The Reading to Learn Approach

R2L draws from Systemic Functional Linguistics’ (SFL) view that language is a semiotic resource for making meaning in social contexts (^{Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004}). Language offers a variety of options from which users can choose to respond to the semantic demands of particular situations and cultural purposes. From this view, it follows that R2L conceives language learning as the expansion of the semiotic resources learners can use to make meanings in context (^{Christie, 2004}; ^{Halliday, 1993}).

R2L is also based on SFL’s premise that any language use in context comprises texts that, in turn, belong into specific genres (^{Christie, 2004}). A text is any instance of language use in communication involving a person who means, some form of meaning, and a person to whom that meaning is addressed (^{Hasan, 2004}). Genres are patterned ways of language use that respond to the demands of particular social contexts (^{Derewianka, 1990}; ^{Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004}; ^{Martin & Rose, 2007}). These include, for example, the way language is used to explain a recipe procedure or the way a biographical recount describes the life events of a person. Genres are classified according to their primary social purposes: Narratives tell a story, usually to entertain; and instructions tell people what to do, while expository texts argue a viewpoint (^{Derewianka, 2003}).

Not unlike other genre-based models inspired by SFL, R2L follows the principle that the patterned ways of using language in genres should be made explicit to learners (^{Schleppegrell, 2004}). To this end, R2L favors the use of a shared metalanguage (i.e., language to talk about language) as a pedagogical resource to talk about texts and thus promote learners’ awareness of how language works to create various kinds of meanings (^{Humphrey & Macnaught, 2011}). Examples of such metalanguage are the specialized terminology used in SFL (e.g., orientation, complication, resolution) or the one teachers and students may customize (e.g., action, reaction, interaction; ^{Humphrey & Feez, 2016}) to scaffold students’ understanding and creation of texts.

R2L is also based on the sociocultural view (^{Vygotsky, 1978}; ^{Gibbons, 2003}) that learning occurs thanks to guidance from others in the context of meaningful tasks. Hence, R2L proposes a series of support strategies to enable students to read and write various kinds of genres independently (^{Rose & Martin, 2012}). These strategies are organized along three levels of support, from understanding and producing whole texts to becoming aware and using the wordings of discrete clauses (Figure 1).

Figure 1 Reading to learn cycle 

The first level of support focuses on whole texts and comprises three stages: preparing for reading, joint construction, and independent construction (the outer layer of the cycle in Figure 1). Preparing for reading supports students to read along the text with a general understanding of its context of situation and culture. Students’ background knowledge of the genre type is activated by briefly explaining to the students what the text is about and pointing at its schematic structure. Then, a summary of the text is provided to give more intensive support by telling students how the text unfolds step by step. The purpose of this stage is to reduce the semiotic load of trying to understand a model text of the genre learners would use in the next stage. In joint construction, the teacher and the students collaboratively deconstruct the stages and phases of the model text and jointly construct a new one organized with the same schematic structure. During independent construction, students can work individually or in groups to write a new text of the same genre independently. Based on the current level of students, the teacher can decide on providing little or no support to the groups during this stage of the cycle.

The second level of support, the intermediate layer in Figure 1, focuses on key segments of texts and comprises three other stages: detailed reading, joint rewriting, and individual rewriting. These stages help students understand how groups of words create meaning in clauses (^{Rose & Martin, 2012}). In detailed reading, teachers support students’ understanding of the text following a carefully planned, three-part interaction cycle. First, teachers prepare students by reading sentence by sentence, summarizing the meaning of the whole clauses in language students can understand and telling the position cue of the wordings to be read. Second, students engage in the learning task, identifying, in the text, the wordings previously signaled through the teacher cues. Last, teachers affirm and elaborate on students’ answers by explaining the wording’s actual meaning or how they make sense in the text (^{Rose, 2015}). This stage enables students to understand and participate by elaborating meaning, defining terms, and explaining relevant concepts from the text (^{Rose, 2008}). In joint rewriting, students, along with the teacher, use the words they highlighted in the previous stage to brainstorm ideas on the board in order to reconstruct the text using their understanding from detailed reading. Finally, in individual rewriting, students use the notes to rewrite the same segment of text on their own.

The third level of support focuses on sentences and comprises sentence making, spelling, and sentence rewriting (the innermost cycle in Figure 1). These stages help learners to understand how letters are arranged, and how groups of words, sentences and clauses create meaning in the genre. At the level of words and sentences, students learn how to select elements of the texts and organize them into coherent and well written sentences and sequences (^{Rose, 2008}).

The strategies used within the cycle can be used flexibly to accommodate students’ needs, proficiency, and genre type (^{Rose & Martin 2012}). For instance, teachers can think of engaging learners in joint construction after the preparing for reading stage, depending on their English level. Similarly, the teacher may select the skill to emphasize, for example, adapting the R2L cycle for teaching spoken discourse (as is the case of this study) or focusing on reading over writing (^{Becerra et al., 2019}; ^{Benítez et al., 2018}).

^{Becerra et al. (2019)} report how a high school teacher adapted the R2L cycle to promote ninth graders’ comprehension of explanation texts in EFL during six lessons. For instance, the teacher privileged a focus on lexicogrammar during the step-by-step summary before actual reading and detailed reading, which appeared to be material for developing students’ understanding of explanations. Similarly, ^{Benítez et al. (2018)} focused on students’ critical reading and thus added the stages of building context, purpose and structure of the text, detailed reading, re-representation of ideas from the text, reaction to it, and self-assessment. They also incorporated conscious attention to reading strategies by the teacher.

Context and Participants

Participants were an EFL teacher, Mr Noel (pseudonym), and his 14-16-year-old ninth graders in a small rural state school in Colombia. Mr. Noel is an experienced teacher who holds a bachelor’s degree in English language teaching and a masters’ degree in education. Mr. Noel was invited to participate in the study because of his reputation as a successful EFL teacher who frequently sought out professional development. At the beginning of this study, his students were beginning EFL learners who could introduce themselves or describe friends orally using basic language but usually struggled to follow L2 instructions.

Using the Genre’s Schematic Structure to Produce Biographical Recounts

Analysis revealed that students became able to organize their texts following the typical stages (orientation and life stages) and phases (e.g., early life, fame stages) of a biographical recount (^{Rose, 2018}), including new phases that varied according to each celebrity’s life. Table 1 illustrates the stages and phases of students’ initial and final texts, including the number of clauses for each (e.g., X2 stands for two clauses).

Analysis of the phases conducted in students’ biographical recounts also revealed that students became able to represent an increased variety of life events towards the end of the R2L lessons. As Table 1 shows, initial students’ texts¹ only included phases related to the orientation stage of a biographical recount. For instance, Mario’s text about Neymar contained an initial phase indicating his name (He is Neymar Silva Santos), his age (he is 30) and his profession (his job a play soccer). The second phase included Neymar’s date and place of birth ([Date of birth] 5 of [February]::: ((1992)) , [Date of place] ((Mogi das Cruces )) Brazil). Bonny and Vale’s texts included the same stage (orientation) and phases (person’s name and date of birth) identified in Mario’s text.

The students’ final texts contained the two typical stages of biographical recounts (e.g., orientation and life events) as well as a variety of phases (birth, childhood, school, marriage, death) that signaled different events in the celebrities’ lives. For instance, Mario and his partner Jose’s final text included phases related to princess Diana’s life events such as childhood (her parents divorced), school (she first time in school in September first 1970), marriage (his get [married] with [prince] Charles), children’s birth (had his first [child] and second [child]), divorce (Diana and Charles divorced), and death (princess Diana dead in Paris, She died in Paris). Likewise, their partners’ texts included varied phases that included marriage (Maria Teresa was (,1) his ? wife esposa, wife), fame (leader of the patriory [society]), and death (He ::: died 18[30]) along with remarkable life events of their chosen celebrities.

In sum, findings indicate that students’ final texts included the typical stages of the biographical recount genre and a rich variety of phases according to each person’s life experience. This may suggest that students gained awareness of the schematic structure of the biographical recount at the end of the R2L adapted cycle.

Students’ Use of Transitivity Resources

Analysis of initial and final texts revealed that students conveyed more meanings using more varied transitivity resources in their spoken biographical recounts towards the end of the R2L lessons. Students’ initial texts included an average of five units of meaning and transitivity resources such as relational processes, participants as value, carrier and attribute, and a few circumstances of time and place. In contrast, students’ final texts included an average of nine units of meaning along with a greater number and variety of transitivity resources such as new participant roles, processes, and circumstances. This comparison is illustrated in Table 2.

Table 2 details students’ use of units of meaning and transitivity resources in their texts. The units of meanings increased by almost four mean points, specifically each case used between two and four more clauses containing new information in their final texts. This contrast can also be observed in Bonny and her partner’s texts in Tables 3 and 4. Specifically Bonny’s initial text (Table 3) contained six units of meaning. The first two units and the last one identify who Benito is (name, age, and occupation), whereas the other three units give information about his birth (birthdate and place of birth). Bonny and Wendy’s final text contains eleven units of meaning. The students were able to tell the orientation in Clause 1 (name) as well as life events in Clauses 2 to 11 (birth, professional debut, signing of first international contract, obtention of first international prize, cerebral accident that caused death, and death). This points to a clear expansion of meaning potential throughout the R2L sessions, as students appear to have become able to produce a larger number of clauses conveying new content.

Regarding changes in students’ use of transitivity resources, the number of clause participants as value, attribute, and carrier did not have significant differences; however, the number of participants as actors increased four mean points. Regarding processes, the number of relational processes decreased one mean point while the number of material processes increased almost five mean points. The number of circumstances also increased in the final texts; specifically, time circumstances increased two mean points while circumstances of place and accompaniment increased one mean point each. However, the number of role circumstances did not vary.

Students’ use of these transitivity resources is further illustrated by qualitatively comparing students’ initial and final spoken biographical recounts in Tables 3 and 4. For example, Bonny’s initial text included human participants in relational clauses with only two circumstances of place and time, realizing the orientation stage of spoken biographical recounts (in Table 3, students’ pronunciation mistakes have been omitted to facilitate reading).

As presented in Table 3, Bonny’s text specifically contained the participant he as value in Clause 1 (He is Benito Antonio Martinez Ocaso) and as carrier in Clauses 2 to 6 (he is twenty-three), as well as several attributes (e.g., twenty-three, a singer). In Clause 1, the relational process be performed an Identifying function; in Clauses 2 to 6, its function was Attributive, describing the person’s age, birth, profession, and nationality. Bonny’s text included only two circumstances, one of time in Clause 3 (He is born of twenty-six of March 1994) and one of place in Clause 4 (He is from San Juan de Puerto Rico). Although Bonny’s use of these linguistic resources allowed her to introduce the character of her biography, they seemed insufficient to achieve the distinctive purpose of a biographical recount, which is to narrate the life events of a person.

In contrast, Bonny & Wendy’s final text (Table 4) included a greater variety of units of meaning and transitivity resources. This allowed them to retell important events in a person’s biography, therefore achieving the purpose and following the stages and phases of a biographical recount. These resources included both relational and material clauses with participants (i.e., the celebrities) as actors, a variety of which was missing in the initial texts.

Bonny and Wendy’s text included eleven clauses, four of which were relational. Clauses 1 and 2 were of the identifying type (He is Miguel Calero), whereas Clauses 3 and 10 were attributive (He was born in 1971). These clauses included participants as value, carrier and attribute, and one circumstance of time (in 1971). Clauses 4 to 7 contained four material: intentional processes (e.g., he debuted); Clause 8 contained a passive: material process (e.g., he was taken), and Clauses 9 and 11 contained material: involuntary processes (e.g., he died).

New participant roles appeared in the text such as actor, in Clauses 4 to 7 and 9 to 11 (e.g.,he first obtained the Mexican title) and goal in clause 8 (e.g.,Calero was taken to emergency). Students included varied circumstances such as role (e.g.,as professional player) and accompaniment (e.g.,with Pachuca, with cerebral thrombosis) in Clauses 4, 6, 7, and 8; time (e.g.,in 14 of April, in December 4 ^th 2012) in Clauses 2, 3, 8, and 11; and place (e.g., in Barranquilla, in Mexico, to emergency) in Clauses 5, 6, 8, and 9. A combination of circumstances is also observed in the sixth and eighth clauses where students specified role and place (e.g., with Pachuca in Mexico), and place, accompaniment, and time (e.g.,to emergency in a day of Sunday noviembre 25 with a cerebral thrombosis), respectively.

In sum, the increased number in units of meaning as well as the greater variety of transitivity resources in students’ final spoken biographical recounts may provide important evidence of the students’ expanded meaning-making potential by the end of the R2L lessons. Such increased potential allowed students to achieve the distinctive purpose of biographical recounts, which is to narrate the main events of a person’s life. In other words, learners’ meaning-making potential went from simply introducing the person whose life events they would describe to both introducing the person and recounting his/her life events using a greater variety of linguistic resources during the R2L lessons.

Scaffolding Spoken Discourse Through Metalanguage and Pedagogical Diagrams

This section describes how Mr. Noel used metalinguistic knowledge of stages and phases of a text as a tool to scaffold learners’ attempts to tell biographical recounts in the R2L lessons. This tool appeared first verbally, in Mr. Noel’s explanations during preparing for listening, detailed listening, and joint retelling (Lessons 1 and 2), and then as a diagram in the form of a biographical timeline that students used to prepare for individual retelling, joint construction, and independent speaking (Lessons 2 through 4).

Metalinguistic support of learners’ understanding and reporting of a spoken biographical recount

Metalinguistic knowledge of stages of a text first appeared verbally, in Mr. Noel’s interaction with learners, to support understanding and retelling of a biographical recount of Steve Job’s life. Transcript 1 (see Figure 2) occurred after Mr. Noel brainstormed students’ previous knowledge of Steve Jobs at the beginning of the first lesson. Mr. Noel stood in front of the class while the video of Steve Job’s life was projected on the board.

Figure 2 Mr. Noel’s Use of Verbal Metalinguistic Support (transcript 1)  

Mr. Noel used the metalinguistic term ‘biography’ (Turn 3) and referred to the contents of the video in terms of the stages of Steve Job’s life, such as birth, first jobs, university life (Turn 3), and family and friends (Turn 5). Such preview of the contents of the video intended to facilitate understanding by offering students a sequence of events they could use to guide their listening and watching of the video.

Verbal support about the stages of a text also occurred as shared metalanguage that Mr. Noel and students used in their interactions towards the end of the first lesson. Unlike Transcript 1, such support facilitated students’ active engagement in reporting their understanding of the video. Transcript 2 (see Figure 3) occurred after detailed listening and highlighting of key wordings in a written version of Steve Jobs’ video, at the end of the first lesson. The video was paused but projected on the board.

Figure 3 Metalinguistic Support as Shared Metalanguage (transcript 2)  

Similarly to Transcript 1 (Figure 2), Mr. Noel’s use of the idea of stages provided a framework for students to report their understanding of the video. Unlike Transcript 1, however, metalinguistic terms appeared both in students and Mr. Noel’s talk as a metalinguistic tool for naming the stages of Steve Job’s life (Turns 2, 4, 6, 8, and 9) and to refer to the contents of the video more generally (“stages,” Turn 1).

In addition to using metalanguage verbally, during the second lesson Mr. Noel represented it as a timeline. This timeline functioned as a Pedagogical Diagram (^{Martin & Rose, 2008}) that organized the joint retelling of Steve Jobs’ biography. Mr. Noel drew the timeline from top to bottom on the left of the board. The timeline included the phrase “Steve Jobs Biography” as title and the words “birth,” “school years,” “college,” and “work,” written one below the other along an arrow-tipped line. Mr. Noel and students had also written notes consisting of phrases and a few sentences to summarize the stages of Jobs’ life on the right of the board. To also provide support, Mr. Noel projected the video in the center of the board, without sound, and stopped it after each key stage in Steve Job’s life. The phrase Reed College was one of the notes written on the right of the whiteboard. Transcript 3 (Figure 4) shows a clear example of how Mr. Noel used metalinguistic support in the form of a timeline for guiding joint retelling of Jobs’ life.

Figure 4 Metalinguistic Support in the Form of a Timeline (transcript 3)  

While previous verbal uses of metalanguage had facilitated understanding of the video, the diagram representing the stages of Steve Jobs’ life facilitated students’ speaking, albeit in retelling under Mr. Noel’s direction. Students first identified the stage they would talk about (Turns 2 and 4) and then provided information about it supported by Mr. Noel’s continuous prompting (Turns 5, 7, 9, and 11). It is revealing how the timeline, along with the notes and the muted video, was material in facilitating students towards what to say, also offering opportunities for Mr. Noel to clarify content (Turns 13 to 21) and emphasize the kind of lexicogrammar (Turns 23 and 25) students would need for joint construction and independent speaking in later lessons.

The Timeline as a Pedagogical Diagram to Scaffold Joint and Independent Construction of a Spoken Text

The timeline also worked as a pedagogical diagram that students used to guide their efl spoken meaning-making. Students first annotated key wordings in the timeline and then used those wordings during both joint construction and independent speaking. As preparation for joint construction students looked for information about Martín Elías, a famous Colombian singer whose biography students had chosen to tell. Then, during the third lesson, Mr. Noel drew another timeline horizontally along the whiteboard. Students and Mr. Noel used the timeline to brainstorm details about Martin Elias’ life, which they then annotated on the board. Transcript 4 (Figure 5) illustrates how students and Mr. Noel jointly constructed the stages in Martin Elias’ biography using the timeline as visual metalinguistic support. The word “no” was the only note written under the stage “college” in the timeline.

Figure 5 Visual metalinguistic support of joint construction (transcript 4)  

Mr. Noel tapped on the timeline (Turn 1) to direct students’ speaking towards the stage of “college” in Martin Elias biography. Then, as S1 started to speak, he provided support by repeating S1’s contribution with rising intonation (Turns 5, 8, and 12) and making clarifications about the content of this stage (Turn 10). It is revealing in Transcript 4 how S1 became able to build a full clause from the note “No” in the timeline, showing in turn how the timeline’s and Mr. Noel’s support facilitated S1’s precise and grammatically accurate description of this stage in Martin Elias’ life (Turns 11 and 13).

In the final lesson students used the timeline on their own, in small groups, as a visual support tool to tell their biographies independently. As preparation for independent speaking, Mr. Noel distributed written biographies of three famous characters students had chosen in the previous lesson: Miguel Calero (a Colombian soccer player), Simón Bolivar (a military leader during Colombian independence), and Princess Diana of Wales (the late princess of England). In small groups, students drew timelines in their notebooks and took notes about the life stages of the character whose biography they had decided to tell. Mr. Noel interacted with the small groups to help them with pronunciation, lexicogrammar, and understanding the written biographies. Figure 6, about Princess Diana’s biography, is one example of the timelines each group drew and the kind of notes they took.

Figure 6 Picture of a Student’s Timeline of Princess Diana’s Biography 

The picture shows students’ notes of key events in Diana’s life. Some of the notes consisted of abridged information, realized by circumstances of time (e.g., Diana’s date of birth or the start of her schooling), while others included verb processes (e.g., divorced, died, or get married) or larger segments of text (e.g., get married with Prince Charles). Transcript 5 (Figure 7) shows Mario’s attempts to recount the details of Diana’s birth independently, using both the timeline and teacher prompts as support.

Figure 7 The Timeline as a Visual Metalinguistic Tool During Independent Speaking (transcript 5) 

Mario started by identifying Princess Diana as the topic of his biography (Turn 1). The fact that this was not specified in the timeline shows Mario’s ability to fulfill this part of the orientation stage of biographical recounts independently. Mario’s recount of Diana’s birth is especially revealing of the role of the timeline in scaffolding students’ spoken meaning-making. Mario used the prompt “birth” in the timeline to start his recount, to which Mr. Noel provided implicit support (Turns 4 and 6) and then the pronoun (Turn 8) as a starter for Mario’s talk. This allowed Mario to recount the details of Diana’s birth with the clause “she was born in first July 1969 in Wales.” The fact that Mr. Noel’s support between turns 14 and 20 occurred simultaneously as Mario’s talk (shown by the underlined segments) indicates that such support may not have been necessary for Mario to complete his intended meanings. A similar pattern of timeline-teacher support occurred during the rest of Mario’s recount of Diana’s life up to her schooling. For the rest of the biographical recount, Mario’s partner, Jose, simply read from the timeline, which indicates his limited potential to retell the stages of Diana’s life independently. As we will discuss in the next section, the combination of visual metalinguistic support condensed in the timeline and Mr. Noel’s prompting was material for engaging students such as Mario in purposeful and relatively independent meaning-making.