1 I take it that the purpose of any language course is to develop in learners the ability
2 In courses which have a notional/functional orientation, the focus of attention is on the schematic level and the direction of fit is reversed. That is to say, the starting point is a particular notional frame. of reference or, more usually, a particular functional routine: asking the way, asking and granting permission, apologizing and so on. The language is then brought in to service the presentation of these schemata. In both cases the whole business of language behaviour is presented as a straightforward matter of projecting knowledge. One gets the image of the language user as somebody going around with bits of language in his head aiming for the appropriate occasion to insert them into the right situational slots.
3 But actual language use is not like this at all. It is rather a series of problems that have to be solved on the spot by reference to a knowledge of linguistic systems and communicative schemata. This knowledge does not provide ready-made solutions which are simply selected from storage and fitted in. But language courses have generally been based on the assumption that it does. Whether they are structurally or functionally oriented, what they have tended to do is to present and practise solutions. What they need to do, I suggest, is to create problems which require interpretative procedures to discover solutions by drawing on the knowledge available as a resource. In other words, they need to encourage the exercise of the capacity for negotiating meaning and working out the indexical value of language elements in context.
The writer is arguing in favor of ______.
A.functionally oriented language courses
B.notionally oriented language courses
C.structurally oriented language courses
D.none of the above