1) Introduction to the grammatical theories

The field of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) was first outlined by Michael Halliday and his colleagues (Halliday 1994; Martin 1992 in White, Mammone & Caldwell, 2015, p. 259). Systemic Functional Linguistics rejects traditional, structural models of teaching grammar that are focused on rules and “correct or incorrect usage” (Kongpetch, 2003, p. 86), instead focussing on how language is used in society. “Language has evolved to satisfy human needs; and the way it is organised is functional with respect to those needs” (Halliday, 1994, p. xii). White et al. (2015, p. 259), summarise the ways that SFL describes meaning-making in language:

It understands language to provide three broad modes of meaning making:
(1) interpersonal meanings by which social roles, identities and relationships
are construed, (2) ideational meanings by which particular representations
of the experiential world are formulated and (3) textual meanings by which
these interpersonal and ideational meanings are managed and interrelated
in unfolding communicative events (texts).

SFL recognises that text evolves into some context. Central to this theory is the concept of the context of situation (Halliday, 2009 in Payaprom, 2012, pp. 11-12) which is defined in three areas. Field consists of who or what is involved and the circumstances surrounding the activity. Tenor comprises the interlocutors, their status and language choices and the mode entails the channel of communication being used, the symbols in any messages, how they are interpreted and how language choice is affected by these factors. The situational context which overrides all of these is called the register. The register is different in texts with different contexts (Payaprom, 2012, p. 12). Eggins (in Payaprom, 2012, p. 19) summarises these concepts in the diagram below.

SFL allows students to “predict the nature of language and the recurring linguistic pattern of language in a particular context” (Payaprom, 2012, p. 10). These textual patterns and conventions are the focus of the genre based approach.

The genre-based approach to grammar became popular in the Australian educational context from the late 1980s and it replaced “growth and process” methods that had previously been popular from the 1970s (Ahn, 2012, p. 3; Christie, 2013, p. 12; White et al., 2015, p. 258). It focuses on identifying specific “text types” (Christie, 2013, p. 14) that are common in the English classroom and the examination, dissection and composition of these genre based textual items (Frow, 2004, p. 1627). The genre-based approach focuses on using explicit instruction of texts and their conventions to aid students in constructing meaning that is relevant to the Australian cultural context (Ahn, 2012, p. 3). Knapp’s genre model (Knapp, 1992 in Knapp and Watkins, 2005, p. 27) defines the genres of describing, explaining, instructing, arguing and narrating which he asserts are “social processes” which in turn create “products” and “multi-generic products”.

As the theory developed different linguistic traditions adapted it in different ways. Hyon 2007 (in Ahn, 2012, p. 12) classifies the three schools of genre approaches in the table below.