Instructional discourse: Language Functions and Classroom Practices

By Viviana Cortes, Ph.D. (Applied Linguistics and ESOL)

Perhaps the best way to start a discussion about functional language is to look at written language. When we write, we need to make sure the language we use is communicating what we want to convey. This language is not only related to the information we want to covey or he content of our writing. We need to pay attention to the language that we use to guide our reader through our written production.

Functional language in academic writing

For example, when writing a research article, if we want to indicate a gap in research we can use specific expressions that help indicate that gap. A good example of this type of expressions is “little is known about.” Let’s look at how this expression is used in context to indicate a gap in research in a particular area:

More importantly, the extant literature does not offer insights on how actual users employ interface agents in various software environments including electronic mail systems. Little is known about the actual end-use experience.

Other expressions that are used for the same purpose are ”there is a need” and “…to our knowledge, there is no…” among several other expressions.

Functional language in classroom discourse

Now, if we look at instructional discourse, that is, the language that we use in the classroom, we can also find many linguistics exponents of functional language that are used for a wide variety of purposes such as

• engaging students
• organizing the content
• managing the class

As instructors are well aware of, classes have different stages. Instructors usually start a class in a certain way. Then the class evolves going through certain stages. These stages may have some things in common across instructors but in many cases, instructors shape their classes to their particular needs. The same goes for closing stages. The language that instructors use for these class stages, however, has been found to be very formulaic and the use of these formulas recurs across instructors and across disciplines (Biber, 2006).

Class openings show good examples of this type of language. In face-to-face contexts, we refer to class opening as the first stages in the class, on average the first three or four minutes. Instructors often use those minutes to manage several aspects of the class, present the objectives of the class, and show some outline of the content. Instructors may also bring back topics from previous classes or provide feedback from homework or previous work.

Functional Language in class openings

In face-to-face teaching contexts, examples of functional language in class openings are referential expressions and stance markers used to guide students to the objectives/content of the class:

what I want to do is…

what I want you to do is…

take a look at….

one of the things…

we are going to talk about…/what we are going to talk about…

we are going to have to…

            These are some examples of functional language from a class:

Ok. What I want to do is pick up where I hope you left off with it last week and even a bit of time to revisit that….

What we are going to have to do is have this due Wednesday….

            Moving along class stages: Content Presentation

In this stage, instructors do not use introductory expressions any longer because these stages are geared towards presentation and explanation stages. The discourse in these units also has referential expressions but it has many discourse organizers, as in these examples

Introducing a point	Revisiting/reviewing a point	Discussing abstract ideas
I’ll start with… I’ll show you… We’re gonna talk about… If you look at the… you’ll see that… Let’s first take a look at… I wanted to (wanna) talk about…	You may remember that you’ve seen that… We’ve talked about… This we mentioned in… Let’s come back to… I’ll go back to… We were talking about… In case you happen to have missed this point	Imagine/consider for a moment that.. Consider this scenario… What would you do if     we/you… If you think about… Let’s say that… Pretend … Hypothetically..

Final remarks

Once instructors are aware of these language uses, they can notice and learn the functional language they themselves use and that used by other instructors. Functional language and content language go hand in hand in our teaching. Functional language is motivated by functions, but it is also influenced by many contexts such as power dynamics, topic gravity, audience size, relationship between instructor and students, and so on. We need to pay more attention to when language is used in addition to what language is used and what is used for.