2015/11/19 by Esther Daborn · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Gender Studies in Language #Linguistic and Sociocultural Studies #Linguistic Variation and Morphology
paper · doi:10.1093/applin/amv068
openalex publication_date 2015/11/19 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Focus on Grammar and Meaning is a 143-page volume in the Oxford Key Concepts for the Language Classroom series edited by Lightbown and Spada. The focus of this book is how to infuse meta-language about grammar and meaning into a content lesson to support language development in diverse contexts, ranging from teaching content, perhaps in a Content and Language Integrated Learning context, or in classrooms ‘where there are L2 learners along with others at different levels of proficiency in the target language and often also with native speakers of that language’ (p. xiii). The target audience is students working towards graduate TESOL qualifications or practicing teachers on professional development programmes. Along with others in this series, the book offers ‘accessible content about research in topics of importance to second language teachers’ (Editors’ preface). A solid theoretical framework is set up for a socio-cultural learning theory and what might be termed a socio-semiotic or functional approach to describing language. Derived from Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics, this pedagogic application is presented as a way of thinking about language and structures ‘not as a set of individual items to be learned and put together, but instead as meaningful segments that work together in sentences and discourse to make meaning’ (p. 2). This perspective is central to the idea that material relating to language is not added, but included or ‘infused’, to use the authors’ term.