Official pedagogy, foreign language teaching and literacy: a functionalist perspective

Abstract

The theoretical framework that informs this paper is systemic functional linguistics (Halliday, 1994, Mathiessen, 1995 and Halliday and Mathiessen, 2004). This paper is not meant to be a guide for foreign language teachers on how to teach with a list of prescriptive tips to be adequately followed, but meant to highlight the importance of language teaching as a social functional activity. It stresses the need for a particular type of literacy that helps learners reflect on the ideational content of the educational input, questions beliefs and settled practices of their societies, and dwells on the educational requirement for any country to join the socio-economic revolutionary processes of Globalisation.