On film studies courses, students are asked to treat as objects of study the same films which they may more commonly experience as entertainment. To explore the role of academic writing in this, an action research project was carried out on a university film studies course using a systemic functional linguistics approach. This paper presents a key assessment essay genre, referred to as a taxonomic film analysis. This genre was analysed drawing on the work of Halliday and Mathiessen, 2004 and Martin, 1992 and Lemke, 1985 and Lemke, 1990), focussing on three aspects: the genre acts performed in the process of analysing film; the conceptual frameworks of film studies knowledge, or ‘thematic formations’ (Lemke, 1993) drawn on and re-constituted in the assignment; the particular ways that language is used to perform these acts and build these thematic formations. For EAP to be relevant to film students, it is proposed that EAP specialists need to engage with these three aspects of film study. This application of SFL in film studies EAP is intended as an illustration of how SFL tools can be used for relevant EAP provision across the HE curriculum.
Highlights
► The key genre identified was taxonomic film analysis. ► Deploying film studies language and genre converts film into an object of study. ► EAP lecturers need to engage with both the language and the meaning making of film student
This paper describes a methodology for the analysis of classroom talk, called sociocultural discourse analysis, which focuses on the use of language as a social mode of
thinking ñ a tool for teaching-and-learning, constructing knowledge, creating joint understanding and tackling problems collaboratively. It has been used in a series
of school-based research projects in the UK and elsewhere and its use is illustrated with data from those projects. The methodology is expressly based on sociocultural theory and, in particular, on the Vygotskian conception of language as both a cultural and a psychological tool. Its application involves a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods and enables the study of both educational processes and learning outcomes.
B. Mohan, и T. Slater. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, (2006)Notes possible problems in bilingual education (in US). Describes (unconscious) consideration of theory-practice relationship.
C. Coffin. NALDIC Quarterly, 3 (3):
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