Discourse Analysis Unit II: Making Meaning in Text
🎯 Stage 1 — Desired Results
A. Established Goals
Students will analyze how grammatical choices and vocabulary intersect to build cohesion, coherence, and interpersonal meaning within extended discourse.
B. Transfer Goals
Students will independently use their learning to:
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Transition their instructional focus from teaching isolated, sentence-level grammar to facilitating discourse-level meaning-making.
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Curate and annotate authentic texts to explicitly show learners how language choices reflect authorial stance and bind ideas together, bringing transparency to the reading and writing process.
C. Meaning
Enduring Understandings (Students will understand that …)
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Grammar is not just a set of rules for sentence construction; it is a vital tool for packaging information (theme and rheme) to guide a reader’s attention.
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Tense, aspect, and modality function beyond the sentence level to build narratives, express interpersonal relationships, and reveal the speaker or writer’s stance.
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Cohesion and coherence rely heavily on the deliberate intersection of vocabulary and grammatical links.
Essential Questions
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How do writers use vocabulary and grammar to glue a text together?
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What do our choices in verb tense and modality reveal about our attitude and relationship with our audience?
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How can we make the invisible threads of a text (theme and rheme) visible to English language learners?
D. Acquisition
Students will know …
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The role of formal links and lexical cohesion in binding texts together.
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The concepts of theme and rheme (information packaging).
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The discourse functions of tense and aspect beyond sentence-level grammar.
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The role of modality in expressing speaker/writer stance and interpersonal relationships.
Students will be able to …
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Diagram thematic progression in student-generated and authentic texts.
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Analyze narrative texts to track shifts in tense and aspect and their effect on the reader.
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Identify and evaluate the effectiveness of lexical cohesive devices in varied genres.
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Interpret the degree of formality and authorial stance through the use of modals.
🎯 Stage 2 — Evidence
A. Performance Task (GRASPS)
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Goal: Create a “Grammar in Context” toolkit that visually maps out the cohesive devices and interpersonal meanings within an authentic text, shifting the focus from abstract rules to practical discourse application.
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Role: A transparent language educator and facilitator.
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Audience: The broader public at large and fellow ELT educators looking for practical ways to teach grammar contextually.
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Situation: To foster an engaging community of educators, you are developing an open-source teaching resource. You must select a piece of extended discourse (e.g., an op-ed, a short story, or a public speech) and create an annotated guide that deconstructs its grammatical and lexical choices to show exactly how the text makes meaning.
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Product/Performance: A multimodal annotated text (e.g., an interactive PDF, a video teardown using a digital whiteboard, or a slide deck with voiceover) highlighting lexical cohesion, thematic progression, and modality. The guide must draw upon concepts from Cook (1989) Section 1 and McCarthy (1991) Chapters 2 & 3.
Standards/Rubric (summary): (Note: Unit II assignments and quizzes represent 25% of the total course grade.)
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Purpose & audience: The toolkit translates complex linguistic theories into accessible, transparent instructional materials for other teachers and learners.
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Organization & cohesion: The analysis logically breaks down theme/rheme, tense/aspect, and modality, demonstrating how they build interpersonal meaning.
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Detail & diction: Correctly identifies and evaluates lexical cohesive devices and thematic progression in the chosen genre.
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Language control (B1+): Employs accurate, professional language; the use of English accounts for 50% of the item’s evaluated value.
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Process & integrity: Adheres strictly to APA style for all cited sources and references; contains no plagiarized or improperly AI-generated content.
B. Other Evidence
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Formative Quizzes: Assessing conceptual knowledge of formal links, theme/rheme, and the discourse functions of tense, aspect, and modality.
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Narrative Shift Journal: A short written analysis tracking shifts in tense and aspect within a provided narrative text to determine the effect on the reader.
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Thematic Diagramming Task: An in-class practical assignment diagramming thematic progression using student-generated texts.