Coursebook activities analysis under the perspective of interpersonal function in systemic functional grammar

Abstract

This paper was developed to explore how the use of Systemic Functional Grammar can help teachers in English as a Foreign language classes for adult learners. The Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) was developed by Halliday, who thought about language as more then only a system to be followed, but also how language works with the relation between speaker and listener (or writer and reader). In this paper, the mentioned approach was related with the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), whose concepts lead teachers to teach with communicative goals, where students can actually relate their studies with meaningful real life situations. To explore how the use of SFG can help teachers, six coursebook activities from three different books were analyzed. The main goal of the analysis is to set up some ideas of how the exercises can work better with a functional perspective from the teachers. From the analysis it was possible to conclude that SFG may be a facilitator tool for teachers to improve book activities when thinking with an interpersonal perspective, making the exercises more meaningful for students in order to make them relate what they are learning with their real life situations, creating an environment in class for them to put in practice what was learned (sic).