Sometimes, when we look at all the (literally) millions of words and phrases there are out there to teach our students, we can get totally overwhelmed.

There’s so much of it, right? So, it helps to break it up a bit.

One of the most useful ways of doing that is through function and genre.

It might seem that in any situation, the possibilities of what we can say are endless, and that makes us ask the question, “What do I teach my students? I can’t possibly teach them EVERY SINGLE ENGLISH WORD AND PHRASE EVER…”

But, happily, the possibilities of what we can say start getting much much smaller when we start thinking about why we’re communicating.

Whenever we’re using language, we’re fulfilling a function. Perhaps it’s something technical like asking for directions. Perhaps it’s something more general, like trying to get to know someone better.

Either way, when we look at the sort of functions we want our students to be able to fulfil in English, we get a nice, limited, selection of words and phrases to teach them.

When we’re bored, for example, and we’re trying to find something to do, the language of making suggestions, accepting suggestions and rejecting suggestions comes to the fore.

And that’s what’s happening in this video.

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