FUNCTIONAL-

NOTIONAL
APPROACH

By: Nahui Ollin Díaz de León Oñate

For: teaching vocabulary class
 Introduction
The term “functional-notional approach” is any strategy of language teaching that derives from the
learner’s need to express three different kinds of meaning:

1. Functional (i.e. the social purpose of the pronunciation);

2. Modal (the degree of likelihood);
3. 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.

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

learners’ social and/or vocational communicative needs
 History
In 1972, the British linguist D.A. Wilkins published a
document that proposed a radical shift away from using
the traditional concepts of grammar and vocabulary to
describe language to an analysis of the communicative
meanings that learners would need in order to express
themselves and to understand effectively.
This initial document was followed by his 1976 work
Notional Syllabuses, which showed how language could
be categorized on the basis of notions such as quantity,
location and time, and functions such as making
requests, making offers and apologizing. Wilkins’ work
was used by the Council of Europe in drawing up a
communicative language syllabus, which specified the
communicative functions a learner would need in order
to communicate effectively at a given level of
competence. At the end of the 1970s, the first course-
books to be based on functional syllabuses began to
appear.
The Concept of Functional-notional Approach

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

● Communication is meaningful behavior in a social and

cultural context that requires creative language use rather
than synthetic sentence building

● language is constructed around language functions and

notions a; 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.
 Explanation of specific terms:

01 Notions
are meaning elements that may be expressed
02 function
is some kind of communicative act: it is the
through nouns, pronouns, verbs, use of language to achieve a purpose,
prepositions, conjunctions, adjectives or usually involving interaction at least
adverbs. A notion is a concept, or idea. between two people. Examples would be
suggesting, promising, apologizing, greeting,
inviting.

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

Exponents Code
are the language utterances or is the shared language of a
statements that stem from the community of speakers.
function, the situation and the topic.
Code-switching.” Is a change or switch in code during the speech act, which many theorists believe is purposeful
behavior to convey bonding, language prestige or other elements of interpersonal relations
between the speakers.

The essential components found in functional-notional syllabi are:

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

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.)
Code-switching.”
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.
Code-switching.”
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.

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

behavior and offering a spiraling 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
In teaching language, the Functional Notional
Approach to language helps the teacher to first of
all identify the needs of the learner and analyze the
needs in order to draw the syllabus.
In teaching, the Functional Notional Approach to
language helps the teacher to be able to teach the
purposes of speech. Do we need language for letter
writing or greetings? If so which language do we
use?
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 everyday, 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;

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 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:

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.
 Conclusions
It´s a students centered method

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