Unlocking Multilingual Potential: Systemic Functional Linguistics Strategies for Effective Descriptive Writing Instruction

Abstract

The use of the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) approach as an instructional tool has been implemented to help English Foreign Language (EFL) students acquire and analyze common disciplinary discourses. However, many teacher preparation programs have not adequately integrated an SFL-guided curriculum to meet the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students. International assessment frameworks like ACTFL and CEFR lack distinctive features that emphasize the functional and linguistic characteristics of spoken and written genres necessary for students to acquire competencies at various levels. This article reviews how the researcher used SFL to teach descriptive writing about hometowns to EFL students. The study highlights the potential benefits of incorporating SFL into foreign English teachers' curricula, using the Expanded Teaching Learning Cycle (ETLC) for teaching, data collection, and analysis. The researcher examined descriptive texts from three EFL students categorized by academic performance. The students showed different levels of progress in composing descriptive texts that accurately reflected genre phases and register characteristics.