If they think English is a communication tool, then they will try to teach the functional sentences, such as “Hello.” “How do you do.” “Good bye!” when greeting people; or sentences for going shopping.
II. Views on language.
1) What is language ?
Language is a system of arbitrary verbal symbols used for human communication. ( Wardhaugh , 1972 : 3) (other different definitions on p307, Appendix1) 2) Different views on language : the structural view
Interactional View :
It consider language as a communicative tool , whose main use is to build up and maintain social relations between people. Therefore , learners not only need to know the grammar and vocabulary of the language , but also need to know the rules for using them in a whole range of communicative context.
the functional view
the interactional view
Structural View :
It sees language as a linguistic system made up of various subsystem : from phonological, morphological, lexical, etc. to sentence . (p3, from Larsen-Freeman&Long, 1991) Each language has a finite number of such structural items. To learn a language means to learn these structural items so as to be able to understand and produce language .
Unit 1
I.
Language and learning
How do we learn language ?
1 ) How do we learn our own language ?
2 ) How do we learn a foreign language ? (1) People learn language for different reasons. (2) People learn language in different ways. (3) People have different understanding about language learning. (4) People have different capabilities in language learning.
For example,

If they think English is a set of letters, words, sentences and grammar rules, they will teach their students to read and write these items in order to master the language.
English teaching Methodology
Unit 1 Languaቤተ መጻሕፍቲ ባይዱe and learning
Two commonly asked questions:
1.
Is there any shortcut in English learning? Is there any shortcut in English teaching?
The possible answers:
Yes and no. The best way of teaching English is to teach according to how English is learnt successfully.


In fact, language teachers often teach a language according to what they think about language and language learning.
Functional View :
It not only sees language as a linguistic system but also as a means for doing things (p.3). Most of our day-to-day language use involves functional activities : offering , suggesting , advising, apologizing, etc. Therefore , learners learn a language in order to do things with it . To perform functions , learners need to know how to combine the grammatical rules and the vocabulary to express notions that perform the functions.