Systemic Functional Linguistics in Teaching English Beyond School

Abstract

Thus, language teaching/learning was present from the early stages of his theorizing about language, a theorizing which included context as an integral part of language (see Mouvet and Taverniers, this issue). Halliday saw as beneficial to L2 teaching “the systematic description of the relation between linguistic and situational features” (Halliday 2007 [1960], p. 160). In 1964, Halliday and colleagues, Angus McIntosh and Peter Strevens, published The Linguistic Sciences and Language Teaching, which set out “to describe how language – specifically, English – ‘works’” (Halliday et al. 1964: x). Acknowledging throughout their book the primary importance of good teaching practice, the authors also argued for descriptions of language that could help solve problems in L2 teaching. Heeding Halliday’s earlier call in 1960 for relating linguistic and situational features, the authors brought in the notion of register, or “variety of a language distinguished according to use” (Halliday et al. 1964: 87). They also argued that learning will take place more readily “if the language is encountered in active use than if it is seen or heard only as a set of disembodied utterances or exercises” (Halliday et al. 1964: 181). The authors, therefore, acknowledged the importance of real language in use for learners of an additional language. This 1964 volume was described “as a kind of applied linguistics manifesto” at the time of its publication (Widdowson, 2009: 194), and Halliday is cited as a major figure of inspiration for the communicative approach to L2 teaching (Brumfit and Johnson, 1979; Melrose, 1995: 3; McCabe et al., 2015; McCabe, 2017). Its focus on register has also meant that SFL has adapted readily to English for Specific Purposes (ESP) (and, obviously, the more general Language for Specific Purposes – LSP) teaching. In fact, Swales (2000, p. 59) called Halliday, et al. (1964) a “a landmark volume”, which provided “a clarion call” for descriptions of language in use, citing as a key passage: