The notional / functional approach

The Notional / Functional Approach

Speech act theory applied to language syllabus design

The term notional syllabus embraces any strategy of language teaching that derives the content of learning from an initial analysis of the learner's need to express different kinds of meaning.

Three broad types of meaning can be identified:

1. Functional – the social purpose of the utterance.
2. Modal – the degree of likelihood expressed.
3. Conceptual – the meaning relationships expressed by forms within the sentence, including categories of communicative function.

Notional / Functional approach – how new were the ideas?

The groundbreaking theoretical work in the UK was D. A. Wilkins's Notional Syllabuses [Oxford 1976]. However, the ground was not entirely new. Speech Act Theory had already been developed for some time.

• John R. Searle's Speech Acts [1969] and J. L. Austin's How To Do Things With Words [2nd ed. 1975] both predated Wilkins's research, which originated in his PhD work. Wilkins's important contribution was to make a connection between work in the philosophy of language and language teaching, particularly the problem of how to specify a modern language syllabus. Other writers subsequently took up the challenge of producing English language course books based on a notional / functional approach. Brian Abbs and Ingrid Freebairn, for example, refer specifically to the notional / functional approach in section 3, The idea behind the course, of the introduction to their Teacher's Book for Building Strategies [Longman 1979]. They also describe their approach as a communicative methodology and emphasise the importance of discourse skills.
• Although Abbs and Freebairn were quick to apply these ideas to English language teaching, authors from other countries also developed speech act theory into materials of practical use to language learners and teachers. An example is the 1991 taxonomy under categories of use for learners of Spanish in Actos de Habla de la Lengua Espanola by Jesus Fernandez Cinto.
• Although new terminology was subsequently invented for academic purposes, the idea of teaching functional language is as old as language teaching itself. There is a long history of language phrase books for travellers. In the early twentieth century, organisations such as Berlitz, which had pioneered Direct Method teaching in private language schools, also produced phrase books for travellers and faced competition from publishers such as Hugo. The better phrase books organised their content around functions, situations and topics likely to be directly useful to travellers. Similar materials were produced for troops serving abroad during the Second World War. Their aim was communicative rather than synthetic.

The Notional / Functional approach should therefore not be credited entirely to the second half of the twentieth century. It is fair, however, to credit Notional Syllabuses with helping to formalise ideas which, for a time, were widely described by course book writers as the Notional / Functional approach, before the adjective communicative became more widely adopted.

Are structural syllabuses any less natural than other approaches?

Ways of structuring language courses reflect different underlying approaches to language learning. Wilkins used the term synthetic to describe structural language syllabuses prevalent in the 1960s and early 1970s. The term involves an unfortunate ambiguity. Structural syllabuses are 'synthetic' in the sense that they help learners to build up their language skills from a selection of linguistic forms. However, synthetic can also mean 'unnatural' in ordinary dictionary usage.

Characterising the structural syllabus as 'unnatural' in order to validate something called The Natural Approach was not Wilkins's intention.

The defence of structural syllabuses is their capacity to ensure that learners beginning a new language are presented with a manageable sequence of linguistic challenges. Those who argue for abandoning structural design perhaps need reminding that all languages are structural. Learners build up their language partly by recognising and using structural patterns. I know of no language course book for low-level learners which does not contain some kind of structural thread, whatever other principles its authors and publishers may claim to follow.

Further discussion of the ideas marketed as 'natural', particularly The Natural Approach, can be found in Language Two [1982] by Heidi C. Dulay, Marina K. Burt and Stephen D. Krashen. Although I tried hard to absorb these ideas during my MA course in 1984, I found them less useful in my own teaching than less theoretical works such as Streamline Departures, which was structured to provide learners with accessible entry-points into an unfamiliar language system.

At pre-intermediate level, I got on well with Brian Abbs and Ingrid Freebairn's Building Strategies, which was presented as a Notional / Functional approach. However, the authors did not abandon a structural thread. The Council of Europe's Waystage [1980] and Threshold [1980] syllabus specifications, at pre-intermediate and intermediate levels respectively, also demonstrated that a functional syllabus could be specified without abandoning reference to structural patterns. There was therefore an acknowledgement that some control of syntax is needed at lower levels of second-language learning and teaching.

I got on less well with course books such as Communicate and Approaches [Cambridge 1979]. My learners were disorientated by the absence of a clear structural thread and did not feel that they were making progress. These books enjoyed a disappointingly short shelf-life in the school where I taught. One teacher commented that they 'have no meat in them'. I assumed that by 'meat' the teacher meant the backbone provided by a structural syllabus.

Food analogies are not altogether helpful in linguistics. Branding one type of syllabus as 'natural' in order to dismiss another as 'synthetic' is particularly unhelpful when synthetic is being used by Wilkins in a quite different sense.

Are structural syllabuses uncommunicative?

Another common form of branding or marketing is the use of the adjective communicative to identify a type of syllabus supposedly invented in recent times and so superior to earlier approaches that there is no longer any need to judge whether it is actually effective in fostering language use.

Claiming special ownership of the adjective communicative for a particular era or type of syllabus is highly presumptuous. Communicative describes the overall purpose of learning and teaching a modern language.

Is it really the case that people trying to organise language teaching in previous decades, centuries or millennia never focused on helping learners to communicate? The history of language teaching is well documented in:

1. Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching: Historical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Applied Linguistic Research by H. H. Stern [1983], Oxford Applied Linguistics.
2. A History of English Language Teaching by A. P. R. Howatt with H. G. Widdowson. The 2nd revised edition was published in 2004; the 1st edition was published in 1984.

Chapter 14 of Howatt's history is entitled Natural methods of language teaching from Montaigne to Berlitz. Howatt cites a variety of labels – Natural Method, Conversation Method, Direct Method and Communicative Approach – which he associates with communicative approaches to language teaching. The reference to Michel de Montaigne in the chapter title makes the point that there was an early example of natural foreign-language teaching as far back as the sixteenth century.

Howatt's Chapter 2, Refugiate in a strange country: the refugee language teachers in Elizabethan London, examines the teaching methods used by three refugees: Jacques Bellot, Claudius Holyband and John Florio. Large numbers of French Huguenot and Protestant refugees fled to London during the 1570s and 1580s. Jacques Bellot produced English manuals, including collections of dialogues and conversations for French-speaking refugees. These were based largely on the everyday spoken-English needs of the non-breadwinners in refugee families: shopping, getting up in the morning, going to school and so on.

Before the revival of Communicative Language Teaching in the late 1970s, communicative approaches had also been revived among native-speaking immigrant communities in America in the 1860s, for example through Sauveur and Heness. See Sauveur's An Introduction to the Teaching of Living Languages without Grammar or Dictionary [1874].

Different 'Natural Approaches' relate to different and incompatible sets of ideas

Anthony Howatt's review of natural methods concludes with a description of how Direct Method language teaching became available from the late nineteenth century onwards to large numbers of learners who would not otherwise have encountered it in ordinary schools. This was largely achieved through dedicated Direct Method language schools established by Maximilian D. Berlitz [1852–1921]. In the UK, the grammar-translation approach remained prevalent in state schools, top public schools and universities until about 1970.

As a marketing term, the word natural is confusing because, over time, it has been used to publicise very different sets of ideas. Once the label is set aside and the ideas themselves are examined, it becomes clear that one 'Natural Approach' can be largely incompatible with another.

Berlitz's Direct Method, alternatively described as The Natural Method, is very different from The Natural Approach described in Language Two [1982] by Heidi C. Dulay, Marina K. Burt and Stephen D. Krashen.

The very different 'Natural Approaches' associated with Berlitz in the late nineteenth century and Krashen in the second half of the twentieth century both moved away from translation. However, the Direct Method, used successfully in Berlitz and Inlingua schools for more than a century, is essentially a structural approach.

Wilkins described the structural approach as synthetic, not to suggest that the language patterns used were artificial. A typical structural syllabus aims to teach new linguistic structures through such procedures as:

• explanation of rules;
• presentation of paradigms;
• contextualisation through dialogues;
• series of analogous sentences designed to promote inductive learning.

The content of a synthetic syllabus consists primarily of a selection and ordering of linguistic forms.

Berlitz, Inlingua and many other language-school chains have had a long record of success using this general approach. Even today, very few course books intended for lower levels completely abandon a structural thread.

Valid criticisms of many structural syllabuses

The Direct Method, traditionally used in Berlitz, Inlingua and many other private language schools, was a behaviourist version of the structural syllabus. It did not emphasise explicit explanation of rules, and certainly not explanation through translation. The emphasis was on stimulus and response. Later cognitive versions of the structural approach placed greater importance on knowledge and awareness of rules.

Analogous sentences designed to promote inductive learning occur in structural approaches generally, and I have always found them useful. However, one of the main weaknesses of many structural approaches, including the Berlitz Direct Method, was insufficient attention to discourse: for example, the discourse markers used for reference and to indicate logical relationships within a well-constructed paragraph.

Poor versions of structural syllabuses focused almost entirely on sentence-level question and answer. The grammar-translation approach, for all its limitations, at least involved learners with discourse.

The Berlitz Direct Method emphasised spoken English. A fair criticism of the structural syllabus adopted by Berlitz and Inlingua schools until about 1980 is that it allowed relatively little cultural adjustment. Similar patterns and vocabulary were used whether the target language was French, British English, American English, German or Spanish. To achieve this, much of the content consisted of sentence-level question and answer. What was presented as spoken language could therefore resemble a kind of structure-speech, lacking many of the features found in natural conversation between native speakers.

Interest among language syllabus designers in discourse, both spoken and written, increased during the 1970s. The expansion of English for Academic Purposes also drew attention to the need for learners to understand discourse, such as the development of a topic within a paragraph. L2 students found themselves listening to university lecturers who did not speak to them in a succession of short, perfectly formed sentences or in Received Pronunciation.

There was a parallel expansion during the 1970s in the teaching of English for Specific Purposes. Removed from context, forms such as will can have meanings which are not predicted simply by their grammatical form. For example:

This machine will print 10 pages per minute.

Here will can express capacity rather than future time. A structural approach can accommodate more than one meaning and can also be applied to occupational varieties of English. However, greater attention to the relationship between syntax and semantics is required to make clear that there is no simple one-to-one relationship between linguistic form and meaning.

Refinements to structural syllabuses during the 1970s and 1980s

During the 1970s and 1980s, under the influence of works such as Robert O'Neill's English in Situations, the quality of structural syllabus design improved in several ways.

• A cognitive dimension was added to many course designs, providing greater attention to meaning, insight into underlying rules and the role of mistakes as indications that greater conceptual awareness might be needed.
• By the end of the 1970s, the Council of Europe's Waystage [1980] and Threshold [1980] syllabus specifications had demonstrated the value of maintaining both structural and functional syllabus threads.

Direct Method courses such as Nuffield En Avant French had already used both structural and situational criteria when selecting content. Functional criteria subsequently became an additional strand in language course books, such as Strategies, and in examination syllabuses, including the revised Cambridge First Certificate and the new Cambridge PET.

These examples demonstrate that structural and functional syllabuses can operate successfully alongside one another. They also suggest that criticisms should be directed at poor structural syllabuses which emphasise syntax at the expense of semantics, rather than at structural syllabus design itself.

• Poor structural syllabuses may fail to prioritise vocabulary relevant to learners' communicative needs. Lexical and grammatical criteria for selecting and grading language can complement one another, although they can sometimes conflict. A highly desirable lexical item may, for example, create grammatical difficulties for beginners.

The great strength of structural syllabuses is their emphasis on language patterns, which assists the generative use of language and therefore facilitates communication. In selecting content words, better structural syllabuses can also take account of functional language and both the immediate and deferred needs of language learners.

The limits of functional / notional syllabuses

The extract below, written by Robert O'Neill, was published in English for Specific Purposes, Modern English Publications Limited, 1977, ISBN 0 906149 00 2.

O'Neill's criticisms of functional / notional syllabuses would equally apply to communicative language-teaching syllabuses.

The central point of the article is that language use can be so personal and unpredictable that no notional / functional or communicative syllabus designer could predict every communicative need a learner might have. Julian Dakin recounts the example of an eight-year-old girl who, in a tape-recorded interview, said that her guinea pig had died with its legs crossed.

By contrast, structural syllabus design fosters the generative use of language, allowing speakers to form sentences which they have never previously heard or produced.

The article draws extensively on Julian Dakin's Language Laboratory and Language Learning [Longman 1973], but it also provides a particularly clear account of Robert O'Neill's own experience and beliefs concerning structural and communicative language teaching.

Extract from: The limits of functional / notional syllabuses – or
'My guinea pig died with its legs crossed' by Robert O'Neill

There is in my mind, and in my teaching and writing, a constant and often uneasy tension between the desire to teach what I hope will be directly useful to the learner and the desire also to help the learner acquire the generative framework without which no communication is possible. And to do this at all there are at times, frankly, when I feel compelled to abandon the claim that what I am doing is going to be of any use I can foresee at the time. Often I have to address myself to other needs than the learner's 'communicative' ones. And even, sometimes, when I know there are language operations the learner will have to carry out just outside the classroom, I defer teaching for these needs in order to meet still greater needs.

For example, in the beginning stages there is the need to help the learner feel he or she can actually learn. This is perhaps the greatest need of all. And huge numbers of those who begin learning a language never get beyond the rudiments because they are defeated at this level. They are not helped by teachers who think only of 'communication'. By teachers who do not try to predict some of the major phonological and structural problems the learner will have in trying to communicate. By teachers who do nothing to help the learner, in some kind of flexible but orderly fashion, to come gradually to grips with these difficulties and slowly to master at least some of them.

At the very beginning, a foreign language seems to the learner like a brutal and wild barrage of strange sounds, words, noises, letters and stringings-together of structures. If you simply march your troops into the loudest bits of gunfire, the 'communicative situations' you can be pretty sure they will have to deal with, you are more likely to give them a bad case of shell shock than help them to survive.

Some teachers, aware of this danger, create in their classrooms an atmosphere from which the sound of real action is forever banished. Everything is ordered according to some rigid and internal notion of simplicity and learnability, and usually the result is that nothing worth learning ever gets learned.

Other teachers, more wisely I think, remain concerned with both communication and the problems of learning the system behind it. They organise their teaching so that the needs of both the system and the communicative functions it is used for are kept in some kind of equilibrium.

For instance, they begin with what they feel, often intuitively, to be fairly accessible entry-points into the system. The learner can reach them without excessive effort and damage to his or her confidence. These entry-points may be structures like 'My name is...', 'This is... (an introduction)', 'I live in...' and 'He lives in...'. But these are chosen not only because they are accessible but also because they are likely to be very useful. And from the very beginning they can be manipulated by the learner with some degree of creativity. Perhaps at this point they go on to the Present Progressive, much like Dakin's story.

Click here for the full text of the article, used with Robert O'Neill's permission.

Successful course books based on Notional / Functional design

D. A. Wilkins's terminology from his seminal work Notional Syllabuses [Oxford 1976] was adopted in a number of successful course books. Language-teaching theory was moving in a similar direction in the USA and elsewhere in Europe, although many authors continued to refer to John Searle's Speech Acts rather than to Wilkins's terminology of notions and functions when drawing attention to semantic criteria. Taxonomies with titles such as Los Actos de Hablar also found their way into school and university collections in Spain.

• Building Strategies by Brian Abbs and Ingrid Freebairn [Longman 1979] – see the Teacher's Book for a description of the Notional / Functional approach.
• Functions of English by Leo Jones [Cambridge 1979].
• Notions in English by Leo Jones [Cambridge 1982].

Less successful course books of the late 1970s and early 1980s by other writers, despite their theoretical commitment to the new approach, included:

• Communicate and Approaches [Cambridge 1979].

Successful course books of the 1970s and 1980s based on multi-syllabus approaches

The most successful course books of the late 1970s and the 1980s were generally more eclectic than the clearly synthetic designs of the two previous decades. They made greater concessions to language use, semantics and meaning without necessarily adopting D. A. Wilkins's terminology of 'functions' and 'notions'. These multi-syllabus, multi-skill course books nevertheless retained a structural thread, and some continued to make extensive use of drilling.

1. Kernel One [1979] and Kernel Two [1982] by Robert O'Neill. These courses have a strong structural thread as well as a narrative involving central characters. Supplementary drills and pronunciation exercises were produced for Kernel One by Robert O'Neill and Muriel Higgins.
2. Bernard Hartley and Peter Viney's Streamline Departures [1978], Streamline Connections [1979], Streamline Destinations [1981] and Streamline Directions [1985]. Streamline Departures was one of the most successful structural syllabuses of the 1970s and 1980s. Supplementary exercises suitable for the language laboratory were produced at each level, with Speechwork added to each title.
3. Brian Abbs and Ingrid Freebairn's Strategies [1975], Starting Strategies [1977], Building Strategies [1979 and 1984], Developing Strategies [1980], Studying Strategies [1982] and Opening Strategies [1985]. Building Strategies [1979] was the first of the series to mention Notional / Functional syllabuses in its Teacher's Book, although the earlier Strategies [1975] had already moved some distance towards communicative syllabus design.
4. Michael Swan and Catherine Walter's The Cambridge English Course 1 [1984], The Cambridge English Course 2 [1985] and The Cambridge English Course 3 [1987]. Revised versions were subsequently published as The New Cambridge English Course 1, 2 & 3, in larger formats comparable to the course books in Oxford University Press's Streamline series. I liked the balanced course design of the original series, but I felt that publishing new versions was a mistake because the content had changed only slightly. This could be confusing for schools holding class sets of both versions, and there were some unhappy mix-ups when learners purchased the wrong editions.
5. John and Liz Soars's Headway Intermediate [1986], Headway Upper Intermediate [1987] and Headway Pre-intermediate [1991]. I felt that the quality of the original 1991 Headway Pre-intermediate was hard to beat. The course book worked seamlessly on most occasions when I used it.
6. Robert O'Neill's and Patricia Mugglestone's Fourth Dimension [1986] and Third Dimension [1989].

It is worth noting the influence of the Council of Europe on course book design, especially at pre-intermediate and intermediate levels. Its early Waystage [1980] and Threshold [1980] syllabus specifications adopted a twin-syllabus approach. They listed notions and functions alongside syntactic forms suitable for lower levels which could be used to realise those functions.

This provides an important indication of the relationship between structural and functional syllabus design. The two do not necessarily have to compete. A syllabus can identify communicative purposes while also recognising the structural patterns that learners need in order to express them.

For a chronological account of important developments in English language teaching methodology from 1400 to the present day, see A History of English Language Teaching by A. P. R. Howatt with H. G. Widdowson. The 2nd revised edition was published in 2004 and the 1st edition in 1984.