GROUP 7 

 Suhirman
Ahmad Wahyu Ilahi R
Isnaini Farida
Aswar Ali Amzah


Language function
Function are essentially the purposes that we accomplish with language, e.g stating, requesting, responding, greeting, parting etc. function cannot 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 those forms.
Functions are sometimes directly related to forms. As a question and as a statement. But linguistic forms are not always unambiguous in their function.
Communication may be regarded as a combination of acts. A series of elements with purposes and intent. Communication is not merely an event, something that happens; it is functional, purposive, and designed to bring about some effect-some change, however subtle or unobservable on the environment of hearers and speakers. 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 through linguistic forms.
Halliday’s seven functions of language
Michael Halliday who provided one of the best expositions of language functions, use 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.
4. The interactional function of language serves to ensure social maintenance.
5. The personal function allows a speaker to express feelings, emotions, personality, “ gult-level” reaction.
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. Telling fairy tales, joking, or writing a novel are all uses of the imaginative function. Poetry, tongue twisters, puns, and other instances of the pleasurable uses of language also fall into the imaginative function.
These seven different function of language are neither discrete nor mutually exclusive. 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
Notional- functional syllabuses” in this case, is a term used mainly in the United Kingdom to refer to what is commonly known as a “curriculum” in the US. Notional-functional syllabuses attended to functions as organizing elements of a foreign language curriculum.
“notions” referred both to abstract concepts such as existence, space, time, quantity, and quality and to what we also call” contexts” or “situations” such as travel, health, education, shopping, and free time.
Curricula were organized around such functions as identifying, reporting, denying, declining an invitation, asking permission, apologizing, and etc. functional syllabuses remain today in modified form. For example the following functions are covered in the first several lessons of advanced beginners textbook are:
- Introducing self and other people
- Exchanging personal information
- Asking how to spell someone’s name
- Giving commands
- Apologizing and thanking
- Identifying and describing people
- Asking for information
A typical unit in this textbook includes an eclectic blend of conversation practice with a classmate, interactive group work, role plays, grammar and pronunciation focus exercises, information-gap techniques, internet activities, and extra class activities practice.
Communication is qualitative and infinite; a syllabus is quantitative and finite.