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程麗群

Abstract: The essay gives a brief survey of structural and functional aspects of communicative English language as well as understanding relationship between function and structure in English study.

Key words:Structural View; Functional View; Communicative Ability; Linguistic Competence

English is a communicative tool in our daily life. Every English teacher knows, teaching English aims at cultivating students' communicative ability. English itself is a communicative language. One of the most characteristic features of communicative lan- guage is that it pays systematic attention to functional as well as structural aspects of language, combining these into a more fully communicative view.

The structural view of English focus on the grammatical system, depicting ways in which linguistic items can be put together. Some people hold the wrong idea that memorizing a good many English words or expressions will lead into good linguistic competence of producing good sentences or paragraphs. Actually they just casually piece words and phrases together and neglect grammatical rules which combine words or expressions into a correct structure. The structural view of English helps to construct linguistic ability in communication. Different linguistic order pass on different communic- ative information. For example, the view explains the operations for making the passive “Paper was first invented in China” rather than the active “Somebody first invented paper in China”, and describe the word rules that make us interpret “The father scolded the son”quite differently from “The son scolded the father” . Intuitive knowledge of these, and of a great number of other linguistic facts and operations, bringing up an English learners linguistic competence and enables him to make up new sentences to match the meanings that he needs to express.

In no way can the structural view be replaced by the functional view. However, it is not sufficient on its own to account for how English language is used as a means of communication. Lets take the following straightforward sentence for example:

Why dont you come earlier?

Apparently, from a structural viewpoint, it is a interrogative. In grammar, grammarians may define it in different terms, but none could argue that its grammatical form is that of a declarative or imperative. From a funct- ional aspect, however, it is ambiguous. In different circumstances, it may function differently. For example, when the sentence is used as a question, the speaker may genuinely wish to know why the listener arrived late. Considering another situation, it may function as a commandthis would probably be the case if, say, a commander addressed it to a soldier who had arrived late. In yet other situations, it could be intended as a plea, a suggestion or a complaint. In other words, although the sentences structure is fixed and straightforward, its communicative function is variable and depends on specific situational and social factors.

Structural and functional views should be united into an organic whole in English language teaching when we try to train st-udents communicative ability. As we see, in structure, a single linguistic form can express a number of functions, so also can a single communication function be expressed by a number of linguistic forms. Take the sentence “Why dont you come earlier?” for example again, the speaker may not address it straightforward, he has many other linguistic choices, including “Come earlier, please”, “Could you come earlier?”, “Excuse me, could I trouble you to come earlier?”. Some forms might only perform this directive function in the context of certain social relationships, for instance, “Youve arrived late!” could act as a directive from teacher to student, but not from teacher to president.

Sometimes in teaching we can find some students fail in understanding the teachers communicative attempts. Once I wanted Du to fetch a box of chalk for me, my first attempt “Would you get me a box of chalk before I use them up” to communicate my meaning to Du resulted in confusion, there was not any action from Du, then I used a direct imperative which he understood at last “Du, get me some chalk”.

It was unambiguous from Du's reactions that he was not being insolent or deliberately uncooperative. The possible explanations for his failure lie in that the structure of the sentence could have been outside Dus ling-uistic competence or the student may have been unfamiliar with the use of interrogative structure for expressing commands. Perhaps his behavior is often predominantly controlled by his parents direct imperatives. In other words, the teachers utterance may have been within his linguistic competence but outside his communicative competence.

The above two possible explanations highlight two corresponding aspects of the skill involved in understanding functional meanings in English study: the ability to comprehend linguistic structures and vocab- ulary and knowledge of the potential commu-nicative functions of linguistic forms. Since the relationship between structure and function is variable, and can not be definitely predicted outside specific situations. The teacher, on one hand, must try to create real situational circumstances for students to study English, on the other hand, students must also be given opportunities to develop strategies for pract- icing English in actual use.

作者單位:湖北咸寧職業(yè)技術學院