English writing instruction in Norwegian upper secondary schools - a linguistic and genre-pedagogical perspective : Thesis for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor Department of Nordic and Media studies Faculty of Humanities and Education University of Agder and Faculty of English Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań

An experimental study on the effect of systemic functional linguistics applied through a genre-pedagogy approach to teaching writing

Abstract In the tradition of teaching English as a second language, there has been an increased interest in how functional language descriptions and understandings of genres may be used as resources for making meaning. The present study investigates what impact writing instruction that draws upon systemic functional linguistics (SFL) applied through a genre-pedagogy approach has on students’ ability to write argumentative essays. This includes explicit grammar instruction inspired by SFL, as well as instruction on text structure. The study uses a mixed-methods approach, with a quasi-experiment followed up by quantitative and qualitative analyses of the collected material. Statistical analys…

English writing instruction in Norwegian upper secondary schools

AbstractThis article presents a study of current English writing instruction practices in a selection of Norwegian upper secondary schools and discusses how this draws upon ideas within genre-pedagogy. The data comprises individual and focus-group interviews, observation reports and some teaching material. The study shows that English teachers focus on teaching genre requirements and adjustment of language to task and context. However, despite agreeing on the importance of teaching how to write specific text-types and to adjust to the situation at hand, there seems to be different opinions about how detailed instruction should be. Some teachers fear that too explicit instruction may hinder …

Feedback practices in English in Norwegian upper secondary schools

The trends that we see both in official guidelines and school practices demonstrate a shift towards formative assessment strategies with an emphasis on feed-forward comments to the students. How this is carried out in schools varies, and the material in this study shows signs of changing evaluation practices in English instruction. One of the changes is an increased tendency to use process-oriented approaches to feedback, in which the students work through a draft several times before handing in a final product. Much of what is commented on in the feedback focuses on how ideas are organised and how the text is structured. Though process writing is a familiar concept from first language writ…

Challenges concerning argumentative writing in a second language context

The current study is based on parts of the data collected in a quasi-experiment conducted in four English classes of Norwegian upper secondary school students. The purpose of the quasi-experiment was to explore whether a teaching intervention based on systemic functional linguistics and genre-pedagogy would support students in improving their competence in writing argumentative texts in English. The improvement was measured by comparing evaluations of pre-and post-tests. The current study investigates what seemed to be the main challenges for Norwegian students concerning this type of genre in a second language context based on the pre-tests and the evaluations of the pre-tests. The most ch…

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PhD revisited: English writing instruction in Norwegian upper secondaryschool