DISCOURSE COMPETENCE IN LANGUAGE LEARNING: A FUNCTIONAL PERSPECTIVE

This paper attempts to discuss discourse competence in
language learning and it viewes from a functional perspective. It focuses on how current issues such as
discourse analysis is concerned with language in use in
social contexts, as well as linguistic units, such as units of language beyond the sentence level. In discourse analysis the highest unit of language is the text, and language is realized within its context. The discussion of the subject matter based on the three functional perspectives developed by Halliday (1979). There are three broad metafunctions: ideational, interpersonal, and textual. Each of the three metafunction is about a different aspect of the things which is concerned with a different mode of meaning of clauses. The ideational metafunction is concern with clauses as representations. The interpersonal metafunction is concern with clauses as exchanges and the textual metafunction is concern with clauses as messages.