The journey towards independent writing, as viewed by many instructors who practice the principles of SFL, moves through three steps.

Supporting student writing through a SFL/genre analysis approach often moves through a three-step progression. Step 1: Text Analysis In order to understand how a particular genre is constructed, students are invited to carefully consider an example text. This analysis may be guided by a series of structured questions that invites them to consider the purpose of the text and the audience, and how the social context ultimately influences the structure and language choices. Step 2: Supported Text Construction With a basic understanding of how the text is constructed, the next step is for students to practice writing their text, with support. In class, this may include student work in pairs or small groups to practice writing, or a full-class exercise in creating a shared text. Individually, this might include writing a portion of a larger text and receiving individual formative feedback before moving on to create a larger piece of writing. Step 3: Independent Writing After initial support and formative feedback, students move on to independently complete the assigned writing task.

Analyzing A Text

A key first step in applying SFL-inspired approaches in the classroom is conducting a text analysis that unpacks how ideational, interpersonal, and textual meaning are typically realized within a particular genre. This sounds complex — but can be as simple as answering a structured list of questions about the text. After doing this ourselves, we can select the questions that are most relevant to help students analyze the text.

The template on the right, adapted from the British Council, demonstrates how to work through the process. 

  • What is the purpose of the text?  What does the writer the reader will think, feel, or do after reading?
  • Who is the audience for the text?
  • How formal is the text?  (formal, semi-formal, informal)
  • How objective is the text? (Is a personal opinion?  A scientific paper?)
  • What is the general layout/format of the text?  (Does it have a title page?  Where are the page numbers?  Are headings used?)
  • How is this text organized overall?  What information is in each paragraph?
  • Where does the author state the main argument/thesis?
  • How is the introduction organized?  How does the author indicate how the paper will develop?
  • How is the conclusion organized?  How does the author summarize the content of the text?
  • If the author uses information from other sources, how does the author introduce this information? (e.g. Berry states that ___)
  • If the author uses information from other sources, how does the author cite this information in the text of the paper? 
  • If there is a works cited page or bibliography, what do you notice about how it is organized?
  • What do you notice about the sentence structure in the text?  Are there many simple sentences?  Many complex sentences?
  • What words are used to connect ideas together and to show the relationships between sentences?
  • Are there verb tenses or verb forms that occur often in this text?  Why do you think these are chosen?
  • Are there any words or expressions that occur often in this text?
  • Are there any technical terms that occur often in this text?
  • In general, does this text use everyday vocabulary or specialized vocabulary?
  • How is the vocabulary in this text different than vocabulary you might use in everyday speaking?

Reference:

Adapted from: British Council. (2005). Planning a Writing Lesson:  Genre Analysis Form. Retrieved December 6, 2016, from https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/sites/teacheng/files/genre_form.pdf

Download the Text Analysis Template

Supporting Metacognition

In addition to the text analysis process,  it may be helpful to include exercises to support student metacognition throughout the writing process — in other words, supporting students in planning their work, monitoring their effectiveness, and evaluating their success. 

One effective strategy to consider is providing checklists or rubrics for students to use as a guide to monitoring and evaluating their assignment drafts before submitting. This helps students gain proficiency in evaluating what is needed to produce a successful piece of work, and revising their work to meet these criteria.

Supporting the Writing Process

Some students may struggle to produce strong writing because they are unfamiliar with how to move through a writing process of pre-writing, draft creation, editing, and proofreading. You may also wish to include structured student exercises to guide students through these writing process steps.

In the video below, you will explore how the principles outlined here were used to create a student writing exercise.

 So let’s take a look at one example of a supported student writing assignment. This assignment was designed for BUSI 1110. So a first-year business course where students were responding to a mini case study, typically with a paragraph or two, a short and basic response.

I started out by trying to contextualize the writing task. I’ve written “in business courses, you will often be asked to respond to case studies. This type of assignment is designed to prepare you to respond to challenging problems that arise in professional settings. To solve case studies, you are required to think critically, applying concepts that you are learning in your courses to real life scenarios. You are also required to communicate this knowledge clearly in verbal or written form”. So I’ve tried to contextualize here what the task is and how it relates to a real-world scenario. So in all of these exercises, I wanted to give students a sense that this isn’t a text that they’re writing just for the purpose of completing a single course assignment; there is a real-world application.

Then I’ve given the learning objectives for this lesson. I move on to a little bit of work on case study analysis, so four steps to analyzing a mini case study and focusing on strategies for reading and taking notes. This is an example of where I built a learning strategy into the process. I haven’t really moved onto the writing yet, but I’m working on building the students’ thinking skills, reading skills, and writing skills that will prepare them to then be successful on the broader assignment. Here, the students have an example of how they might read the short case study and what notes they might take.

After this work on reading and analysis, the next step is for the students to move into the writing task. Here, I’m trying to connect students with this whole idea of purpose and interpersonal meaning. I’ve got this question about considering the audience. So if I was responding to this type of problem in a work environment, who would be the audience or reader for my writing? We’re identifying an audience. Then we’re moving on to look at what would this audience value? What is necessary to do in this type of communication? We have a few criteria. The students are asked to rank them from one to five in terms of importance. We’ve got criteria like my audience values concise communication. My audience values a formal style, no short form is no contractions, no text-speak, and so on.

After looking at the interpersonal meeting and how it influences writing, we start to look at the structure of the response. So in this case, I’ve given an example and I’ve tried to break down the different parts, the different structure movements in this text. Here we’re looking at structure on more of a discourse level. How is the flow of the whole text? How does it tie together?

So here I’ve identified three different movements. So, a first sentence where the issue is identified in the first sentence, a second part where the issue is connected to the course concepts. I’ve noted the in-text citation. And then a third section where the understanding of the issue is explained by the students. So the students have had a chance to see and evaluate an example.

Then they move on to another task where they’re provided with an example response. That might be a typical student response, but an example of one that’s not quite as strong. So in this case, the students are asked to read the example, to evaluate it, and to give a reason for their evaluation. This is meant to support some of these metacognitive processes. Thinking about what’s required and thinking about whether a response meets those criteria or not.

So now, students have gone through the first text analysis step, and now we’re moving on to some structured text creation. So this would be an in-class activity where students had the chance to apply the principles to try doing a text. This could even be a task that students do in pairs or in small groups. And now, after doing that task, there’s the opportunity again, to evaluate, does it meet the structure requirements of a good response. And is it the right kind of text for the intended audience? This addresses issues like business tone and style. And again, there’s a bit of a metacognitive process here; does it meet the requirements and what needs to be changed. And we end with a reflection.

So at this point in the process, the students have moved through the first two steps. So the text analysis and then the supported text creation. This is intended to move the students on to that final step of being more prepared to create their independent text and to do it in a way that meets the criteria of the course and of the assignment.

Download the file used in this video
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