Judy Diamondstone says:

> Some of the implications
> (to be defensive :-|, they are also explicit in SFG based and
> SFG influenced curricula) are that students need to learn to
> build up noun phrases, need to think about the way they order
> information in their sentences, and, for academic writing,
> at the level of discourse, how to thematize texts.

I know of nothing in systemic functional grammar which explains why
students
have difficulty building up subject noun phrases.  If we take seriously
the notion that the subject is an "actant," then it would seem that noun
clauses
functioning as a subject should be very difficult to create.  That noun
clauses
can be subjects of a clause can occur in some kinds of writing.

Likewise, in the texts I have of SFG, the description of a sentence is
very flat: subject; finite verb group; complement.  Given this
description, I wonder why subject noun phrases are more problematic than
other noun phrases elsewhere.

If sentences don't have a "flat" structure, then there are explanations.

Nobody, to my knowledge, argues that students do not need to think about
how information is ordered in a text.  A central question that I have
about
SFG is whether it is claiming native speakers do not understand the
theme-rheme/given-new information distinction is something that students
don't already know.

If students of all ages come to the class room knowing about this
constraint on how they construct a text, then how do we explain apparent
violations of how information is to be presented in a text?

Perhaps, answering this last question is a central issue in teaching
students about grammar.

Bob Yates, Central Missouri State University