Journal of Al-qadisiya in arts and educational sciense

Abstract

This paper aims at manifesting the role of Discourse Analysis in English Language Teaching from a Functional Perspective. Most of the research to date has been concerned with discourse analysis as an alternative method for understanding language cognition process. In this paper the concern will be on how functional properties of sentential elements (interrogatives will be taken as an example) act as prompts to hearers in different contexts, to facilitate the integration of on-line information. In addition, discourse analysis is a methodological tool, which easily lends itself to the investigation of the functional properties of talk, developmental process as well as discrimination by identifying social attitudes and ideologies responsible for observed linguistic patterns. Most teachers have a tendency to teach language in isolation with its use. As a result, the context is lacking and when it is time to practice the things they have learned in real life situations the students fail to use the language and find it difficult to recognize the function of the utterance guided by the speaker.