A review of M. A. K. Halliday, Aspects of Language and Learning

Functional Linguistics, Sep 2016

This volume was published as one of the “M.A.K. Halliday Library Functional Linguistics” Series. It is based on a series of lectures given by Professor Halliday at the National University of Singapore in 1986. The theme of these lectures is to construct a linguistically informed theory of education, providing a linguistic interpretation of how people learn. The lectures as a whole provide an essential framework of Halliday’s ideas on language, knowledge and education.

A PDF file should load here. If you do not see its contents the file may be temporarily unavailable at the journal website or you do not have a PDF plug-in installed and enabled in your browser.

Alternatively, you can download the file locally and open with any standalone PDF reader:

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186%2Fs40554-016-0034-0.pdf

A review of M. A. K. Halliday, Aspects of Language and Learning

Yu Functional Linguistics A review of M. A. K. Halliday, Aspects of Language and Learning Hui Yu This volume was published as one of the “M.A.K. Halliday Library Functional Linguistics” Series. It is based on a series of lectures given by Professor Halliday at the National University of Singapore in 1986. The theme of these lectures is to construct a linguistically informed theory of education, providing a linguistic interpretation of how people learn. The lectures as a whole provide an essential framework of Halliday's ideas on language, knowledge and education. - scientific discourse in school is not as wide as generally assumed. There exists a continuity between the two, the latter of which is further discussed in the next chapter. Chapter four, “Language and Learning in the Primary School”, explores the learning process from four perspectives: initial literacy, style and registers in the primary school, the beginnings of scientific discourse, spoken and written language in education. When children begin their school education, they have to call up experiences stored previously, to help them learn to read and write. There is much more to children’s writing ability than just writing a narrative. Children should also learn to write other types of writing including scientific discourse, for they learn, not just scientific knowledge, but also the language in which knowledge is presented. In the process, children gradually become aware of the differences between spoken language and written language, i.e. the grammatical intricacy of the spoken language vs. the lexical density of the written language. Specifically how subject-oriented learning takes place is further explored in the next chapter. Chapter five, “The Language of School ‘Subjects’” investigates another stage of learning. As children move on to secondary school, they begin to work with different school subjects. The task of educational linguistics is not just to describe the language of subject learning, but also to explain it regarding the way language is used. Teaching environment is not restricted to classroom, but takes various forms including textbook, library research, homework and so on, in which the field is the same, but the tenor and the mode are different. It is the tenor and the mode, rather than the field that sets the patterns of teaching. The analysis of how the discourse matches up to the context shows that every teacher is a teacher of language, which is to say all learning is a linguistic process. Chapter six, “English and Chinese: Similarities and Differences”, approaches the issue of language and education from a comparative point of view. All human babies are alike in that they develop a system of their own protolanguage despite the differences in their mother tongue. It may be a stage comparable to an earlier phase in the evolution of human language. Observation of children’s transition into the mother tongue shows important similarities with their mode of entry into the language. The mode of learning for English-speaking and Chinese-speaking children is essentially the same. Speaking different mother tongues does not create significant differences regarding children’s understanding of school subjects. There do exist significant differences between English and Chinese which may create different learning experiences for learners. Nevertheless, both languages will develop in the same direction due to pressure from social and technical development. Chapter seven, “Languages and Cultures”, provides an even broader picture of language and learning. Complex patterns of English in Singapore are described. Examples from different languages are also cited and analyzed to further illustrate the relationship between language and culture. The aim is to draw on general principles relating to language and learning. Chapter eight, “Language, Education and Science: Future Needs”, is the last lecture given in this series of talks in Singapore. It rounds off the lectures by not only summarizing the previous talks, but also pointing out directions toward which educational linguistics should develop. At the end of the lecture, Halliday draws attention to an emerging research frontier, the increasing contact between linguistics and natural science. Conclusion Throughout the lectures, Halliday has been trying to present the perspective that learning is a linguistic process. Learning is not simply learning the knowledge of the subject. Rather, it is more about learning how the knowledge of the subject is codified and transmitted via language. It is therefore important for a linguist to explain how language functions in the process of education. To answer that, at least three questions should be asked: (1) How is knowledge organized through language? (2) How does language help students to learn? (3) What does the teacher need to know about language in order to help students along their learning process? These lectures were given 30 years ago (...truncated)


This is a preview of a remote PDF: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186%2Fs40554-016-0034-0.pdf

Hui Yu. A review of M. A. K. Halliday, Aspects of Language and Learning, Functional Linguistics, 2016, pp. 10, Volume 3, Issue 1, DOI: 10.1186/s40554-016-0034-0