Abstract Summary
We present an analysis of the construction of the cognitive discourse function evaluate in a longitudinal corpus of student writing in L1 Spanish and L2 English in subject history from Grade 6 through Grade 10. Results show an evolving inclusion of historical data to back up evaluations across languages.
Abstract :
This paper presents an analysis of a longitudinal corpus of student writing collected in bilingual schools in Madrid, Spain, at three points in time, the end of primary school (Grade 6), and two points in secondary school, Grade 8 and Grade 10, in subject history. Prompts were designed to elicit cognitive discourse functions (CDFs) (eg : classify, define, describe, explain, explore, evaluate, report - Dalton-Puffer 2013), in order to trace students' ability to express these functions in students’ L1 Spanish and in L2 English.
This particular study focuses on the expression of the CDF evaluate, which, according to Bloom’s taxonomy, requires higher-order thinking skills. Evaluation involves learners in "[m]aking judgments based on criteria and standards" (Krathwohl 2002: 215). In the model of language theorized in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), evaluations fall into the realm of the interpersonal meta-function of language, a meta-function which has been further modelled through the Appraisal framework; of particular interest to evaluation is the Appraisal subsystem of Attitude, divided further into Affect (expression of emotion), Judgement (evaluations of people’s behaviour) and Appreciation (evaluation of artifacts, events and phenomena), making it an apt tool for analysis of the CDF evaluate. Criteria and standards are field-specific, and thus involve drawing on the ideational meta-function of language, through which experience is constructed/expressed. Our analysis applies the concept of coupling of ideational and interpersonal meaning (Martin 2000) to trace students’ ability to evaluate historical events/characters and to further justify their evaluations through the expression of their knowledge of history.
Results show that, while some of the texts show more personal and less discipline-appropriate choices of evaluative lexis and justification, others demonstrate an evolving inclusion of historical data to back up evaluations. These results lead to pedagogical suggestions for discipline-specific ways of building subject-related and discourse competences in content-and-language integrated classrooms.
