Super-size your control of language: Inter-propositional relations as a tool for textual analysis in language learning

Abstract

In what might be considered traditional approaches to language teaching and learning, the focus is often on lexical or syntactic issues and instruction is often limited to phrase, clause or sentence. While learning at this level is important, it is also the case that learners, in developing a high degree of control of their target language, need to be taught skills that will give them the capacity to decode and encode complete texts of a variety of types in a variety of contexts. While, over the last two decades, some researchers have made some useful suggestions about approaches to the issue of above-sentence-level language control, they generally make little reference to the role of mental operations in textual comprehension. Against a background of Crombie’s work on inter-propositional relations, the overall objective of this paper is to demonstrate, with reference to a specific example, the extent to which an interpropositional approach provides a potentially rich methodological tool for language teachers and a mechanism for promoting in-depth comprehension of texts.