This 13-chapter volume evolved from a systemic functional congress on linguistics and education in 1999 in Singapore. Most chapters were presented there, but the editor added others to better represent the development of discourse. The outline below gives the author(s) and gist of each chapter.

Chapter 1 is an introductory chapter by the editor. The rest of the book is divided into two parts: Part 1, entitled “Childhood” and Part 2, entitled “Secondary, Tertiary, and Beyond.” The first part has five chapters. Chapter 2, by Halliday, outlines very early child language development (i.e., 10.5 months to 1.6 years). In chapter 3, Hasan uses kindergarten data to show that children make different inferences based on social background and life experience. In chapter 4, Thompson describes how a Singapore nursery rhyme is used in a preschool to socialize the pupils to locally important cultural values. Chapter 5, by Foley and Lee, analyzes children's written narratives in a Singapore primary school. The authors find clear development through Primary four, but little growth thereafter because pedagogy shifts to end-of-primary-six examination preparation. Finally, in chapter 6, Goom deconstructs a British European history textbook for upper elementary pupils. Using quotes, she demonstrates author bias and frequently inaccessible language.

The second part of the book contains seven chapters. In chapter 7, Christie challenges the holistic language education prevalent in Australia. She recommends explicit functional grammar instruction for English teachers and students at junior secondary level to improve literacy. In chapter 8, Hartnett discusses two English nominalization types and compares them with Thai nominalizations. She cites frequencies for the English nominalizations by genre. In chapter 9, O'Halloran critiques three Australian secondary math classrooms using instructional discourse to discuss achievement test results (from best to worst): male private school, female private school, co-educational working class school. Kramer-Dahl reports in chapter 10 on a case (and classroom) study of a female university student in Singapore critically analyzing her own writing plus peer feedback to improve her writing and self-esteem. In the next chapter, Mohan and Slater evaluate two written causal explanations using systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and language assessment. They argue that current language assessment cannot account for the superiority of one sample, whereas SFL can. In chapter 12, Martin uses numerous texts to examine the texture of evaluation in terms of appraisal systems, judgment, and so forth. He shows that evaluation is used to organize discourse at higher levels. In the final chapter, Ball and Tucker use corpus analysis to explore co-occurrences between material and mental verbs and optional adverbials of time and place. Significant co-occurrences are discussed.

Except for Hartnett and Kramer-Dahl, the authors assume prior knowledge of Halliday's (1994) systemic functional approach, so this collection will not be easily understood by those unfamiliar with his framework.