Teach english new edition r

Language functions
An exasperated teacher tells a habitually late student ‘You’d better get here on tim e next 
class!’ She is making a recom mendation, something which is between advice and an order.
There are other ways in which the teacher can make recommendations, too, and her 
choice may well depend on exactly how exasperated she is and how formal, informal, direct 
or indirect she wishes to be - what tone she wishes to adopt (see page 79).
EXAMPLES
Get here on time next class if you know what’s good for you.
I strongly recommend that you get here on time next class.
I suggest you get here on time next class.
I think it would be a really good idea if you got here on time next class.
It would be a good idea if you tried to get here on time next class.
Next class? On time, OK?
A language function is a purpose you wish to achieve when you say or write something. 
By ‘perform ing’ the function, you are perform ing an act of comm unication. If you say ‘I 
apologise’, you are performing the function of apologising; if you say ‘I promise’, you are 
perform ing the function of promising. But functions are more often perform ed w ithout 
using verbs like this at all. We can apologise by saying ‘sorry’ and invite someone not by 
saying ‘I invite you’ but by saying things like ‘D’you fancy coming round for a meal?’. As 
we have seen above, there are m any ways of recom mending a course of action. Many 
functional 
exponents 
(patterns or phrases) are exactly the kind of lexical phrases we 
discussed above.
If our students want to express themselves in speaking or writing, they need to know 
how to perform these functions. A key feature of specific functional exponents is to know 
which are more or less appropriate in given situations (depending on who is being talked 
to, what the situation is and how determ ined or tentative the speaker wishes to be). Issues 
of register (see page 79) are crucial here.