What Is Language for?: a Functional View of the Language Arts

Abstract

Whatever our views about language — strict or liberal, traditional or progressive — it is abundantly clear that language is at the centre of all of the activities we connect with school and learning. Children who succeed in school generally are those who can use language effectively to ask questions, argue a point, express their personal views and to establish relationships with others. Those who have difficulty usually suffer from some kind of language failure. Sometimes it is failure in communication between pupils, teachers and pupils or teachers and parents. Sometimes it is failure of children to make the transitions from speech to reading and writing. Often it is the failure of both teachers and pupils to link the ideas expressed in textbooks to the reality children know. Whatever the reasons, children’s success and failure in school is bound up in the way they use language to share meanings with others (teachers, peers, authors of learning materials) in the process of education.