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Grammar and second language education

Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen

Department of English, PolySystemic Research Group, Faculty of Humanities, PolyU

4th Language and Education Symposium,

Department of English, PolyU, 30 May 2013

v/2013

© Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen

Learning a language can be theorized as learning how to mean (see Halliday, [1975, 2004]): in interaction with other people, the learner gradually develops the meaning potential of a particular language (or set of languages), distilling the system of meaning from innumerable acts of meaning. When people learn their mother tongue (or mother tongues), they start in the middle of their first year by constructing a simple semiotic system, a child-tongue or protolanguage, in interaction with their caregivers. This is not yet a version of the mother tongue; it is a much simpler semiotic system organized into just two planes — the content plane and the expression plane, each of which is mono-stratal, and distributed within the content plane into a small number of mutually exclusive microfunctions (initially, instrumental, regulatory, interactional and personal) operating in distinct types of context. These microfunctions are organized into system networks of options in “meaning”, and the options are realized on the expression plane by either vocalizations (articulatory gestures) or visible gestures.

Having learned the basic principles of how to mean, children begin to make the transition into the mother tongue(s) spoken around them somewhere during the second year of life. At the end of the transitional phase, they have moved into mother tongue: their meaning-making resources are now multi-stratal — the content plane is stratified into semantics (meaning, in its narrow sense) and lexicogrammar, and the expression plane is stratified into phonology and phonetics; and their meaning-making resources are metafunctional — the content plane is organized into simultaneous resources for construing experience (the ideational metafunction), for enacting roles and relations (the interpersonal metafunction) and for transforming these two strands of meaning into a flow of discourse (the textual metafunction). These metafunctionally organized meaning-making resources are embedded in context, but unlike the

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microfunctions of protolanguage, the metafunctions of adult (post-infancy) language are no longer tied to particular contexts. Instead, language is now an adaptive system — varying registerially according to the nature of the context in which it operates: see Figure 1.

Figure 1: Language in context (stratal organization) extended along the cline of instantiation from potential to instance

Once the stratal subsystems of language have become part of their meaning potential, people will continue to learn language throughout their lives (although at some point this growth may turn into decay): they expand their meaning potentials by adding new ways of meaning — new sub-potentials or registers enabling them to operate in new contexts. In this way, people expand their registerial repertoires as they take on new roles in new contexts: Figure 2.

At some point along this learning path, learners may begin to learn another language. This may be under conditions to the first language(s): natural rather than induced, informal rather than instructed. However, if this language is introduced in school, learning will be induced rather than primarily natural (although various methods may be applied to make the process as natural as possible) and it will be guided by explicit instruction based on educational design — curricular, syllabi, lesson plans. Since learners are already far into their first language, we can ask, with Halliday (1978) “Is learning a second language like learning a first language all over again?”

The basic principle here is that learners of the new language have already learned how to mean, and they have their mother tongue as a powerful meaning-making resource to draw on — they have been learning this language and using it as a resource for learning for a long time by the time they meet the new language. In this sense, the first language is also a resource for learning the new language. Thus while researchers have focussed on interference from the first language (as in “contrastive analysis”) and it is clear that some significant proportion of “mistakes” learners make in the new language can be traced back to the first language, they would not be able to learn a second language as a

instantiation

variationininstantiation

potential sub-potential/instancetype instance

potentialization[transformingintosystem]

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second language unless they had already mastered the meaning-making resources of the first language.

Figure 2: Ontogenetic expansion of a learner’s registerial repertoire seen “from above” in terms of the expansion of roles in fields of activity

So we can conceptualize learning a second language as learning how to mean in a second language, and model the learning process as one where the learner gradually splices the second language into the meaning potential he or she has already mastered, thus gradually building up a multi-lingual meaning potential. For example, if speakers of English begin to learn Indonesian, they can draw on the meaning potential of their pronominal system, but they will have to extend and elaborate on this system: see Figure 3. In this multi-lingual system network, parts are common to English and Indonesian, but some parts are specific to Indonesian, and are represented as Indonesian “partitions” of the overall network.

expounding

doing

recreatingenabling

reportingexploring

sharingrecommend- ing

field:socio-

semioticprocesses

field:socio-

semioticprocesses

familyroles

neighbourhoodroles

educationroles

workplaceroles

tenor:institutional

roles

casualconversation:parent-child

nurserytale:parent-child

casualconversation:friend-friend

examplesofsituationtypesininstitutions:rolesinsocio-semiotic

process

instruction:parent-child

regulation:parent-child

instruction:supervisor-employee

contract:employer-employee

explanation:parent-child

lesson:teacher-student

debate:student-student

counselling:counsellor-student

practice:coach-team

serviceencounter:

customer-server

serviceencounter:

customer-server

ontogenesis[child

growingup,takingonexpanding

rangeofrolesinnew

institutions]

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Figure 3: Multilingual meaning potential — integration of the pronominal systems of English and Indonesian

How can the process of learning to mean in more than one language — of developing a multi-lingual meaning potential — be facilitated through instruction in an institution of formal education? This is obviously a very complex question, and the answers will vary considerably according to the local educational conditions — and they will have to take into account different learning styles as well. And the answers have varied considerably over time. Oversimplifying considerably, we can interpret the changes in approaches partly as a stratal ascent from grammar-based approaches to context-based ones: see Figure 4.

In terms of stratification, there has thus been a shift from the view “from below” to the view “from above” of the meaning-making resources of the language being learned. However, what we need is, of course, trinocular vision — as articulated by Halliday (e.g. 1996).

In this talk, I will explore the consequences of adopting the principle of trinocular vision — of bridging the gap between the contextual view “from above” and the grammatical view “from below” by adjusting both the account of context (the conceptualization of tasks) and the account of grammar, by attending to the view “from roundabout” — the account of the semantic core of the meaning potential providing an interface between context and lexicogrammar. At the same time, I will also focus on register variation along the cline of instantiation, since different registers expose different aspects of the overall meaning potential to learners.

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Figure 4: Stratal ascent in approaches to language teaching and design of syllabi

References Halliday, M.A.K. 1975. Learning how to mean: explorations in the development of language.

London: Edward Arnold.

Halliday, M.A.K. 1978. “Is learning a second language like learning a first language all over again?” In D. E. Ingram & T. J. Quinne (eds.), Language learning in Australian society. Melbourne: International Press and Publications. Reprinted in M.A.K. Halliday (2007), Language and education, Volume 9 in the Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday. Edited by Jonathan J. Webster. London & New York: Continuum. 174-193.

Halliday, M.A.K. 1996. “On grammar and grammatics.” In Ruqaiya Hasan, Carmel Cloran & David Butt (ed.), Functional descriptions: theory into practice. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 1-38. Reprinted in Halliday, M.A.K. 2002. On grammar. Volume 1 of Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday. Edited by Jonathan Webster. London & New York: Continuum. Chapter 15: 384-417.

Halliday, M.A.K. 2004. The language of early childhood. Volume 4 of Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday. Edited by Jonathan Webster. London & New York: Continuum.

communicative/task-basedapproach

notionalapproach

pre-1960s

grammar(form)-basedapproach