Colloquium: Myriam Abdel-Malek, "Investigating a Genre-Based Approach Informed by Systemic Functional Linguistics to Teaching Writing in Arabic"

Investigating a Genre-Based Approach Informed by Systemic Functional Linguistics to Teaching Writing in Arabic

Myriam Abdel-Malek, PhD, Less-Commonly-Taught-Languages Center

For this colloquium talk, I will report on a multiple case study, in which I investigated the application of a genre-based approach (GBA) informed by systemic functional linguistics (SFL) (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014) in a second semester university-level Arabic class. I will outline how the connection between the notion of purpose and the necessary language features helped students to produce culturally-informed recounts of habitual events. An SFL analysis of the writing of three students, representing three different performance levels, prior to and after having received instruction in genre-based writing, revealed differences in the linguistic resources that students employed to convey meaning. Implications for foreign language genre teaching and learning will be discussed.