This book examines new functional approaches to language and education, and the impact of these on literacy in the classroom. The first section looks at issues of multimodality, in which the definition of a text is expanded to include not only that which is written down, but also the interaction of writing, graphics, and audiovisual material. The contributors explores ways in which language education can be expanded to deal with multimodal discourse, whether in children's books, in textbooks, or on the web. The second section looks at how critical discourse analysis and appraisal theory can be used as tools for assessing the effectiveness of student writing and literacy achievement, and also for helping developing writers to write more successfully. The final section argues that corpus-based studies of language have changed the way we see language, and that the way we teach language should evolve in line with these changes.


This appealing survey of new directions in language and education includes contributions from internationally renowned scholars. It will be of interest to researchers in systemic functional linguistics, or language and education.