Where is systemic functional grammar in the adult migrant English program?

Abstract

Australia’s Adult Migrant English Program (AMEP) started in 1948. Since then it has continued to deliver language education to migrants for the purposes of settlement and attaining employment. The AMEP and its related developments in English language education have had a profound impact on ESL internationally. Arguably one of the most important contributions to the AMEP and to ESL more generally is Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG), which became the theoretical underpinning of the AMEP curriculum in the early 1990s. However, it would seem that a quarter of a century later, SFG is missing in action. This paper traces SFG’s presence in the AMEP through its inception in the Certificate in Spoken and Written English through various evolutions of the AMEP, and speculates on the implications of its apparent absence in the AMEP today.