Incorporating Systemic Functional Linguistics in the Unlock English Teaching Program

Abstract

This research attempts to develop a supplementary writing teaching method that is compatible with the Unlock intermediate level students at Birzeit University. The purpose of the study is to also provide writing instruction regarding four general writing needs and for such students: understanding genre, using clause and sentence structure for chosen text types, developing a sense of audience, and writing coherently. The study is based on the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), and the writing instruction is provided through two teaching methodologies, Joint Construction and the Logical Tree. The sample of this study is 54 intermediate-level students of the Unlock program, 27 of whom comprised the control group, the remaining 27, the experimental group. Frequency tables were utilized to calculate the sum of the cohesive and structural devices used. Overall, the results revealed more use of the measured variables in the experimental group than in the control. In the experimental group, devices of nominalization, contrast, addition, reason, register, and voice were used 115, 34, 27, 49, 92, and 27 times, respectively. However, in the control group, the same devices were used 58, 19, 11, 19, 35, and 12 times, respectively. The researcher recommends further research be conducted on larger samples of different levels of English proficiency in order to identify additional needs and provide a more representative assessment.