in developing a thorough understanding.

Discipline-specific Academic language, as well as idioms, tone, and voice need to be explicitly taught in order for students to better engage with the material. Fang and Schleppegrell propose that the responsibility to raise student competency isn’t placed solely on literacy fundamentals, but that it is a ongoing process that is built into the study of each discipline.

I found Fang and Schleppegrell’s article very informative on how to effectively ease a student’s transition from the simple and everyday language of elementary text to the more complicated language patterns observed in secondary readings.  I have never been introduced to the Functional Language Analysis before, but through the examples that Fang and Schleppegrell provided I can understand how simplifying the information into feasible parts can aid in a student’s clarification and analysis of the language content.

Although I have always enjoyed reading as a hobby, I still found myself struggling as I completed my readings for class in past undergraduate courses. Reading scientific articles proved to be the hardest as most of the time it consisted of a vast amount of terminology, many of which exceeded the level an undergraduate science student was required to know. Not only were the terminologies hard to keep up with, but the sentences were structured in such long and complicated ways that I found myself reading it over and over again only to make little sense of it. It’s unfortunate I was never fully trained during the senior years of high school to prepare me for what I was expected to carry out in university readings.

To prevent my future students from having to learn the hard way that I did, I would like to implement literacy exercises in my future practices as a science teacher. In doing so, I hope my lessons will not only help them acquire a firm grip on simplifying chunks of condensed material into manageable parts, but to also aid in identifying and building on the pool of technical terms in which the science discipline consists of.  I believe that timing plays a crucial role in a student’s success in developing their literacy skills. I think this development is a continuous process, stretching across their entire educational experience, and it is up to teachers to guide them along in a step by step fashion. For example, at the beginning of high school, students are expected to have mastered the language patterns presented to them in elementary text. It is now up to teachers working with them to build on this skill, through the use of language interpretation activities, to ensure that by grade 11 and 12, they will be prepared enough to comprehend and develop disciplinary literacies across their specialized subjects.

In addition, there is something I would like to clarify from this article. Mathematics is not the only discipline that evokes the usage of two different languages – natural language and symbolic language (Fang, and Schleppegrell 590). Within the general science curricula for grades 8, 9, and 10, students are also introduced to the wide range of symbols through complex concepts and equations which include, but are not limited to, α, β, Δ, and λ. Science students are also trained to acquire the skills in interpreting, organizing, and presenting a set of data in an appropriate way through the use of graphs, diagrams, or charts.

As I was reading through this article I had a flashback to my first year at UBC. In one of my Art Studies courses, the theme of the course was on global citizenship and identity. The second reading was one of the densest I have ever read. It was so convoluted and about borders and international law, a topic that we were not familiar with at the time. I remember my professor took great effort and care to make sure that my fellow students and I could decipher and navigate through the dense and thick forest of academic jargonese that we had to wander through. She taught us not only how to navigate through it, but to “handle language in new ways” as the article says, so that we could write and speak in a way that illustrated our grasp of the language. She essentially was engaging in a form of Functional Language Analysis (FLA), particularly focusing on those three dimensions of experiential, textual, and interpersonal meaning. The effort our professor put in was well worth it as it laid the groundwork for the rest of my undergraduate career, but also in all the reading and analyzing I would do in my daily life. Therefore I can see how important FLA can be for secondary classrooms too, as students begin to encounter academic language and articles.

As a Social Studies teacher candidate, I would want my students to always be aware and familiar with the ins and outs of language. I think in my experiences earlier on in high school, much if not all the textual exploration we had was focused on deciphering the experiential meaning. Over time however, I learned to grapple and grasp the textual and interpersonal meanings as well. Therefore I wish to be able to teach my students how to do this, to realize the importance of “who is doing the story telling” or “how does the author seek to influence the reader” as important and consistent questions to ask. I want to be able to do this with their own writing. I think by learning how to create language and use language in these multidimensional ways––it will better teach them how to read language. As they engage in textual deconstruction, they also learn how to masterfully engage in language construction. And I hope I can be a co-constructor with them in the beginning phases as they find their own methods and voice.

Michael Yang

Upon the completion of my readings this week, I was reminded of my own personal experiences learning English as a second language. I can relate to the “background-school disconnect” (Zwiers 4) feeling that other diversity students mentioned in this chapter had as well. Culturally, I always stood out in my class, and to make matters worse I felt a huge barrier was set between mainstreamer classmates and me because I lacked the language skills to communicate with them. Reflecting back on those moments today, I completely agree with how important it is for teachers to take special notice of the struggles that engulf non-mainstream students in learning English, and to not let them fall victim to their invisible criteria. By developing a solid support system in their school, it provides these students the confidence they need to improve and to help them accept that it is okay to struggle a little before succeeding. It is important for students to improve on their academic English as soon as possible because their struggles in this language could eventually affect their performance in other classes. The last thing any teacher wants to see is their students giving up in science or socials because they can barely understand the lessons. I also believe that parents play a crucial role in this support system. By enrolling their child in extracurricular activities or providing them with educational novels and/or T.V channels, it helps to facilitate learning English even outside of the classroom setting. I was lucky to have teachers who noticed my struggles and set aside ESL class time for me, and parents who provided me with a broad range of extracurricular activities after school. This allowed me to build on my English skills, academically and socially. I definitely noticed a change in my performance and behavior at school after I passed my ESL course. Prior to passing, I was shy and extremely quiet in class. I never wanted to raise my hand and contribute in class discussions as I feared my accent was still obvious, or I would form sentences that were grammatically incorrect. While every student’s learning style and response to strategies is different, school support and extracurricular activities served to be the appropriate combination for me to develop my social, knowledge, and linguistic capital.

My discipline is in the sciences, and I have spent the past few years tutoring in this area. A strategy I have found very helpful in describing complex scientific topics to my students is by relating it something they already know. From this week’s reading, I was able to identify them as the use of metaphors, analogies, and personification. The key to helping a student understand a concept they just can’t grasp or visualize is to find common grounds through which you, as an educator, may start building the connection.

As a Mainstream English speaker, I often do not take notice of the challenges that face ELLs on a daily basis and particularly in academic language. However, this does not mean that, on reflection, I cannot relate or identify with the experiences of these learners. This was evidenced as I read the Functional Language Analysis article. As I read the various examples of different academic content texts I remembered encountering a period of adjustment when I entered junior high school and had to read and comprehend texts written in content-specific academic language. I remember having to read sections of these texts multiple times in order to deconstruct and reorganize the information — in order to make sense of it. Sometimes this still happens when reading articles and textbooks written by subject experts for areas other than my own. I did not have a specifically laid out method of deconstructing the text, such as Functional Language Analysis, with which to do so, but because of my knowledge base and generally strong comprehension abilities, I managed to make sense of the text by drawing on my current metacognitive and metalinguistic skills. However, for ELLs and others who do not have a very strong base in these ways of processing information, it must be very frustrating and seemingly impossible to unscramble the meaning of such texts. This is why I am very interested in this prescribed formula of language analysis and would like to explore this method of deconstruction in my content classroom.

In the study of theatre, students will encounter a wide variety of ways in which authors present information. They will read plays and scripts in which dialogue and stage directions, character details and setting descriptions are laid out and identified in specific ways. Also, they will engage with textbooks and similar academic texts that discuss the history of theatre through the ages. They will also meet texts that attempt to convey modern styles of acting, set design etc. and instruct students on how to explore and achieve these results themselves. Often in these instructional texts much metaphoric and abstract language is used to help the students engage in sensory explorations. These texts will each provide their own specific challenges to ELLs and I will attempt to use functional analysis in my classroom, as much as possible, to demystify these texts.

Theatrical history textbooks are the most obvious texts with which to use this method. They are written very similarly to conventional history texts, referring to dates, important figures and events. Therefore, these texts have frequent nominalizations, such as the “futurist movement”* which represents many events, people, and plays by the statement of two simple words (Fang and Schleppegrell 589). As with other history texts, judgments and personal opinion are also present in these texts. For example, “From the oppression of the dark ages, theatre was reborn, by the very institution that had decimated it—the church…”* As Fang and Schleppegrell suggest, the choices of words and their position with respect to each other are very important in helping the students understand the point of view of the author and the judgements the author is making about the “actors” (the church, the theatre etc.) (589). The students can analyse the processes of “doing” (decimated), “being”, “sensing” and “saying” and those “participants” (the church) involved to learn the experiential meaning of the text. They can also use the mood (declarative), modality and attitudinal vocabulary of the words (decimated) to find their interpersonal meaning. Through analysis of the pronouns, synonyms, antonyms and conjunctions students can understand the textual meaning of the text as well (Fang and Schleppegrell 592).

Through the exploration of Functional Language Analysis, it is my intention to help my students learn the skills to decipher historical and creative language so that they will be better equipped to extract knowledge from the theatrical texts that they will read.

Works Cited:

Fang, Z., & Schleppegrell, M. J. (2010). Disciplinary literacies across content areas: Supporting secondary reading through functional language analysis. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 53, 587–597. doi:10.1598/JAAL.53.7.6

*These are my own examples.

Melanie Reich

Fang and Schleppegrell’s discussion of using functional analysis when approaching specialized academic language highlighted some key elements that I had not yet considered. Along with the difficulty of new vocabulary and concepts that academic texts can introduce, there is always a specific style, tone, or voice associated with various areas of study. Common expressions, tendencies to compact as much information as possible using new and complicated word and sentence structure, and general expectation of audience familiarity add to the entire challenge of adapting to other levels of language.

As a math specialist, I have always had a perception of mathematics as a universal language that needed few words to describe involved problems. This statement in itself is my bias, as well as something that I must now be very careful to approach with my students. Perhaps the greatest barrier does not lie in understanding the methods to solve the problems, but being able to confidently decide what the problem needs to be solved. As the article details, one small sentence expects the reader to hold knowledge from several areas of the subject so as to be able to formulate the problem never mind attempt at its solution. The weight in terms of multiple definitions and contextual connotations that math terminology holds is often taken as understood and mastered. Thus if a student encounters a challenging or unfamiliar problem, he/she should be able to call on their past knowledge of what the pieces of the question describe to build a suitable response.

Now being able to recognize my own personal assumption, I must now work to not carry forward into the classroom. Adopting the techniques that were outlined in the article could greatly help me assist my future students in becoming comfortable and confident with managing such language. After all, as teachers we cannot expect answers from our students if they cannot first understand what is the question!

Fang and Shleppegrell’s article demonstrate that it is important for educators to come up with discipline-specific ways of using language in order to help them succeed in the classroom.  I am in complete agreement with them.  Fang and Schleppegrell discuss how functional language analysis allows students to identify language patterns and associated meanings that are specific to certain disciplines.  By doing this, students can gain a more thorough understanding as to how language works in their discipline-specific setting and can help them comprehend and critique texts (Fang and Schleppegrell, 2010, p. 588).

I think that functional language analysis is important in any classroom setting by giving students a framework for understanding a variety of texts from disciplinary backgrounds.  For example, last week in class we discussed the importance of teaching brick and mortar words to our students in order to help them understand the language of a certain discipline.  By teaching students the meaning and importance of these words in the classroom, they will have a better concept of why certain words are being used in their teacher’s lesson.  Furthermore, demonstrating how language operates across specific disciplines shows adolescents how “content experts use language in characteristic ways to present information, engage in interpretation, and create specialized texts” (Fang and Schleppegrell, 2010, p. 591).

I also believe that teaching students discipline specific ways of using language will make the discipline seem more approachable.  What I mean by this is that students will probably be more interested in their work if they have a strong understanding of the meaning of the words used in that particular discipline.  Discipline-specific learning will also help students see connections, patterns and differences between the languages being used in each of their classes which can then be applied to their lives both academically and outside of the school setting.  This is extremely valuable for the students because it will help improve their critical thinking skills and ability to make connections when problem solving and learning in society.

I think that the functional language analysis approach will be extremely useful for me to adapt my own classroom when I become a teacher.  By assisting students in understanding discipline-specific language in my classroom, they will discover how this language transfers into other areas of their life.  It will assist them in having a successful experience in my class by giving them the basic knowledge needed to understand each lesson and the expectations required of them.

By: Erin Milne