Effect of a Systematic Functional Linguistics Approach and the Teaching Learning Cycle on Writing Skills of EFL Undergraduate Students

Academic writing remains one of the most significant skills for students in tertiary education, often due to a lack of explicit instruction regarding genre and register. While conventional teaching methods frequently emphasize on memorization of rules, the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) approach emphasizes how language choices are shaped by communicative purposes. A key manifestation of this approach is the Teaching and Learning Cycle (TLC), a pedagogical model designed to scaffold student learning through collaborative modeling and guided practice. Understanding whether this strategy can produce measurable gains in writing proficiency is essential for developing more effective literacy interventions. Thus, the primary objective of this study was to asses students’ academic writing skills by implementing the Teaching and Learning Cycle (TLC), a strategy informed by the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) approach to language. It was hypothesized that this instructional strategy would lead to measurable improvements in students’ writing. To investigate this, the researcher employed a mixed-methods design, combining an action research approach with a non-randomized one-group pretest-posttest design. Data was collected through pretests and posttests, which served as the main instruments for assessing students' writing improvement following the intervention. The test results were analyzed using SPSS software. First, the Intra-Class Correlation Coefficient (ICC) was calculated to determine inter-rater reliability across the three test occasions. Then, Repeated Measures ANOVA was conducted to examine changes in student performance over time. Data was presented in tables and converted into percentages to clearly illustrate progress. The findings indicated that the use of the SFL-based Teaching and Learning Cycle significantly improved students’ paragraph writing skills.