Bernard Mohan

Teacher formative assessment and talk in classroom contexts: assessment as discourse and assessment of discourse

There is now widely recognized support for classroom-based formative teacher assessment of student performance as a pedagogically desirable approach to assessment which is capable of promoting learning. However, the highly localized and socially co-constructed nature of this type of assessment has raised conceptual and research issues that transcend the theoretical and epistemological concerns of the more established standardized language assessment. One such issue concerns the part played by classroom spoken discourse in the teaching-assessment interaction between teachers and students. This article argues that there is a need to develop theoretically informed research approaches to study how this type of assessment is accomplished through teacher-student discourse in the classroom. Using data collected in two multiethnic and multilingual elementary classrooms we present an analysis, drawing on systemic functional linguistics, to suggest an approach to empirical research and to discuss a number of teaching-learning and research methodological issues.

A Functional Approach to Research on Content-Based Language Learning: Recasts in Causal Explanations

There is wide agreement among researchers that content-based language learning (CBLL) instruction is most effective when it provides both meaningful communication about content and intentional language development (e.g., Pica, 2000). However, it is less widely recognized that a systemic functional linguistic (SFL) approach offers a distinctive theoretical perspective and characterization of CBLL and addresses issues of advanced language development which are crucial when the second language is a medium of learning. To demonstrate this, we analyze the grammatical scaffolding by teacher and second language learner(s) of causal explanations which form part of work by a group of second language students in a project on the human brain. We show how a SFL analysis reveals quite different aspects of the recast sequences of these data than does a “focus on form” approach. These aspects include: the lexicogrammar of causal meanings, the place of “grammatical metaphor” in the processes of language development, the nature of causal explanations as knowledge structures of “ideational meaning” in discourse, and the role of knowledge structures as bridges between language learning and content learning. The potential of the functional perspective to increase the range and power of research on CBLL considerably is thus seen.

Assessing the Integration of Language and Content in a Mandarin as a Foreign Language Classroom

Abstract Recent initiatives in second language education incorporate goals of learning content and culture and assume that they will be integrated with language learning. But research shows that integration is problematic, and that it must therefore, be adequately assessed to guide future work. We describe an approach to the systematic assessment of integration based on knowledge structures and informed by systemic functional linguistics and ethnography. This has been applied in English. Can it be extended to Chinese? Using the data of student writing in an elementary Mandarin course, we illustrate how knowledge structures can bridge language and culture and can offer an analysis of groupings of lexical and grammatical features of Mandarin discourse. Since ethnographers have claimed that certain knowledge structures are cross-cultural, there are important implications for future research in integrative assessment in other languages and cultures.

Dilemmas of cooperative learning and academic proficiency in two languages

Abstract This study examines cooperative learning in relation to goals for L2 development, L1 maintenance, and content learning. It investigates how Chinese immigrant students perceive these goals, and how they use L1 and L2 to acquire content knowledge during cooperative learning activities. An analysis of interviews with the students indicates that they had contradictory feelings about cooperative learning goals, in particular the goals of L1 maintenance and L2 development. A functional analysis of the students’ interaction during cooperative learning sessions reveals differences between the L1 and L2 discourse they produced. Taken together, these findings indicate that the ideal goals that are claimed for cooperative learning may involve dilemmas between L1 maintenance and L2 development, between the use of L1 and L2 in academic discourse, and between the use of the L1 and L2 for the learning of content. Bilingual academic language proficiency is also shown to be a complex matter, involving the translation of meaning systems, not just labels.

Knowledge structures and academic discourse

(1989). Knowledge structures and academic discourse. WORD: Vol. 40, Systems, Structures, and Discourse: Selected Papers from the Fifteenth International Systemic Congress, pp. 99-115.

Knowledge Structures in Social Practices

To address the issue of education systems that are increasingly multilingual and multicultural, we must look beyond the acquisition of the second language (L2) system and consider education as language socialization into social practices. This chapter models social practices as frameworks of knowledge structures that link cultural meanings of the practice to meanings in discourse. The model is situated within systemic functional linguistics and focuses on field (or popularly, content) of discourse, showing typical relations between meanings of knowledge structures and language form, the role of atypical or metaphorical relations in constructing advanced knowledge, and how graphics and nonlinguistic media generally can be interpreted as knowledge structures. Some educational implications addressed in the chapter include integrated approaches to language and content, the connection of language and content standards in education, bridges between learners’ languages and cultures, and links to strategies for comprehension in reading and discourse awareness in writing. Current concerns include failures of language assessment to deal adequately with the linguistic construction of content in discourse. Future directions include discourse research strategies to support the potential convergence of multimodal literacy, critical thinking skills, and computer technologies; and connections with metaphor and ‘the body,’ and with critical linguistics.

Cooperation Between Science Teachers and ESL Teachers: A Register Perspective

Cooperation between English as a second or other language (ESOL) and content-area teachers, often difficult to achieve, is hard to assess linguistically in a revealing way. This article employs register analysis (which is different from, but complementary to, genre analysis) in a Systemic Functional Linguistic perspective to show how an ESOL teacher uses the same content-area task as a cooperating science teacher so that she can provide a theory–practice cycle similar to that of the science teacher, but at a level that reflects and builds on the language abilities of her students. The task allows her to assess her students formatively and help them develop relevant meanings in the register of science. We argue that the development of register through related tasks in content classes and language classes provides a principled basis for cooperation and that register analysis offers revealing insights into cooperation and formative assessment between language and content teachers.