In order to improve on secondary L3 students´ writing skills and provide helpful feedback, it is widely stressed that text writing, its assessment and feedback procedures should be approached from the concept of genre (cf. e.g., Hyland, 2019; Yasuda, 2011). However, genre writing and research is much more connected to other language learning contexts, especially academic language learning courses. Typically, one thinks of genre in terms of a narration or an argumentative essay. In the secondary L3 context however, writing appears much more immediate and situational. Writing prompts often do not state a clear communicative goal and are comprised of different questions. Student responses to these kinds of tasks are therefore not typically seen in the light of genre. Due to the necessity to know more about how also L3 learners engage with genre in writing, research is needed. However, methodological approaches are lacking which could uncover how secondary L3 learners make meaning within different genre. The question arises which methodological approaches are best suited to analyze L3 learners' meaning-making within a genre in writing? As student writing in the secondary L3 context often still lacks a range of formal features and indices of textual and linguistic form, a less static view on genre like that of Halliday´s Systematic Functional Linguistics (SFL) (Halliday, 1978) and the Sydney School (e.g., Martin & Rose, 2008) need to inform the analysis. The focus is thus on the nature of students´ meaning-making resources and choices that help students to handle the demands of genre. Due to the lack of research in that context, different analytical approaches that are based on SFL have been taken into consideration and tried out on the data. The data stemmed from the TRAWL (Tracking Written Learner Language) corpus, which is a compilation of authentic texts written by primary and secondary language learners in Norway that also includes learners' responses written in the L3 German.
This paper will discuss and present a methodological approach which shows itself as fruitful for uncovering meaning-making within one certain genre. Main conclusions were drawn based on a number of specific analytical tools. The paper will conclude with questions regarding these analytical tools and how they could be used more efficiently in further research.
References:
Halliday, M. A. K. (1978). Language as social semiotic: The social interpretation of language and meaning. Edward Arnold.
Hyland, K. (2019). Second language writing (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Martin, J. R., & Rose, D. (2008). Genre relations: Mapping culture. Equinox Publishing Ltd.
Yasuda, S. (2011). Genre-based tasks in foreign language writing: Developing writers' genre awareness, linguistic knowledge, and writing competence. Journal of Second Language Writing, 20(2), 111–133.
