group 6

Language Function

Functions are essentially the purpose that we accomplish with language, stating, requesting, responding, greeting, parting. It cannot be accomplished without a forms of language : morphemese, grammar rules, discourse rules, and other organizational competencies. Funtions sometimes directly related to form, as a statement.

Communication may be regarded as a combination of acts, a series of elements with purpose and intent. It is not merely an event, something that happens it is fuctional, purposive, and designed to bring about some effect.

Halliday’s Seven Functions of Language

1.      Instrumental Function serve to manipilate the environtment, to cause certain events to happen.

2.      Regulatory Function is the control of events.

3.      Representational Functions is the use of language to make statement, convey fact and knowledge, explain, or report.

4.      Interactional Function serve to ensure social maintenance.

5.      Personal Function to express feelings, emotions, personality, and reaction.

6.      Heuristic Function to involve language used to acquire knowledge, to learn about the environtment.

7.      Imaginative Function serve to create imaginary system or ideas.

Functional Approaches to Language Teaching

The most apparent practical classroom application of functional describtions of language was found in the development of functional syllabuses, more popularly notional-functional syllabuses. It attended to functions as organizing element of a foreign language curriculum.

Here examples of functional syllabuses:

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.   

By : Group 6 ( Yuni Indrawati, Fenni Anggraeni, Nurmawati Kolong )