Discourse Analysis For English Language Teaching

English, in many countries, is taught as a compulsory subject at schools and universities. Even if the students have been learning English for so many years, some are still unable to communicate and some are able, but their English sounds odd and unnatural. They could speak grammatically correct English, but fail in speaking naturally intelligible English. This happens because they receive many inputs of English form, but less in English functions. Teaching English through drilling the rules of grammar and memorizing vocabulary (textual-grammatical) has been the teaching orientation of many teachers of English. To shift the teaching orientation, English teachers need to study Discourse Analysis which will give them information on show how native English speakers interact and communicate in their real social lives. From this, the teachers should be able to teach English not only textual-grammatical English, but also contextual-functional English. The fusion of the teaching orientations is expected able to make the learners of English succeed in both mastering English components (e.g. grammar and vocabulary) and using the components to communicate appropriately and naturally.