Deborah Hobbs works in Bristol as a freelance author and instructional designer and also as an English language lecturer and teacher in higher and adult education. She is also co-author of Open World First. In this article, Deborah explains ‘functional language’ and its place in the exam classroom.
As a newly qualified TEFL teacher, I didn’t really understand what my co-teacher meant when they used the term ‘functional language’. I didn’t recall specific mention of it during my training though it may have been covered. My colleague explained it was about giving students the language needed to carry out different ‘functions’, which basically means communicating effectively in different situations. Things like, buying bus tickets, apologising, or ordering in a restaurant. I later discovered that teaching language by function, or situation, was initially proposed in the 1970s by linguist D. A. Wilkins and, although a radical shift in pedagogical approach at the time, it soon found its way into our coursebooks.
Of course, as with any approach to teaching, functional language has been criticised. It can be difficult to know in which order to teach different functions and the grammar within the functional phrases can be complex both for the teacher to teach and the learner to understand and manipulate. Some students feel they learn more when they follow a more traditional grammar-based syllabus where they can see step-by-step progress. On a personal note, I was never really sure how to incorporate functional language into upper intermediate or advanced general English classes as the majority of ‘functions’, seemed to have been ‘ticked off’ by then.
As a general English teacher, I liked to dip in and out of functional language. There are some really excellent activities in many of our coursebooks, particularly for lower levels and when used alongside other methods and approaches, teaching functional language can be very effective for helping to prepare our learners to communicate in the real world.
Functional language in the exam classroom
When I started teaching exam English, I found that coursebooks took a more targeted approach to language acquisition. There was less focus on functional language unless exam specific, and almost an exclusive focus on exam requirements. Does this provide our students with the skills to be successful in their chosen assessment? Absolutely but does (more) functional language have a place in the exam classroom? Yes, I think it does and at all levels. Here’s why:
- By its very nature functional language offers students a link to the real world, allowing them to make connections with real world activities, like complaining in a restaurant which may not be obvious in an exam-focused coursebook.
- Functional language provides ALL students with more opportunities to use colloquial, idiomatic or phrase level language, which is of real value if students need to communicate with local people outside the relative safety of the classroom environment.
- Students often say they want to be fluent and sound more natural and as functional language is typically taught at phrase level, it’s a great way to improve fluency and build confidence. Skills useful in both the general and exam English classroom.
- In addition to the real world, functional language does directly target exam English. For example, how to politely disagree in Cambridge speaking assessments.
- Functional language can take learners beyond the exam, deepening their knowledge and broadening their range of vocabulary. For example, students learn the function of writing a letter of application for their exam, so why not deepen their knowledge by adding the language to attend a job interview?
Here is an example of teaching functional language to higher levels taken from the Open World series:
You may not have much classroom time available if you’re teaching for an assessment, but a little extra functional language to round off an exam-focused task can really help students in making connections between the classroom environment and the real world – especially so when we, as teachers, make that connection clear. Not only that, but as most ‘functions’ involve speaking, there’s more room for fun.
For more advice from Deborah on bringing the real world into the exam classroom, have a look at her post on ‘using mobile devices to open up the learning environment‘.