I am an Australian,a former agricultural scientist but now teaching 
English in a seaside area south-west of Tokyo. I love this second life but 
have become frustrated at the slow progress of my students. This despite 
trying to find the best materials and techniques (and having done the 
Cambridge CELTA). Incidentally my main grammar reference is a well-thumbed 
copy of the superb American "Understanding English Grammar" by Kolln & 
Funk. 
 Why is Japan ranked almost bottom of all countries on the TOEIC scale? 
 A year ago,to stave off Alzheimer's I commenced a M.Ed(TESOL) with an 
Australian university. I have completed about half of this now but with 
the discovery of  Systemic Functional Linguistics this is consuming all my 
energy. An Australian professor (Derewianka) has written several books on 
functional grammar based on SFL for use in Australian schools. These books 
offer to me a glimpse of hope that similar techniques could be introduced 
into functional grammar/SFL teaching in Japan. I have recently 
corresponded with Sally,a teacher in Canada and she told me of some work 
done on the simple teaching of basic concepts there. I have introduced 
some of these ideas in my classes such as Theme and Rheme, identifying 
participants,processes etc.,and genre writing. However,it is very 
difficult as I have almost to craft my own manual. Surely somebody has 
done this before but if so I can not locate them. Anybody out there?
 This is my first contact with ATEG and I am doing this mainly because I 
know Martha Kolln is associated with the organisation. Her texts on 
Linguistic Grammar seem to be on the same wavelength as the works of 
Halliday.
 I hope I am sending this to the right email address and I am pushing the 
correct buttons.  Here goes..
     John Curran

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