Exploring Second Language Development in Narrative Writing: a Case Study of Two Learners

The present book addresses an issue that has been central in the research literature: the development of writing skills. Drawing on Systemic Functional Linguistics and Genre Theory, this phenomenon was investigated from a semantic perspective which means, in the first place, that writing is considered as a meaning-making process, and secondly, that development is viewed as a process during which students learning to write begin to make finer distinctions of meanings through the deployment of the lexico-grammatical and discourse resources of the second language. The focus is on the use the learners make, over time, of the same linguistic resources to represent the people, the events and the circumstances of time and place as depicted in the visual images used as prompts; to organise the clauses of their narrative texts as messages and to colour representation of experience with particular forms of affect, judgement and valuation. The analysis should help shed some light on this fascinating area, and should be especially useful to professionals in the linguistics area, or anyone else who may be willing to improve the teaching of writing in the classroom from a different perspective.