Group 4

- Leny Mutmafidah

- Nikita Nurul Milati

- Ahmad Ivan Fathoni

LANGUAGE FUNCTIONS

            Functions are essentially the purposes that we accomplish with language, for example stating, requesting, responding, greeting, parting, and so on. Functions can not be accomplished, of course, without the forms of language: morphemes, words, grammar rules, discourse rules, and other organizational competencies. While forms are the outward manifestation of language, functions are the realization of the forms.

            Communication is not merely an event or something that happens, it is functional, purposive, and designed to bring about some effects or some changes. Communication is a series of communicative acts or speech acts. Second language learners need to understand the purpose of communication, developing an awareness of what the purpose of a communicative act is and how to achieve that purpose though linguistic forms.

HALLIDAY’S SEVEN FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE

            Michael Halliday (1973), who provided one of the best expositions of language functions, used the term to mean the purposive nature of communication, and outlined seven different functions of language:

1.      The instrumental function serves to manipulate the environment, to cause certain events to happen.

2.      The regulatory function of language is the control of events.

3.      The representational function is the use of language to make statements, convey facts and knowledge, explain, or report-that is, to “represent” reality as one sees it.

4.      The interactional function of language serves to ensure social maintenance.

5.      The personal function allows a speaker to express feelings, emotions, personality, reactions.

6.      The heuristic function involves language used to acquire knowledge, to learn about the environment.

7.      The imaginative function serves to create imaginary systems or ideas.

These seven different functions of language are neither discrete nor mutually exclusive. A single sentence or conversation might incorporate many different functions simultaneously. Yet it is the understanding of how to use linguistic forms to achieve these functions of language that comprises the crux of second language learning.

FUNCTIONAL APPROACHES TO LANGUAGE TEACHING

            The functional part of  the notional-functional syllabus corresponded to what we have defined above as language functions. Curricula were organized around such functions as identifying, reporting, denying, declining an invitation, asking permission, apologizing, etc. Van Ek and Alexander’s (1975) exhaustive list of language functions became a basic reference for notional-functional syllabuses, now simply referred to as functional syllabuses. Functional syllabuses remain today in modified form. A typical current language textbook will list a sequence of communicative functions are covered in the first several lessons of an advanced-beginner’s textbook:

1.      Introducing self and other people.

2.      Exchanging personal information

3.      Asking how to spell someone’s name

4.      Giving commands

5.      Apologizing and thanking

6.      Identifying and describing people

7.      Asking for information

A typical unit in this textbook includes an eclectic blend of coversation practice with a classmate, interactive group work, role plays, grammar and pronunciation focus exercises, information-gap techniques, internet activities, and extra-class interactive practice.