It has become increasingly obvious that little in language can be understood without taking into consideration the wider picture of communicative purpose, content, context speaker/writer, and audience. Sentence-based intuitions and analyses wither in the face of empirical studies made possible by concordances using corpora of millions of words. In fact, as Celce-Murcia states in this volume, only a handful of grammatical features can be understood by looking at the sentence alone. Research in the field of psychology, particularly in the field of reading (see Grabe, chapter 1) provides considerable support for the teaching of textual awareness, particularly for expository prose. Teaching text structural awareness has also had positive effects on students' writing (see Johns and Paz, chapter 3 for a review of some relevant research).
The title of this volume reflects the assumption that form follows function. Several themes run through the chapters. First, texts, and in fact knowledge itself, are socially constructed. In other words, the meaning of texts is co-constructed by the interaction of reader and text and does not reside in the text alone. The approaches described in this volume all advocate a careful analysis of the text to understand this process more fully. Thus, we lose the somewhat artificial distinction between process and product as we study the text to discover the writer's mental models (see Kramsch, Chapter 4) or biases and presuppositions (see Huckin, Chapter 6). A second theme is that the manner in which language accomplishes the goals of communication affect the overall text from macro-organization to the choice of words. Finally, most chapters assume that texts are so rich and complicated that no single approach can tease out all of the meaning. Learners need to become aware of the richness of interaction among ideology of the writer/reader, genre, overall organization, cohesion, presupposition, and lexical choice to understand not only what is in the text but what has been omitted or presupposed.
The first twelve chapters focus on expository text for two reasons. First, research seems to indicate that students experience more difficulties writing and understanding dense hierarchical expository text than narration and in fact seem to benefit more from the teaching of textual awareness of expository than narrative prose (see Grabe, Chapter 1 for a review of the literature). Secondly, although most students have had considerable exposure to reading and writing narratives, they will ultimately need to master expository prose to succeed in the workplace or in the university, even in English classes.
Each chapter tries to bridge the gaps between a description of an approach, an analysis of at least one text, and pedagogical applications. Sufficient sources have been provided for those who wish to pursue reading in a particular area, while enough examples of approaches are given so that readers can decide for themselves which method warrants further consideration.
Chapter 1 entitled "Discourse Analysis and Reading Instruction" anchors the text in the literature. William Grabe describes many studies which provide empirical support for teaching text structure to students of reading, particularly in expository text. Chapters 2-5 show how an awareness of text structure and strategies is reflected in the quality of student essays. Robert Kaplan's chapter on Contrastive Rhetoric presents a model for the writing process which takes into consideration the impact of author, content, audience, purpose, genre, and context and which shows how students' language and culture shape their writing in English. Claire Kramsch's chapter on Rhetorical Models of Understanding presents student summaries of a narration, while Ann Johns and Danette Paz' chapter on Text Analysis and Pedagogical Summaries deals with summaries of expository texts. Asserting that meaning is a rhetorical and not just a cognitive process, Claire Kramsch presents a model for text analysis and shows how a careful analysis of students' writing can flesh out their respective mental models. Describing Johns and Davies' (1983) topic types, Johns and Paz show what expert and novice summary writers look for when identifying the macro structure of a text. In Chapter 5 John Swales and Christine Feak describe successful and less successful strategies for describing non-verbal information. They recommend going beyond simply transforming information to writing a commentary on non-verbal data.
Chapters 6-9 describe the socio-pragmatic effects that certain language, images, orientations, and organization have on the reader. In an introduction to critical discourse analysis, Thomas Huckin provides the reader with a set of strategies to unveil the assumptions and hidden messages in a text. Greg Myers in "Words and Pictures in a Biology Textbook" provides guidelines for reading visuals, showing how the purpose of visuals changes with genre. Following Myers' description of the modality of visuals is Fransoise Salager Meyer's description of hedges in written scientific discourse. Salager Meyer shows how scientists modulate the strength of their claims and provides suggestions for using hedges to join the discourse community of the scientist. Ana Maria Harvey continues Johns and Paz's and Myer's description of the difference between academic texts and popularizations, showing how science reports are really discourses about discourse. An awareness of the demands of the primary and secondary discourse helps classify texts for pedagogical purposes.
Chapters 10-12 focus on genre analysis and its applications. Vijay Bhatia highlights some of the major features of genre theory and discusses how a genre-based approach can inform language teaching. Tony Dudley Evans describes some of the insights and dangers of genre analysis in academic papers and provides suggestions for a flexible approach. Finally,
Tony Jappy describes a practical approach for using corpora for both research and pedagogy and shows how various language structures are used in different genres.
Chapters 13-18 show how functional grammar approaches are useful not only in teaching grammar per se but in teaching other skills such as reading and writing. The first four articles deal with constructions which textbooks often ignore and which cause problems for teachers such as demonstratives, tense and aspect, and there and it-cleft constructions. The last three chapters show how concepts in functional grammar can be used in the reading and writing class.
Several of the chapters cover the same territory with slightly different approaches. Marianne Celce-Murcia, William Rotge and Roger Lapaire, and William Vande Kopple all deal with existential there, while Marianne Celce Mureia and Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig deal with tense and aspect. William Vande Kopple, Peter Fries and James Martin all deal with issues of placement of information within clauses and its effect on the message. Fries shows how an understanding of Theme and N-Rheme can help students read and write, while Martin shows how an effective control over theme and manipulation of grammatical structures is crucial for revising compositions and therefore for mature writing.
In "Describing and Teaching English Grammar with Reference to Written Discourse" Marianne Celce-Murcia focuses on demonstratives, tense and aspect, existential there sentences, and it-clefts, items which are taken up in later chapters. Celce-Murcia shows that structures are dependent on the context and genre, with some genres allowing more variation with the same grammatical structure than others. Celce-Murcia concludes by advocating more data-based analyses of authentic materials so that reference grammars and teaching materials can begin to supply teachers with guidance as to the use of grammar beyond the sentence level.
In her chapter "Tense and Aspect in Context" Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig advocates using authentic texts to teach tense and aspect, showing how genre is related to the use of tense and aspect. Using a complete radio script, Bardovi-Harlig describes how past tense and aspect relate to point of view and foreground or background. Using a descriptive text, Bardovi-Harlig shows how tense can be used as temporal orientation. In a news report she shows how use of tense and aspect is related to given and new information. BardoviHarlig suggests exercises for each genre and structure.
In their chapter "Towards a Psycho-Grammatical Description of the English Language," Jean-Remi Lapaire and Wilfrid Rotge describe how mental operations leave traces in the surface grammar. They describe how TH, for example, is used when an item being referred to is online (open file) contrasted to WH, which is used to refresh the reader's memory. Following the French linguist Guillaume, they argue that deep unifying principles, or core values, govern surface realizations of grammatical markers. Rotge and
Lapaire advocate teaching grammar in context, beginning with more abstract psycho-grammatical explanations of grammatical features.
In his chapter "Using the Concepts of Given Information and New Information in Classes on the English Language," William Vande Kopple bases his analyses on the Functional Sentence Perspective approach. Vande Kopple shows how dividing the sentence into two parts, one with given information and another with new information can explain the use of many structures. Vande Kopple shows how several grammatical structures such as the passive voice, reversals, and fronts help the writer place given before new and make it easier for the reader to identify which is which. Other patterns such as the expletive there, what-cleRs and it-cleRs help call special attention to new information. Vande Kopple suggests exercises for each structure and provides a checklist for students for using given and new strategically.
In his chapter on "Theme and New in Written English", Peter Fries introduces the notion of Theme and N-Rheme using a systemic-functional perspective. Theme is associated with the initial constituent in the clause and functions to orient the reader to the message. N-Rheme is the final constituent of the clause and serves as the focus of attention and therefore the locus of new information. Using an advertisement, Fries shows how the Theme and N-rheme relate to author's purpose and to the textual structure. Fries introduces rhetorical structure theory and demonstrates how a careful analysis of linguistic features can help readers recognize the overall text structure and can help them write more effectively.
In his chapter entitled "Waves of Abstraction: Organizing Exposition" James Martin shows how the notion of Theme can be used to help students revise texts. In order to package information most effectively, students must learn when to change processes, which are normally encoded as verbs, into nouns; or logical relations, which are normally encoded as conjunctions into verbs. This process, called grammatical metaphor, is necessary if the writer is to manipulate the Theme of the clause effectively and write in a mature manner. Martin uses successive re-writes of a student composition to show how effective use of Theme and grammatical metaphor improves a composition.
It is hoped that the chapters in this series provide the reader with a taste of practical uses of various approaches to discourse analysis, and that the works cited can provide a basis for further reading.
This volume is a compilation of two TESOL France Journals. I would like to thank TESOL France for its high standards and for its efforts to reach a wider public. I wish to thank the following for their careful reading of the manuscript: Jacqueline Queniart, Gloria Kreisher, Frank Smolinski, and Dolores Parker. Finally, I wish to thank the authors for their suggestions and contributions to this volume. Particularly, I would like to thank Ann Johns and William Grabe, whose patient guidance and generous assistance over the years have made this work possible.
