SFL-Informed Genre-Based Pedagogy to Academic Literacy

The term “The Sydney School” was used in recognition of the instrumental role played by functional linguists and educational linguists at the University of Sydney, headed by Halliday, Martin, etc. The initial aim of the Sydney School genre-based pedagogy was to address the educational challenges faced by socially disadvantaged groups in Australia. It was noticed that learners from different social-economic backgrounds achieved different academic outcomes in school due to their different access to language patterns important in their educational context. This educational inequality led scholars of the Sydney School to develop a more structured approach to teaching language that focused on explicit teaching of genres. Their approach came to be known as “genre-based pedagogy”, or simply genre pedagogy in brief.