Key Concept

Professor Christiane Dalton-Puffer, Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Vienna, explains the concept of Cognitive Discourse Functions, which offer a systematic way of “link[ing] subject-specific cognitive learning goals with the linguistic representations they receive in classroom interaction” (Dalton-Puffer 2016:30). In video 1 below

Professor Dalton-Puffer explains what the construct is and in video 2 she tells us a little about the origins of the construct.

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For more information you might want to read her article:

Dalton-Puffer, C. (2013). A construct of cognitive discourse functions for conceptualising content-language integration in CLIL and multilingual education. European Journal of Applied Linguistics, 1(2). https://doi.org/10.1515/eujal-2013-0011

Dalton-Puffer, C. (2016). Cognitive discourse functions: Specifying an integrative interdisciplinary construct. In Dafouz,E., Nikula, T., Moore, P., & Smit, U. (Eds) Conceptualising Integration in CLIL and Multilingual Education (pp. 29–54). Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781783096145-005

Somethings to think about or try out:

- Choose a typical activity or material in your subject area and try to identify which CDFs learners should produce.

- Consider whether the instructions given to learners are clear regarding which CDF you want them to produce and whether there are any ways of being more explicit.

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