This paper aims at presenting some reflections on the application of systemic functional grammar in the language teaching area. Two starting points trigger this discussion. Firstly, a suggestion by Halliday (1985: xxix) to make use of linguistics in order to help mother and foreign language teaching will be considered. Secondly, and associated with this suggestion, is the systemic functional linguistics view of language based on the indivisible relation between the grammatical structures users select when using language and the context of culture and context of situation variables in which they are inserted when language is put to use. The experiences reported in this article intend to be points of departure for a discussion of different issues springing from pedagogical practices. Among these issues are the following interrelated topics: meanings constructed in different Latin American educational contexts, different approaches teachers have used to include systemic functional concepts, problems originating from these practices, solutions proposed, and aspects to be considered in the implementation of a pedagogical project in the systemic functional perspective.
Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG); language teaching; atin America