Functional - Notional Approach

The term “functional-notional approach” embraces any strategy of language

teaching that derives the content of learning from an initial analysis of the learner’s
need to express three different kinds of meaning: Functional (i.e. the social purpose
of the utterance); Modal (the degree of likelihood); Conceptual – the meaning
relations expressed by forms within the sentence (categories of communicative
function) .These method of language teaching is categorize along with others under
the rubric of a communicative approach. The method stresses a means of organizing a
language syllabus. The emphasis is on breaking down the global concept of language
into units of analysis in terms of communicative situations in which they are used.

THE CONCEPT OF FUNCTIONAL-NOTIONAL APPROACH

A functional-notional syllabus is primarily based not on a linguistic analysis but on an

analysis of learners’ social and/or vocational communicative needs. 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). As such, this approach is based on the following concepts:

(1) Communication is meaningful behaviour in a social and cultural context that

requires creative language use rather than synthetic sentence building

(2) language is constructed around language functions and notions; functions such as
evaluating, persuading, arguing, informing, agreeing, questioning, requesting,
expressing emotions and semantic-grammatical notions such as time, quantity,
space, location, and motion. The aim of this approach was to transfer these functions
to acts of communication.

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

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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.

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.

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.

The Essential Components Found In Functional-Notional Syllabi

1. The situations in which the foreign language will be used. A situation will always
include the following: the participants, the place, & the time.

2. Topics, and what the learner will be able to do with these, for example, everyday
interactions, such as buying food, giving directions, are offering advice, etc.

3. The language activities in which the learner will engage.

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4. The language functions which the learner will perform. For example:

a. Personal = expressing one’s thoughts or feelings (e.g., love, joy, pleasure,

happiness) and the everyday feelings (e.g., hunger, thirst, fatigue, sleepiness, etc.)

b. Interpersonal = Enabling us to establish and maintain desirable social and working

relationships (e.g., greetings and leave takings, introducing people to others,
expressing joy at another’s success, extending – accepting – declining invitations,
apologizing, interrupting another speaker politely, etc.)

c. Directive = Attempting to influence the actions of others (e.g., discouraging

someone from pursuing a course of action, persuading someone to change his point of
view, warning someone, etc.)

d. 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 (e.g., identifying items or people in the classroom, the school
the home, or paraphrasing, summarizing, or translating (L1 to L2 or vice versa), etc.)

e. Imaginative = Discussions involving elements of creativity and artistic expression

(e.g., discussing a poem, a story, a piece of music, a play, a painting, a film, a TV
program or creating rhymes, poetry, stories or plays, etc.)

5. The general notions which the learner will be able to handle. Notions are the
interaction of categories of meaning and grammatical form. Examples of notions are
time (time relation: past tense, present tense; duration: until, since), quantity
(countable, uncountable), space (dimensions locations, motion) and so on.

6. The specific (topic related) notions which the learner will be able to handle.

7. The language forms the learner will be able to use. These forms are usually referred
to as exponents which are the language utterances or statements that stem from the
function, the situation and the topic.

8. The degree of skill the learner will be required to display.

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Characteristics

The following are the main characteristics of the functional-notional approach:

1. A functional view of language focusing on doing something through language

2. A semantic base, as opposed to a grammatical or a situational base

3. A learner-centered view of language learning

4. A basis in the analysis of learner needs for using language that is reflected in goals,
content selection and sequencing, methodology, and evaluation

5. learner-centered goals, objectives, and content organization reflecting authentic

language behaviour and offering a spiralling development of content

6. Learning activities involving authentic language use

7. Testing focused on ability to use language to react to and operate on the

environment

The Language Skill Focused

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 needs of the learners gives rise to the Functional
Notional Approach.

Apologizing, we will use words like “I am sorry for all what I have done.”

The functional Notional Approach to language learning places more emphases on the
communicative purpose of speech. It focuses on what people want to do or accomplish
through language. This approach has a goal to help learner use the real language or
appropriate language when communicating. Thus the primary preoccupation of the
Functional Notional Approach is sensitivity to the individual needs of the students.

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In teaching language, the Functional Notional Approach to language helps the teacher
to first of all identify the needs of the learner and analyse the needs in order to draw
the syllabus.

The Functional Notional Approach helps learners to use real and appropriate language
for communication. Thus in conclusion the functional Notional Approach to language
is classified in terms of the purpose of language that is, what people want to
communicate.

Merits

Functional-notional syllabuses are of a number of merits which are mainly the major
characteristics of this type of syllabuses suggested by Finocchiaro and Brumfit (1983).
These merits can briefly be viewed from four perspectives.

From a sociolinguistic perspective, the functional-notional syllabuses emphasize the

communicative purpose of the speech act. As a result,

(a) This kind of syllabuses often tries to set fairly realistic language for learners to
learn;

(b) This approach intends to offer every-day, real-world language use in a variety of
socio-cultural situations, thus, learners will be introduced not only to grammatical
knowledge of the language, but also to the cultural knowledge necessary for them to
fully understand the target language and its culture;

(c) It recognizes that the speaker must have a real purpose for speaking, and
something to talk about.

From a psycholinguistic perspective, the functional-notional syllabuses have placed

the needs of learners at the very core of the teaching program. Consequently,

(a) functional-notional syllabus is often arranged according to different levels and

needs of the target learners;

(b) It is intrinsically motivating because it provides actual communicative functions to

serve the learners’ needs;

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(c) It understands that before asking learners to produce language, sufficient input
must be provided initially;

(d) Thanks to its unit or modular organization of the curriculum materials, the courses
can be designed in a flexible and modular way which will enable learners to learn with
different rhythm or pace of learning.

From a linguistic perspective,

(a) The functional-notional syllabuses will help learners at each level acquire a
reasonable, basic knowledge of the phonological, grammatical, and the lexical
subsystems of the language, as well as the ability to use these in actual
communication.

From an educational perspective, the functional-notional syllabuses have several

other merits:

(a) The approach has enabled teachers to exploit sound psycholinguistic,

sociolinguistic, linguistic and educational principles;

(b) It can develop naturally from existing teaching methodology;

(c) It enables a spiral curriculum to be used which reintroduces grammatical, topical

and cultural material;

(d) It provides for the widespread promotion of foreign language courses.

Drawbacks

The above merits are drawn from the ideal level of functional-notional syllabuses.
However, the practical application of this kind of syllabuses shows a number of
problems, which has aroused criticisms against functional-notional syllabuses among
researchers in this field (e.g. Dubin & Olshtain, 1986; Richards, 2001; Widdowson,
1979; etc.). The major drawbacks can also be seen from different perspectives.

From the perspective of course design, i.e. the application of a functional-notional

syllabus, the designers always encounter difficulties during the selection of the
content. This is because:

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(a) The idea of “functions” and “notions” of language is not as clearly definable as it
is thought to be;

(b) although there are criteria listed above for the selection and grading of the
components of a functional-notional syllabus, it is hard to decide such as which
functions or notions is of more coverage or frequency then others;

(c) A need analysis is an important and necessary step before the design of the
contents as whatever included in any particular functional-notional syllabus are highly
related to the need of the learners; however, it is always difficult to carry out a
profound need analysis in a real life situation.

From the perspective of the nature of language, the basic assumption of functional-
notional syllabuses can sometimes be misleading, for

(a) The idea that language is determined by the uses or functions it performs is an
over simplistic view;

(b) Communication does not just refers to language functions and notions; and the
process of communication somehow remains unstated in this kind of syllabuses;

(c) The functional-notional syllabuses, in fact, also assume that language can be
broken down into discrete components (various functions and notions) that can be
taught separately; this assumption makes them not much different from grammatical
syllabuses in misleading the real nature of language.

From the perspective of language teaching and learning, functional-notional

syllabuses bring along dissatisfactions and problems unanswered to language teachers
and learners, such as,

(a) Grammatical structures elicited by the functions and notions taught appear in an
unsystematically order which may make teachers and learners, especially those
familiar with grammatical approach, uncomfortable;

(b) Important grammatical structures may not be touched by the functions and
notions included in the syllabuses, which may lead to low grammatical competence of
the learners;

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(c) language functions and notions do not have particular linear sequence, which
may make it ineffective for teaching and learning as the latter is a process inherently
sequential in nature;

(d) Functional-notional syllabuses are product-oriented which state clearly the

expected outcomes of language learning; however, it fails to address the process of
how to realize the outcomes.

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