SFL – Systemic Functional Linguistics

Russell Elementary School is a rich, diverse community of students and families from many different cultural backgrounds. Out of our 400 students, over half are English learners with varying levels of language acquisition.

SFL, the Systemic Functional Linguistics, is a theory of language centered around the notion of language function. Russell integrates the concepts of SFL into the curriculum in order to improve language arts and students’ performance in writing.

SFL starts at social context, and looks at how language both acts upon, and is constrained by, this social context. SFL places the function of language as central (what language does, and how it does it), in preference to more structural approaches, which place the elements of language and their combinations as central.