ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on one of a family of genres known as response. Response genres are used to appreciate and respond to cultural works in the curriculum area of English and music, drama, film studies and visual arts, which in Australia are known as Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA). Each of these disciplines is distinctive; however, our analysis of students’ writing in these learning areas revealed that cumulative knowledge of how cultural works were composed could be supported through a genre we have called Compositional analysis. In this chapter, I present key features of a foundational 4 × 4 toolkit designed to provide a shared metalanguage among teachers of middle years English and CAPA at two of our project schools. I then specify and expand the toolkit as in exemplifying its apprenticing role in the disciplines of music, visual arts and English and its relationship with response genres needed for senior literary study. The focus in the chapter is on logical meanings that are needed to develop ideas in analytical ways. I report on how more ‘common-sense’ terminology derived from SFL’s ideation discourse semantic system provided a valuable base for teachers and students across these areas to confidently talk about shared and distinct discipline-based discourse patterns and provided English teachers with a platform for extending their students’ knowledge of how language works.
