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3.

0 CRITICAL REVIEW

3.1 Product Oriented Syllabus [Functional-Notional Syllabus]

A Critical Review of the journal titled The Functional Approach to Second Language
Instruction by Adam Ismail Mohamed Ahmed, World Journal of English Language, vol. 3,
no. 1; 2013.

The author has stated his purpose of conducting the study with reasons. The purpose of this
study conducted is to investigate the effectiveness of the functional approach to second
language instruction in obtaining grammatical accuracy. The reason that the author conducted
the study is because he finds that many instructors of English use the structural and traditional
approaches in teaching grammar which turn down of English language among university
students. Besides that, another reason is the aspects of todays life which involves second or
foreign language students to cope with the discourse of modern civilization thus they can
comprehend cross-cultural globally through multimedia that involves communication channels.
The research could be beneficial in providing insights for teachers about what is functional
approach syllabus in education and what it really does or results when they implement this
functional approach in lessons to get the students to achieve grammatical accuracy when
communicating.

To conduct research in this study, the author used qualitative and quantitative research methods
to elicit data. The subjects of the study are English majoring students at the University of Nyala
in Suda. The subjects are divided into two groups which are controlled and experimental
groups. The data collected from the subjects were analyzed by using a T-test. The research
questions of the study conducted is:

a) Does the functional approach to second instruction facilitate the acquisition of


grammatical accuracy more effectively than the structural approach?
b) What are the factors that make the functional approach to second instruction more
effective in acquiring the grammatical accuracy than the structural approach?

Based on the journal, the findings of the study have been productive. The author claims that the
functional treatment is more effective in getting the grammars to be accurate than the structural
treatment. Besides that, the author has claimed that the results or findings of the study support
previous researches which have also investigated the effectiveness of using functional
approach to second language instruction. It is good that the author mentioned that his findings
support other scholars research based on same topic because it helps the reader to believe and
trust on this approach that it works. Most of subjects are having lack of knowledge on the
English tenses when they sit for pre-test because of two reasons. The reasons are during
schooling, they were taught English tenses in traditional and structured approach and teaching
of English tenses is ignored at university level because the lecturers assumes that all students
have already known the English tenses in schools and do not have to be taught again. This
issue is quite true in education system where teachers assume that students already had
learned the basic of English language and not teaching it again thoroughly. It is clear that the
findings has answered the research questions

Apart from that, the author also provides information on implication of this functional approach
pedagogically. The author stated that functional approach helps students to use the language
properly in real-world situation and can be make use of teaching all the four skills on language
functions. It has been stated in the journal that in order to prepare students to cope with modern
civilization, they need to start using real and appropriate language to communicate with others
and the communication can be done in many ways such as through mobile phone, internet,
chatting and so on. Generally, using the functional approach to learn the grammar focuses on
how to use language to gain a variety of different functional and communicative purposes. The
author has explained well about the implications of functional approach in classroom which
gives an insight to teachers who are unsure how to execute the approach in classroom.

In conclusion, I find that the author really had explained clearly on the theory of the functional
approach and what learners benefit from that. Besides that, I find that the author should test the
subjects more on writing skills that is writing with using certain words to lodge a complaint, to
give information to people or any situational context. This is because, this will beneficial for the
subjects and more appropriate test to investigate their communicative competence which will
improve their level of competence of using language function. The author has chose the suitable
data collection method which is T-test and it is an appropriate method to test subjects level of
competency at pre-test and post-test stage. This journal would be helpful for teacher who are
eager to know about functional approach can read this journal to get enough understanding on
how effectively it works on students and get some ideas on which area that it can be taught to
the students.

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