CHAPTER 1 A FUNCTIONAL APPROACH TO LANGUAGE

Chapter 1

A functional approach
to language
It is often said that children, as they use language, are constantly:

• learning language
• learning through language, and
• learning about language.

We never stop learning language – from the babbling of babies to the voracious
preschool years, from our early encounters with print and our first attempts
at writing through to the secondary textbooks and essays, and then beyond to
the new demands of adulthood, where we still continue to learn and refine the
language needed in every new situation we find ourselves.
And it is now widely recognised that we learn through language – that language
is absolutely central in the learning process. Our perception of the world is
constructed through language, and it is through language that we are able to
interact with others in our world. In schools, we could virtually say that ‘language
is the curriculum’.
But what of learning about language? As we use language, we develop a
relatively implicit understanding of how it works. A functional approach to
language attempts to make these understandings explicit. Once they have been
brought out into the open, we have a shared way of talking about language with
our students.

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What is a functional approach to language?

A functional approach looks at how language enables us to do things: to share
information, to enquire, to express attitudes, to entertain, to argue, to get our
needs met, to reflect, to construct ideas, to order our experiences and make sense
of the world. It is concerned with how people use real language for real purposes.
At the heart of a functional model of language is an emphasis on meaning and
on how language is involved in the construction of meaning. It sees language as a
resource for making meaning.
A functional approach to language is not concerned with a set of rules which
prescribe correct and incorrect usage taught through decontextualised exercises.
Rather, understandings about language are developed in the context of authentic
tasks across all areas of the curriculum.

What are the advantages of a functional

approach to language?
• Language is concerned above all with the creation of meaning, and because
meaning is found within a text as a whole, a functional model of language
describes how language operates at the text level, not at the level of individual
words and sentences in isolation.
• A functional approach to language stresses how meanings are made in
interaction with other people. This strongly supports the small group work and
conferencing practices of today’s classrooms.
• A functional approach to language is concerned with real language used by
real people – not schoolbook exercises contrived purely to teach some point of
grammar, or reading texts devised to teach some aspect of reading.
• In primary classrooms today, there is an emphasis on writing for specific
purposes. A functional approach to language aims to show how texts can most
effectively achieve these purposes.
• Children today are also encouraged to write with a particular audience in mind.
A functional model describes how texts will vary according to the audience
being addressed and how distant that audience is.
• Perhaps most importantly, the knowledge of language provided by a
functional model helps us to identify what children’s strengths are and to
make clear and positive suggestions about how they might make their texts
more effective – instead of vague, superficial comments or mere corrections
of spelling and punctuation.
• If children have an explicit knowledge of which language resources are
characteristic of a particular context, they are in a better position to make
informed choices when developing texts of their own.

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How might you use a functional approach

to language in the classroom?
A functional approach to language does not advocate teaching about language by
handing down prescriptive recipes. Rather it is concerned with supporting students
in composing effective texts for particular purposes and providing feedback at the
point of need within the context. A functional model of language can be drawn on
whenever children are engaged in the construction of texts and opportunities are
created for explicit discussion of these texts. Such opportunities might occur, for
example, during the modelling of a text, during a shared book activity, during the
construction of a class text, or during a conferencing session. Sometimes these
opportunities can be programmed, sometimes they may be spontaneous. They can
occur at the whole class, small group or individual level.
Many teachers have found it useful to develop in the class ‘a language for
talking about language’. These shared understandings about text, reflected in the
shared terminology used by the class, allow for a more productive use of time.
They can be built up through group reflection on the language as it is used, starting
with questions like these:

What do you think we might use this sort of a text for? What could we call it?
Remember when we were writing Explanations? Why is this text different from
an Explanation?
Look at the beginning of the text. What do you think the writer is doing here? What does
the beginning of this text tell the reader?
Is it the same as the beginning of a Report?
What name could we give this sort of a beginning? What about a term such as
‘orientation’ to remind us that it is setting the scene?
Which words link up the text and show us when the actions took place? We could call
these ‘linking words’.

Thus the children are guided towards making explicit the knowledge they
already have about texts. This shared knowledge and terminology, combined with
new insights contributed by the teacher, then becomes a resource they can draw
on in their subsequent discussions of texts.
The teachers you will meet in the chapters of this book decided to trial a variety
of activities which would allow for the growth of shared understandings about
texts. In particular, they drew on the teaching and learning cycle outlined in the
support resources in each state. The activities they developed, described in the
following pages, provided a context for language exploration while the children
were using language for real purposes in a variety of curriculum areas.

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A teaching and learning cycle

The teaching and learning cycle moves from initial understandings of the
topic and task through to gaining independent control over the genre. The
elements of the cycle are represented in Figure 1.1, but this is not intended as
a linear sequence – you should be moving flexibly in and out of the stages in
response to the demands of the task and student needs.

Preparation
• Identify the major understandings and abilities to be developed in the unit of
work you are preparing (for example, finding and organising information about
transport, putting forward an argument on conservation, telling a horror story).
• Decide which genre (or genres) would be appropriate in achieving the purpose of
the unit (for example, Report, Argument, Narrative). This becomes the language
focus of the unit.
• Identify a ‘culminating task’ that the class will be working towards (for example,
a Narrative as a class big book; a multimedia production about Australian
mammals) and break it down into a number of smaller contributing activities
that build towards the culminating task.
• Plan a number of activities to familiarise the children with the subject matter
and the genre, ranging from hands-on, exploratory, oral activities through to
more reflective, written activities.
• Locate sample texts in the chosen genre to use for immersion and modelling.
Read them carefully beforehand and annotate them so that you can draw
students’ attention to relevant features. Then have a go at writing your own
model text – it’s very revealing to realise what you are expecting your students
to achieve.

Note:
It’s important to know how well children can already use the genre. If you are
uncertain, you may find it helpful to ask them to write a text ‘cold’ very early in
the unit, using the genre in question, so that strengths and weaknesses become
apparent and they can observe how their texts improve as they progress through
the unit. You might ask the students to keep an ‘evolving draft’, which they
constantly revise as they develop new understandings about the topic, the genre or
certain language features.
Your assessment of the children’s proficiency in the genre at this stage may well
influence subsequent phases of the unit, for instance:

• if the genre is relatively unfamiliar to most of the children, the class may need
to develop common basic understandings about it as a whole group
• if the class has worked previously with the genre, it may help to look at specific
aspects (for example, how to write an effective beginning)

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LK I N G TO L E A R
TA N

Building Supported
knowledge of reading
the field

Assessing
student
Independant Learning
progress
use of about
the genre the genre

Supported
writing

Figure 1.1 Teaching and learning cycle adapted from Rothery (1994)

• if the children demonstrate quite different levels of proficiency, it may be

a good idea to work with groups on different aspects
• if the children are still building knowledge of the topic or content (the field),
a variety of activities and interactions (discussions, interviews, hands-on
activities, excursions, videos) may help to develop their understanding.

Before writing, we will need to make sure we have something to write about. We
often need to gather information from print, multimodal or digital texts. At this
stage, you may find it necessary to work with the class on researching skills (for
example, use of the library or internet, locating relevant information in a book
or online, making notes using a graphic organiser). Students will generally need
support in how to read increasingly complex academic texts through activities
such as modelled, shared, guided and independent reading.

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Modelling the genre

If children are to write in a particular genre, they first need to become familiar
with its purpose and features through immersion in the genre, and by exploring
sample texts.

• Introduce a model of the genre to the class (for example, using the smartboard
or a hovercam). Choose or compose a text which is similar to the one to be
written later as a joint construction by the class.
• Discuss the purposes for which we use this type of text in our society (for
example, the purpose of a Recount is to tell what happened).
• With the class, identify how the text is structured. Each genre has a distinctive
set of stages which helps it to achieve its purpose. These stages make up its
schematic structure. (The schematic structure of a Recount, for example,
consists of an orientation which sets the scene, followed by a series of events
which tell what happened.) It’s a good idea to give the students a photocopy of
the model text so they can annotate its stages and features for later reference.
• Discuss the function of each stage. (For instance, the function of the orientation
of a Recount is to let the reader know who was involved, when and where the
events took place, and any other information necessary to understand the
events which follow.)

Note:
• Some teachers might introduce the features of a text directly to the children,
while others might prefer, through careful guidance and questioning, to help
the children discover the features themselves (in which case the class may need
to examine several examples of the same genre).
• During the modelling phase you may wish to compare a successful text with
one that has not achieved its purpose, asking the children to work out why.
• It may also be interesting to compare the structure and stages of this genre with
one previously examined.
• Model texts can be commercially published pieces of writing, texts written
previously by students, or texts written by the teacher at the level of a high-
performing student.
• In the modelling phase, you can also refer to language features other than the
structure of the text, but it’s probably most helpful to start with an overview of
the text as a whole, introducing selected language features later on.

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Joint construction
Before children write independent texts, it’s useful for them to participate in
collaborative writing in the chosen genre. A text may be jointly constructed by the
whole class, by a small group, or by a teacher and child during conferencing.

• Revising structure. It may be helpful at this stage to revise the schematic

structure of the genre (for example, by referring to model texts).
• Jointly constructing a text. Invite the children to contribute the information
and ideas from their notes while you act as a guide, asking questions and
making suggestions about the structuring of the text. Scribe the text yourself
on the whiteboard or smartboard, so that the children can concentrate on
the meanings they are creating. When it’s complete, give them each a copy as
a further model. With longer texts, you might jointly construct only parts of
the text at a time (for example, composing the introduction to an Argument
together, then having groups of students work on supporting arguments before
coming back, pooling their arguments and jointly constructing the conclusion).
• Assessing the children’s progress. Some children may be keen to try an
independent text, while others may feel they need further modelling. At this
stage flexibility may be needed, with different groups working on different tasks.

Independent construction
Having read and examined specimen texts in the chosen genre, and having had
the experience of jointly constructing a similar text, students are now in a position
to write their own text independently.

• All students will be using the same genre, but their choice of topic might vary
slightly from the jointly constructed text or the model text. For instance,
if you’ve already modelled a text on ‘How to care for your dog’, a child might
choose to write a similar text on caring for cats, goldfish or tortoises.
• The children write their drafts, referring to models.
• Each child consults with you and/or peers, receiving comments on what
he or she has achieved (in the light of built-up, shared knowledge about
the genre) and suggestions for changes to help the text achieve its purpose
more effectively.
• You may find that conferencing about drafts reveals a need for more modelling,
joint construction or attention to selected language features.
• Before publishing and sharing their texts, students might need support with
editing their texts for clarity of meaning, and proofreading them for accuracy
(for example, checking spelling and punctuation).

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Public conferencing of some of the children’s texts (in a constructive way and
with each writer’s permission) can encourage discussion of more detailed language
features, just as shared reading of children’s texts can give further opportunities
for modelling the genre.
Children eventually reach the point where they can undertake writing the
genre quite independently. Indeed, they may choose to do so in free-choice writing
sessions, when writing for a similar purpose in other tasks and in other curriculum
areas. When they have gained control of the basic features, they may move on to
exploit the genre more creatively.