Functional Grammar involves considering grammar from the point of view of the USE of the language, this is, language in context. Learning Traditional Grammar, as you have experienced, does not necessarily mean you learn to use the language in communication. So now we're trying to understand, teach and learn using FG.

On our Functional Grammar section not all is technically speaking FG, but I'll be trying to turn it all into that!

The first thing we've got to do is change our approach: literal translation is not helpful. It's more helpful to know what our aim is with the message we want to create. First you need to understand - and doses of intuition are required - that our approach will always part from human communication and its contexts: what do we want to communicate who to, where...? What do you wish to do in a situation, to somebody! with what you want to say? Here is a little chart that can help you learn about Language Functions and Modals (1 page). If you analyze it you will see that thinking in terms of Language Functions is going to help you use Modals better than thinking in terms of (inaccurate, misleading) equivalences (literal translation) such as "have to" is "tener que". Oh my! That's terrible!

Are you getting the feeling of what I mean? Let me explain further by using an example... If you want to translate ¿Qué me pongo? and you use literal translation, the result will be completely disastrous. But if you ask yourself, "Which is the language function I'm using?", which is my communicative aim and intention?, you'll get a clear answer: you are asking for advice, you are going to be polite. In English there is a modal auxiliary verb to ask for advice: should. So the functional translation of that sentence is: What should I wear? The different translations we may get of a same sentence depend often on our communicative aim, on the function we want language to perform for us, and on context (the situation, the people involved), of course.

Also, check out the FAQ webpage on English - Teaching/Learning

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HotPotato Exercises
Useful Language