Aldersgate College Teaching and Assessing Grammar

College of Arts, Sciences and Education Junelyn G. Villar, LPT

Module 4: Approaches of Teaching and Assessment of Grammar

Learning Objectives:
At the end of the module, the students should be able to:

1. Identify the Functional and Notional Approach in Grammar;

2. Discuss the functions/categories and the advantages of the approaches;
3. Apply the rules in grammar practices.

Learning Focus
Lesson 2: Functional and Notional Approach

Explanation of specific terms:

Notions are meaning elements that may be expressed through nouns, pronouns, verbs,
prepositions, conjunctions, adjectives or adverbs. A notion is a concept, or idea: it may be quite
specific, in which case it is virtually the same as vocabulary (dog, house, for example); or it may be
very general – time, size, emotion, movement – in which case it often overlaps with the concept of
“topics”. A notion may be “time past”; this may include past tenses, phrases like a month ago, in
1990, last week, and utterances using temporal clauses beginning with when…., before…., after….
and so on;

A function is some kind of communicative act: it is the use of language to achieve a purpose,
usually involving interaction at least between two people. Examples would be suggesting, promising,
apologizing, greeting, inviting. “Inviting” may include phrases like “Would you like to….? I
suggest…., How about…? Please…

Task: Have a look at the items listed in the box below. Can you sort them into separate lists of notions
and functions?
Notions and functions
location offer request
obligation promise spatial relations
advise the future food
threat crime instruction
apology the body remind
probability expressions of opinion

A situation may affect variations of language such as the use of dialects, the formality or informality
of the language and the mode of expression. Situation includes the following elements:
A. The persons taking part in the speech act
B. The place where the conversation occurs
C. The time the speech act is taking place
D. The topic or activity that is being discussed.

Exponents are the language utterances or statements that stem from the function, the situation and
the topic.
Aldersgate College Teaching and Assessing Grammar
College of Arts, Sciences and Education Junelyn G. Villar, LPT

Code is the shared language of a community of speakers.

Code-switching is a change or switch in code during the speech act, which many theorists believe
is purposeful behaviour to convey bonding, language prestige or other elements of interpersonal
relations between the speakers.

Functional Categories of Language

Mary Finocchiaro:The Functional-notional Approach: From Theory to Practice (1983, p. 65-
66) has placed the functional categories under five headings as noted below: personal,
interpersonal, directive, referential, and imaginative.

• Personal
Clarifying or arranging one’s ideas;
expressing one’s thoughts or feelings: love, joy, pleasure, happiness, surprise, likes, satisfaction,
dislikes, disappointment, distress, pain, anger, anguish, fear, anxiety, sorrow, frustration,
annoyance at missed opportunities, moral, intellectual and social concerns; and the everyday
feelings of hunger, thirst, fatigue, sleepiness, cold, or warmth

• Interpersonal
Enabling us to establish and maintain desirable social and working relationships:
greetings and leave takings
introducing people to others
identifying oneself to others
expressing joy at another’s success
expressing concern for other people’s welfare
extending and accepting invitations
refusing invitations politely or making alternative arrangements
making appointments for meetings
breaking appointments politely and arranging another mutually convenient time
apologizing
excusing oneself and accepting excuses for not meeting commitments
indicating agreement or disagreement
interrupting another speaker politely
changing an embarrassing subject
receiving visitors and paying visits to others
offering food or drinks and accepting or declining politely
sharing wishes, hopes, desires, problems making promises and committing oneself to some action
complimenting someone
making excuses
expressing and acknowledging gratitude

• Directive
Attempting to influence the actions of others; accepting or refusing direction:
making suggestions in which the speaker is included
making requests; making suggestions
refusing to accept a suggestion or a request but offering an alternative
Aldersgate College Teaching and Assessing Grammar
College of Arts, Sciences and Education Junelyn G. Villar, LPT

persuading someone to change his point of view

requesting and granting permission
asking for help and responding to a plea for help
forbidding someone to do something; issuing a command
giving and responding to instructions
warning someone
discouraging someone from pursuing a course of action
establishing guidelines and deadlines for the completion of actions
asking for directions or instructions

• Referential
Talking or reporting about things, actions, events, or people in the environment in the past or in the
future; talking about language (what is termed the metalinguistic function: = talking or reporting
about things, actions, events, or people in the environment in the past or in the future
identifying items or people in the classroom, the school the home, the community
asking for a description of someone or something
defining something or a language item or asking for a definition
paraphrasing, summarizing, or translating (L1 to L2 or vice versa)
explaining or asking for explanations of how something works
comparing or contrasting things discussing possibilities, probabilities, or capabilities of doing
something
requesting or reporting facts about events or actions evaluating the results of an action or event

• Imaginative
Discussions involving elements of creativity and artistic expression
discussing a poem, a story, a piece of music, a play, a painting, a film, a TV program, etc.
expanding ideas suggested by other or by a piece of literature or reading material
creating rhymes, poetry, stories or plays
recombining familiar dialogs or passages creatively
suggesting original beginnings or endings to dialogs or stories
solving problems or mysteries.

Task: In the table shown below each column represents a different basis for selection of language: situation,
function, vocabulary, etc. In each row one of them is filled in; can you fill in some suggestions for the others?

Coordinating different language categories

Situations Topics Functions and Grammar Vocabulary
Notions
Getting to know Someone’s Interviewing, Interrogative 23, female,
someone background informing, greeting forms Solano,
verb/gerund swimming,
dancing, etc.
Hospitalization of Road Accidents Time past Past tense Accident, road,
the victims Narrating driver, rescuer,
Reporting of the Describing car
accident Informing
Aldersgate College Teaching and Assessing Grammar
College of Arts, Sciences and Education Junelyn G. Villar, LPT

Calling or interviewing
rescuer
Planning of Teacher’s Day Making Requests Future Tense
Teacher,
School Program Modals
students,
visitors, parents,
alumni,
speakers
Requesting of Classroom Making requests Future Tense Students,
face to face rules/regulations Predicting teachers,
classes Electing of class Future time classroom,
officers Setting of standards school, etc.
Creating farmers’ Equipment/Machinerie Requesting Yes/no question farmer,
association s information/materials Present tense secretary, etc.
Defining Land owner Describing activities Present
professions Profession Defining profession progressive
Applying a job Activities tense
Qualifications

FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR
People who study and use a language are mainly interested in how they can do things with language ---
how they can make meanings, get attention to their problems and interests, influence their friends and colleagues
and create a rich social life for themselves. They are only interested in the grammatical structure of the language as a
means to getting things done. A grammar which puts together the patterns of the language and the things you can do
with them is called a functional grammar.” [COBUILD, 1990]

Objective
The main objective of a functional grammar is to explain language in terms of what people do with it, how
they use the language to live. It tries to do that by adopting more of a semantic and pragmatic orientation inside the
grammar. It does not see semantics and pragmatics as extra levels of organization but sees them as integral to the
organization of the grammar.

Criticism
• Order
Criticisms of functional approaches include the difficulty in deciding the order in which different functions
should be presented. Is it more important to be able to complain or to apologize, for example? Another problem lies
in the wide range of grammatical structures needed to manipulate basic functions at different levels of formality (for
example, ‘Can I …..?’ as opposed to ‘Would you mind if I …..?"). In addition, although it is possible to identify
hundreds of functions and micro-functions, there are probably no more than ten fundamental communicative
functions that are expressed by a range of widely used exponents.
• no structures syllabus
There is also the apparently random nature of the language used, which may frustrate learners used to the
more analytical and "building-block" approach that a grammatical syllabus can offer. Another apparent weakness is
the question of what to do at higher levels. Is it simply a case of learning more complex exponents for basic functions
or is one required to seek out ever more obscure functions (complaining sarcastically, for example)?

Advantages
Aldersgate College Teaching and Assessing Grammar
College of Arts, Sciences and Education Junelyn G. Villar, LPT

On the positive side, however, there is little doubt that functional approaches have contributed a great deal
to the overall store of language teaching methodology. Most new course-books contain some kind of functional
syllabus alongside a focus on grammar and vocabulary, thus providing learners with communicatively useful
expressions in tandem with a structured syllabus with a clear sense of progression. In addition, the focus on
communication inherent in the practice of functional exponents has contributed greatly to communicative language
teaching in general. Finally, the idea that even beginners can be presented with exponents of high communicative
value from the very start represents a radical shift from the kind of approach that began with the present simple of the
verb ‘to be’ in all its forms and focused almost entirely on structure with little regard for actual communication in the
target language.

Conclusion
          Functional-national is a method of language teaching that categorize along with others under the rubric of a
communicative approach. The method stresses a means of organizing a language syllabus. This approach holds that
the classification of skill levels should be based on what people want to do with the language (functions) or in terms
of what meanings people want to convey (notions). A Functional Notional Approach to language learning places
major emphases on the communicative purposes of speech or in speaking skill. That is what people want to do or
accomplish through speech. In teaching language, the Functional Notional Approach to language helps the teacher
to identify the needs of the learner and analyze the needs in order to draw the syllabus, beside that also to teach the
purposes of speech.