3.4 Implications for English Education
Given the distinct ways academic disciplines use language to make their own meanings, it is clear that being able to read and write in one discipline does not guarantee similar success in reading and writing in other disciplines. This means that English students need to become familiar with the ways language is used in a variety of disciplines. In other words, they need to develop language and literacy skills across a range of disciplines so that they are prepared for career or further study upon graduation. Importantly, they need to become more aware of how experts from different disciplines exploit the lexicogrammatical resources of language in their social practices. As Unsworth (2001, p. 11) argued,
It is no longer appropriate to talk about "literacy across the curriculum". Instead there is a need to delineate "curriculum literacies", specifying the interface between a specific curriculum and its literacies rather than imagining there is a singular literacy that could be spread homogeneously across the curriculum.
This notion of developing discipline-specific literacies suggests that we can no longer rely solely on the set of basic language skills (e.g., phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency) and generic cognitive strategies (e.g., inferring, predicting, summarizing, visualizing, questioning) that characterize the elementary and secondary English literacy instruction (c.f., National Reading Panel, 2000; Vacca, Vacca & Mraz, 2016). To be literate in English at the college level necessarily involves the ability to handle the specialized discourses of academic disciplines. This means that we need to help students develop language/literacy skills that are more complex and more embedded in academic disciplines, emphasizing discipline-specific language and literacy practices and encouraging students to read and write like scientists, historians, economists, novelists, lawyers, and other content experts. Specifically, we need to show, demonstrate, and make visible to students how language/literacy operates within each academic discipline, helping them learn how disciplinary experts use language in characteristic ways to present information, engage in interpretation, develop argument, and create specialized texts. This is key to preparing students to become language experts who are capable of working across diverse fields and contexts.
3.4.1 Curriculum
The new emphasis in English literacy instruction requires that the existing English curriculum be revamped. A typical English curriculum in the department of English in colleges and universities across China seems to have as its goal the development of generalized language proficiencies in reading, writing, listening, speaking, interpreting, and translation. Students take such courses as intensive reading, extensive reading, listening, oral conversation, and writing during their freshman and sophomore years and courses such as grammar, oral interpretation, translation, literature, linguistics, and cross-cultural communication in junior and senior years. Courses such as rhetoric and composition, business English, scientific English, journalistic English, and Western civilization are typically offered as electives in the upper division. These more specialized courses often serve as add-ons to the curriculum, bearing little conceptual linkage to other courses.
This curriculum, with its emphasis on generic literacy and its privileging of literature (primarily British and American literatures) as the dominant literacy staple, does not promote the development of advanced literacy and disciplinary literacies that are needed in higher education. What is needed in colleges and universities is a new kind of curriculum that enables students to develop an understanding of how knowledge is built through language across academic disciplines (including subject English) and at the same time build knowledge and understanding about these disciplines. Today's high school graduates are generally much better in their general English language proficiencies than their counterparts of some 20 years ago. They typically do not need four more years of coursework to develop basic language competence again. Rather, a focus on disciplinary-specific language and literacy skills is needed because it will not only contribute to the development of students' advanced literacy but also better prepare them for a variety of career opportunities after college.
A curriculum that focuses on advanced literacy and disciplinary literacies can be conceptualized to encompass four strands: (1) consolidating and refining basic language skills, (2) building content knowledge about core academic disciplines, (3) developing tools for language and literacy studies, and (4) investigating language and literacy practices across academic disciplines. The four strands roughly parallel the four years of study during college. Year 1 focuses on consolidating and refining students' basic language skills in reading, writing, speaking, and listening; Year 2 focuses on developing students' content knowledge about key disciplines in humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, business, law, medicine, and so on; Year 3 focuses on equipping students with tools and strategies for, as well as initial experiences in, studying language and literacy in context; and Year 4 focuses on engaging students in more in-depth, specialized studies of language and literacy practices across academic disciplines. The development of these strands does not necessarily proceed in a linear fashion from year to year; rather, they have cascading effects, with the development in one set of knowledge and skills often involving engagement with tasks that can simultaneously engender or reinforce the development in others.
Within this curriculum framework, students can take courses such as content area reading, academic writing, listening, and speaking in the transitional freshman year. During this year, they are exposed to a variety of texts from different academic content areas that include, for example, natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, business, law, and medicine. Traditionally, literary texts have been — and remained — the main literacy staple for students in their K-20 educational experiences. This limits students' exposure to different genres and registers and inhibits their language/literacy development. As was demonstrated earlier in the chapter, the language of literature differs in significant ways from the language of, for example, science or law. Being able to read and write literary texts does not ensure similar success with other disciplinary texts. English students are expected to familiarize themselves with different genres and registers across diverse disciplines so that they can be better prepared for the future. The recent calls by some scholars to return the English major to its historical roots in literature and humanities is an equally problematic reaction to the ill-conceived advice to eliminate the English major and to situate English education within specific academic content areas outside subject English (e.g., science, law, engineering, business, journalism). While the advice itself fails to recognize the unique identity and mission of the English department in colleges and universities, the reaction is likewise shortsighted in that it fosters a narrow view of what it means to be literate in the English language and fails to take account of the significant differences in the ways language is used across disciplines. It is, as 蔡基刚 (2019) pointed out, an unfortunate retreat from an earlier call in the landmark document, 《高等学校英语专业英语教学大纲》 (高等学校外语专业教学指导委员会英语组，2000), that emphasizes the preparation of language professionals with content expertise.
In the sophomore year, students take introductory courses in core disciplines from natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, law, business, engineering, and medicine. Having developed the breadth of knowledge in academic content areas, each student can then be required to choose a minor in a discipline outside subject English (e.g., journalism, law, economics, finance, environmental science). The main purpose for this requirement is not to train students to become a specialist in their chosen minor (e.g., an accountant, a historian, a lawyer, or a chemist) but to equip them with a basic understanding of the core principles, knowledge, values, habits of mind, and world views of the discipline so that they can be better prepared to do the language-related work in that discipline. Developing such content knowledge, albeit often neglected in language education, is essential to the literate practices of reading, writing, and translating academic and disciplinary texts.
In the junior year, students learn the tools for conducting language and literacy inquiries in context. Developing inquiry tools is critical to building students' capacities as language workers. These tools can include basic methods for linguistic and literary analyses, introductory statistics, interviews, surveys, and observations. Equipped with these tools, students will be better prepared to engage in what Halliday (1980) referred to as the tripartite process of learning language, learning about language, and learning through language. As students are learning to master these tools, they also engage in preliminary applications of the tools to the study of language and literacy practices in context.
In the senior year, students engage in intensive exercises studying how experience, knowledge and ideologies are construed and reconstrued through language across disciplines and how experts in these disciplines read, write, talk, and think in ways that enable them to engage in the social practices of their disciplines. The primary purpose of these exercises should be to develop students' awareness of and sensitivity to the different ways language is used to present information, embed perspective, develop argument, and structure texts across different disciplines. Such exercises can culminate in a bachelor's thesis project that investigates the language and literacy practices of a specific discipline chosen by individual students (e.g., literature, biology, finance, history, linguistics, economics, mathematics, law). It may also be useful to consider a five-year program that leads to both a bachelor's degree (at the end of the fourth year) and a master's degree (at the end of the fifth year), with the last year focusing on internship and research in the language and literacy practices of a specific discipline chosen by individual students. On the other hand, however, it is not inconceivable to have the fifth-year content infused into a four-year program.
This four-strand curriculum framework affords the flexibility that is needed to address the individual needs and aspirations of students and the unique missions of particular institutions. For example, some students may choose to have two minors or decide to double major in both English and another content area (e.g., business, political science) to better prepare themselves for the future. These aspirations should be encouraged and supported. On the other hand, certain universities, such as those designated to specialize in the preparation of future business leaders or scientists and engineers, may have their students develop an area of specialization beyond the omnipresent focus on literature, linguistics, or translation. Such practice maximizes the development of individual talents, makes more effective uses of educational resources, and better prepares students for their chosen profession in the real world.
The new curriculum framework described above addresses some of the recommendations and overcomes some of the pitfalls in 《高等学校英语专业英语教学大纲》 (高等学校外语专业教学指导委员会英语组，2000). This highly influential document articulates a vision of English education in China for the twenty-first century. Specifically, English students are expected to demonstrate solid foundations of language, breadth of knowledge, and some knowledge relevant to subject English (commonly interpreted to be about literature, linguistics, and culture). They are expected to first develop basic language proficiency and solid control over subject English. On the basis of this, they are then expected to build knowledge about the humanities and the sciences, master basic knowledge of the discipline relevant to their prospective job upon graduation, and enhance their capacity for continuous learning, independent thinking, creativity, morality, ethical integrity, cultural knowledge, and psychological strength. The document further recommends that the first two years of college education be devoted to building strong language foundations through courses such as foundational English, listening, reading, writing, oral interpretation, and translation, with the remaining goals to be accomplished during the last two years through courses relevant to subject English (e.g., English linguistics, English lexicography, English grammatics, English stylistics, British and American literatures, British and American society and culture, Western civilizations) as well as content courses dealing with international relations, economics and trade, law, business, journalism, education, science and technology, and military history. It also emphasizes the need to prepare language professionals with content expertise. Clearly, these recommendations recognize that in order to be ready for career, English students need not only language skills but also knowledge about the discipline in which these skills are to be put to use. The new curriculum framework described above addresses this need in the second strand. It also addresses the need for developing basic facility in language foundations in the first strand and the need for developing learning capacity and disposition in the third and fourth strands. In short, the goals set by the national document can be achieved using the new curriculum framework described in this chapter, perhaps with greater efficiency and more solid theoretical grounding.
At the same time, the new curriculum framework overcomes some misconceptions in this influential document. According to the document, for example, students build basic language foundations in the first two years of college and then move on to build knowledge about subject English and other disciplines relevant to students' prospective jobs during the last two years of college. This recommendation in effect creates a separation of language and content, as if language development stops after the first two years and gives way to content development in the third and fourth years. It also reifies a view of literacy as a generalized reading/writing ability that can be applied unproblematically across disciplines and contexts. The recommendation is inconsistent with the functional model of language described earlier in the chapter. Language and literacy can and should continue to co-develop while students are expanding and enriching their content knowledge about subject English and other academic disciplines. Students need to develop advanced literacy and disciplinary literacies in order to engage with the knowledge of academic disciplines, and such advanced and discipline-specific reading/writing abilities are best developed in the context of building knowledge across disciplines. In other words, learning to read and write in academic disciplines is a continuous process that takes much more than two years and involves both language learning and content development. As students engage with new knowledge within and beyond subject English, they encounter new language patterns, expand their linguistic repertoires, and develop their literacy capacities. Language learning, literacy development, and knowledge building are indeed three interrelated processes that take place simultaneously, one building on and extending the other. The new curriculum framework encourages this synergy. It situates language and literacy work within disciplinary learning, an approach that can stimulate greater student participation, support advanced literacy development, and promote the learning of disciplinary habits of mind.
Educators and employers in China have often decried that English graduates are not adequately prepared for their careers as language workers in context (be it business or government) despite years of English learning from the elementary and secondary schools through college and onto the graduate school. One major reason for this lack of preparedness is that while students generally have developed sound basic language skills that enable them to engage in quotidian conversations about commonsense topics, these language skills are seldom adequate to help them meet the new literacy demands of the often specialized and complex subjects that are dealt with on a daily basis in not-for-profit organizations, government agencies, academic institutions, research centers, commercial corporations, and industrial entities. The new curriculum framework described here has the potential to alleviate this problem by helping students develop the language proficiency, content knowledge, inquiry skills, and practical experiences they will need to successfully engage with the language and literacy practices of their chosen discipline.
3.4.2 Pedagogy(https://www.daowen.com)
An emphasis on discipline-specific language/literacy practices in a content-based, language-driven curriculum necessitates a functional linguistics approach, or FLA, to literacy instruction. FLA is grounded in a powerful sociosemiotic theory (Halliday, 1978, 1993; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014) that views grammar as a creative resource for making meaning, literacy as involving the use of contextualized language, language use as both shaping and being shaped by context, and learning of any kind as primarily a linguistic process. The approach recognizes language as the hidden curriculum of schooling and advocates explicit teaching of grammar as a way to promote advanced literacy development; facilitate access to disciplinary genres, knowledge, habits of mind, and world views; and address equity issues in education. It promotes explicit teaching of language that focuses on meaning above, below, around, and beyond the clause through such constructs as clause complex, group, phrase, cohesion, genre, register, Mood, modality, and metaphor.
The approach requires teachers to move beyond the traditional but still prevalent practice of teaching language/literacy as a set of grammatical conventions, basic skills, or generic strategies that students have to memorize and then apply unproblematically in reading and writing practices across disciplines. In other words, language and literacy instruction must occur in content-rich contexts where students also build their knowledge about subject English and other disciplines. As students expand their textual diets beyond the traditional staple of literary works to include other content areas such as fine arts, humanities, social sciences, engineering, business, medicine, and law, they begin to encounter more diverse patterns of language. They will discover, for example, that the language of literary texts, which typically foregrounds agents, actions, and feelings, is different from the language of science, which, with its focus on things and relations, is often constructed in complex nominal syntax with technical and abstract vocabulary. They will also discover that even within the same discipline (e.g., science), linguistic variation exists among its sub-branches (e.g., biology, chemistry, environmental science, and physics).
At least two major permutations of FLA have emerged over the past couple of decades. One is the genre-based literacy pedagogy, developed initially for the purpose of writing instruction in the Australian context (e.g., Cope & Kalantzis, 1993; Rose, 2009; Rose & Martin, 2012). The other is the register-based literacy pedagogy, developed initially for the purpose of reading instruction in the U.S. context (de Oliveira & Schleppegrell, 2015; Fang & Schleppegrell, 2008; Fang, Schleppegrell & Moore, 2014; Schleppegrell & Achugar, 2003). Although each approach has its own focus (e.g., genre vs. register, writing vs. reading) and operational procedures, they have become increasingly intertwined by virtue of their shared theoretical underpinnings and their common emphasis on reading-writing connections. They complement and enrich one another in ways that can enhance literacy teaching, learning, and assessment.
The genre-based FLA promotes explicit teaching and learning of key school-based genres (e.g., stories, reading responses, arguments, biographies, accounts, explanations, procedures, reports), recognizing that (a) curriculum content is typically presented to students through texts in a variety of genres, (b) students' mastery of such content is evaluated primarily through the use of texts of different types, (c) school success depends largely on the ability to read and write these texts, and (d) knowledge of genres can improve this ability and empower students. The approach is rooted in the belief that mastering the school-based genres and the linguistic resources that construct them is key to building knowledge and developing literacy in academic disciplines. It argues that genre knowledge should form part of the curriculum of literate practice because "[t]o be aware of genres, their constitutive principles, their valuations in hierarchies of power, and above all to be able to produce them … becomes both the sine qua non of fully literate practice and the condition for full participation in social life" (Kress, 2003, p. 85).
The approach was initially developed for writing instruction in the primary school during the 1980s as a response to the then-popular process approach that "largely abandoned the explicit teaching of writing in favor of a progressivist ideology of personal development" (Rose, 2009, p. 152). It was extended in the 1990s to the secondary school and beyond. It is now widely known as the Sydney School Genre-Based Pedagogy. This pedagogy involves three main stages — deconstruction, joint construction, and independent construction — that form a teaching-learning cycle (Rothery, 1994), as shown in Figure 3-1. During deconstruction, the teacher engages students in analyzing a model text in the target genre, helping them recognize the social purpose, schematic structure (or staging), and key linguistic features of the genre. During joint construction, the teacher guides the class to construct another text in the same genre, showing students what it takes to compose a text in the target genre. With stories, students use the literary resources of the accomplished author they have been reading in constructing a new story that is different in content (e.g., events, characters, and settings) from the model text. With factual texts, students write a new text using the same content as the model text, but in wordings that are closer to what they might use themselves. With analytical genres, students write a new text using the rhetorical resources of evaluation and persuasion borrowed from the model text. During independent construction, students write a new text in the same genre on their own, making sure the final product includes the structural and linguistic features that define the target genre and that they have practiced using with the class in the earlier stage. More recently, the pedagogy incorporated reading as a way to support students to recognize the language patterns in the texts they are expected to read so that they can use these patterns in the texts they are expected to write.
Figure 3-1 Genre Teaching-Learning Cycle (reproduced from Rose, 2009, p. 154)
The Sydney School Genre-Based Pedagogy, with its focus on generic stages (i.e., schematic structures), has been criticized for being too formulaic and overtly rigid for the teaching of text and for "a failure to make the necessary connections between grammar and its role in the production of text" (Watkins, 1997, p. 296). More recent descriptions of the pedagogy (e.g., Humphrey, 2017; Rose & Martin, 2012) have given greater attention to grammar as a generative resource for text production. The register-based FLA places a much greater and more systematic emphasis on grammar and its role in the production, comprehension, and interpretation of text. Initially developed to promote close analysis and deep comprehension of complex texts that students are expected to read in secondary and postsecondary schooling, the approach recognizes that language use (i.e., lexicogrammatical choice) varies from one discipline or genre to another and that students can develop advanced literacy and disciplinary literacies through a functional focus on grammar. It provides teachers with a set of tools for engaging students in functional grammar analysis (see Table 3-1), offering a new way of talking about language and text that helps students make sense of what they are reading and at the same time develop insights into how a text means what it means. As such, the approach answers Watkins' (1997) call for "the development of a pedagogy which can account for, and foster competence in, the dynamism of textual form and the manipulation of the grammatical resources of language which is in itself a technology" (p. 297).
Table 3-1 An Instructional Framework for Functional Grammar Analysis
Specifically, using the metalanguage provided by SFL, the teacher engages students in systematically analyzing and discussing how lexical and grammatical choices within a text simultaneously present content (the experiential meaning), organize text (the textual and logical meanings), and infuse points of view (the interpersonal meaning) in discipline- and genrespecific ways. For example, students can identify the content of the text (i.e., main ideas or what happened) by analyzing the process (realized in verb), participant (realized in noun), and circumstance (realized in adverb and prepositional phrase) in each clause, with process analysis showing what events are presented (e.g., doing, describing, identifying, saying, thinking, or feeling), participant analysis revealing who/what is involved and has agency and who/what is not involved, and circumstance analysis indicating when, where, how, and why something happened. They can learn about how the text is organized by analyzing what begins each clause (e.g., time markers indicating chronology, abstract nouns indicating causes and effects), how clauses are combined (e.g., hypotactic, paratactic, or embedded; elaborating, extending, enhancing, or projecting), and how cohesion is created and sustained (e.g., reference, repetition, conjunction). They can also infer the author's opinion, attitude, or voice by analyzing word choices, with, for example, analysis of intensifiers (e.g., The king is a little/extremely disappointed.) and words with positive/negative meanings (e.g., The oil price skyrocketed/plunged in recent weeks.) indicating how the message in the text is made more or less intense; analysis of adjectives and adverbs (e.g., They are true friends. This effectively ends their friendship.) showing how meaning is made more or less precise; and analysis of nouns (e.g., That rascal used to be my roommate.), verbs (e.g., It is alleged that he stole the car.), adverbs (e.g., The students were treated fairly at the camp.), adjectives (e.g., That is disgusting.), and modals (e.g., She may be sick. This can't be true.) revealing authorial judgment, appreciation, emotion, or engagement. These analyses enable the reader to gain key ideas and details, understand writing craft and structure, and critically evaluate knowledge, claims, and evidence — all abilities that are crucial to advanced literacy development. They promote close, critical reading of text, helping students more effectively access and critically evaluate the information they are expected to learn from the text. Equally important, they illuminate the ways language is used as a creative resource for making meanings in genre-and discipline-specific ways, thus giving students insights into and power for academic communication.
Functional grammar analysis gives teachers a powerful vehicle for engaging students in thoughtful reading, providing a way of bringing out and critically appraising the content students are expected to learn from the text. At the same time, it also illuminates the writer's process of constructing the text. Teachers can use Table 3-1 as a guide to inform their decisions regarding which question (s) to focus on and what strategy (or strategies) to use in answering the question (s). Such decisions should also take into consideration the nature of the text selection and students' literacy proficiency levels, as well as the overall curriculum goals and particular lesson objectives. Using functional grammar analysis, teachers can help students develop a richer, more complete understanding of the knowledge and ideology presented in the text and gain a deeper appreciation for the rationale and consequence of particular language choices in the text. The insights students gain from relating language choices to meaning and function through intensive grammatical analyses make them become more critical readers and enable them to write texts that are purposeful and rhetorically powerful.
A functional linguistics approach, regardless of whether it is genrebased or register-based, is most effective when embedded in a sequence of classroom activities that also engage with students' background knowledge, prior experience, motivation, and disciplinary habits of mind. According to Langer (2011), "reading, writing, and familiarity with language, structure, and disciplinary conventions are at the root of learning in academic coursework ... [and] need to be taught, through first-hand disciplinary experience, as language and thought-in-use, in content-area classes" (p. 4). That is, language/literacy development work must be situated within authentic disciplinary experiences, where opportunities to also engage with disciplinary content and habits of mind co-exist. As pointed out in Chapter 1, exploring language in contexts that have little substantive content discourages students' participation, limits their encounters with richly diverse language patterns, and hinders their advanced literacy development. In contrast, when language/literacy work is performed in content-rich contexts — such as arts, humanities, sciences, medicine, law, and business — students have repeated opportunities to interact with authentic disciplinary texts of diverse genres and registers. Such experiences with diversely complex texts — with their rich vocabulary, varied sentence patterns, and diverse discourse structures —are key to advanced literacy development.
An avenue for this sort of contextualized language/literacy work is unit study. A unit study is a collection of learning activities tied to a core concept or theme that lasts over a span of days, weeks, or even months. It permits more in-depth, engaging exploration of an idea or issue that is significant to a discipline or a question that is of relevance and interest to students. For example, in a literature unit on genre study, students can read a wide range of literary genres, such as fantasy (e.g., J. K. Rowling's [1997-2007] Harry Potter series), autobiography (e.g., Bill Clinton's [2004] My Life), biography (e.g., Jane Leavy's [2018] The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created), science fiction (e.g., Kurt Vonnegut's [1969] Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death), historical fiction (e.g., Laurie Anderson's [2002] Fever 1793), realistic fiction (e.g., Kate DiCamillo's [2000] Because of Winn-Dixie), coming-of-age novel (e.g., Harper Lee's [1960] To Kill a Mockingbird), play (e.g., William Shakespeare's [1595/1596] A Midsummer Night's Dream and Paul Roche's [1958] translation The Oedipus Plays of Sophocles), graphic novel (e.g., Art Spiegelman's [1980-1991] Maus: A Survivor's Tale), novellas (e.g., John Steinback's [1937] Of Mice and Men), essay (e.g., E. B. White's [2006] Essays of E. B. White), poetry (e.g., Shel Silverstein's [1974] Where the Sidewalk Ends), and public speech (e.g., Martin Luther King, Jr.'s [1963] "I Have a Dream"). Through reading/viewing/listening to and discussing these pieces of literary works, students gain a rich understanding of the purpose, subject matter, form, style, and other characteristics of different literary genres and learn to analyze, interpret, appreciate and enjoy literature as work about the real or imagined worlds.
Each group of 3-5 students can be assigned one genre to explore, with each student in the same group reading the same book or different books belonging to the same genre. Alternatively, students can form groups of 3-5, with each student reading a book belonging to a different genre so that 3-5 genres are discussed in each group. Students record and share (within and beyond their small group) evidence that their book fits the assigned genre. They can also complete a book review and share summaries of the books they read with their classmates. On a regular basis, the teacher can methodically select passages from each genre for close analysis and discussion in order to advance particular lesson objectives related to both disciplinary content (i.e., understanding literary genres) and the language (i.e., lexical, grammatical, discursive resources) through which this content is constructed. Passages selected for this purpose usually contain rich or characteristic language resources with which students are less familiar and which they are expected to master and apply to their own writing. In short, situating the language and literacy work within the context of disciplinary explorations — where students engage in firsthand experiences, draw on disciplinary methods, use disciplinary habits of mind, conduct inquiries, solve problems, and interact with diverse texts — gives the learning experience purpose, meaning, and usefulness.