<![CDATA[English-language climate change discourse shapes how readers understand the ecological crisis, yet little is known about how English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students in non-Western contexts respond to it. This study examined Bugis-Makassar EFL students’ responses to this discourse, focusing on the ecolinguistic features of their writing, their interpretation of the texts, and the local wisdom they draw on. Using a qualitative descriptive design, the study analyzed written reflections from 20 English Literature students at Universitas Hasanuddin who read three genres of climate texts: an IPCC report, a COP30 decision, and a BBC news articles. Reflections were analyzed using Stibbe’s ecological discourse analysis and transitivity and modality analysis based on Systemic Functional Grammar, and triangulated with semi-structured interviews with 20 students. Material processes dominated the 82 ideational clauses analyzed (61.0%), but human agents were often replaced by abstractions or removed through passive constructions. Students built strong urgency through high modality and scientific and moral framing, while destructive metaphors were largely absorbed from the source texts. Thirteen reflections were beneficial, seven ambivalent, and none destructive; ambivalence arose from anthropocentrism. Local wisdom appeared spontaneously in only three reflections, through the Bugis rituals mappadendang and mappanini bosi, while one interviewee linked the COP30 term mutirão to gotong royong. Students thus took a negotiated position, absorbing the grammar of global climate discourse while evaluating it critically through local experience. EFL instruction should explicitly teach epistemic modality and agency analysis and bring local wisdom into reading and writing tasks.]]>
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