Translate This Blog
English French German Spain Italian Dutch Russian Portuguese Japanese Korean Arabic Chinese Simplified

Functions of Language


Another linguistic theory of communication supporting CLT is Halliday’s functional account of language use. He described seven basic functions for children learning their first language. Richards & Rogers classified them as (1986: P70-71):
‘the instrumental function: using language to get things;
the regulatory function: using language to control the behaviour of others;
the interactional function: using language to create interaction with others;
the personal function: using language to express personal feelings and meanings;
the heuristic function: using language to learn and discover;
the imaginative function: using language to create a world of the imagination;
the representational function: using language to communicate the information’
Halliday’s language functions were adopted by the proponents of CLT as denoting the linguistic means to perform different kinds of functions. His dogmas have had a strong influence on the development of functional syllabuses.
Another impelling force for a different language pedagogy came from the changing of education realities in Europe. The social and political pressures on language teaching promoted a more semantic, more social and more communicative approach.
Wilkins (1976) outlined a taxonomy of concepts for this kind of syllabus. His semantic classification was based on three categories: semantic-grammatical, modal, meaning and communicative functions.
The Council of Europe incorporated his semantic communicative analysis into a ‘threshold level’ communicative language syllabus. It specified situations, learners’ roles, settings, functions and notions (van Ek: 1975).
These specifications have had a strong influence on the design of communicative language programmes and the ideas were taken up in a number of text books.

Related Post:

Comments :

0 komentar to “Functions of Language”

Posting Komentar