Source: School of Foreign Languages
Written by: School of Foreign Languages
Edited by: Wang Dongmei

The 14th Symposium on Functional Linguistics and Discourse Analysis was held on May 13, 2015 at SYSU. The symposium was jointly organized by the School of Foreign Languages and the School of Chinese as a Second Language. The theme of the symposium, "Language Teaching and Language Learning”, was specially chosen to celebrate Professor M.A.K. Halliday’s 70th year of teaching and researching Chinese.

Professor M.A.K. Halliday
 

Professor M.A.K. Halliday is a world-renowned linguist, who developed the internationally influential Systemic Functional Linguistic model of language. Seventy years ago on 13 May 1945, Professor Halliday taught his very first Chinese class in the British air force. In 1949-50, he studied at Lingnan University in Guangzhou with Professor Wang Li, doing research on dialects in the Pearl River Delta. Professor Halliday’s subsequent involvement in language education, his own research on English and Chinese grammar, his theory of language and its applications in educational contexts etc. have all had a profound impact on language teaching, and the field of applied linguistics in general. 

Professor Halliday delivering a speech entitled "Some Experiences of a Teacher of Chinese"
 

Apart from Professor Chang Chenguang and Professor Huang Guowen, who chaired the opening and closing sessions respectively, the main speakers at the symposium include Professor Jonathan Webster (Three Histories: Halliday as Learner, Teacher, Grammarian), Professor M.A.K. Halliday (Some Experiences of a Teacher of Chinese), Professor Mark Shum (Applying Systemic Functional Approach to Teaching Chinese to Non-Chinese Speaking Students), Professor Christian Matthiessen (Language Teaching: Systemic Functional Reflections from the Point of View of a Life-long Language Learner), Professor Zhou Xiaobing (The Localization of the Teaching of Chinese – with Halliday as an Example), Dr Kazuhiro Teruya (Teaching Japanese Systemic Functionally: from Introductory to Advanced Levels of Japanese Language Capacities).

Group Photo of Speakers and Chairs