The employment of genre-based pedagogy and Task-Based Language Teaching in second language education is representative of a paradigmatic shift towards a focus on meaning-making. Despite this shift, second language acquisition (SLA) research continues to predominantly rely on complexity, accuracy, and fluency metrics to assess learner production…

In the past three decades, the construct of second language (L2) writing complexity has been theorized and refined in both second language acquisition (SLA) (Crossley, 2020; Housen, De Clercq, Kuiken, & Vedder, 2019; Lu, 2011; Norris & Ortega, 2009) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) research (Byrnes, 2009; Ryshina-Pankova, 2015;…

This dissertation is a variationist account of two non-standard relative clause (RC) structures in Spanish: resumptive pronouns (RPs) and prepositional-phrase (PP) chopping. Previous typological studies considered RP explanations based on difficulty of processing (Hawkins, 1994), while Spanish-specific quantitative studies proposed a number of…

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the potential of Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) pedagogy to support English language learners (ELLs) in enhancing their meaning making potential as they engage in persuasive writing practices within academic contexts. The dissertation results from a teacher action research project in which the…