Pedagogical Linguistics - Volume 5, Issue 1, 2024

While applying cognitive linguistics (CL) to language teaching has been proven effective for teaching polysemous prepositions in English, it has demonstrated less success with the difficult-to-acquire Spanish prepositions por and para. This points to the need for more practical research investigating if and how CL might be effective for this particular target, especially given that conventional instruction has been found to be lacking. The current study compared three instructional conditions in intact intermediate Spanish classes. The first was a traditional approach to teaching por and para that presented learners with lists of disconnected uses in one lesson (n = 32). The second was an applied CL approach that presented Principled Polysemy Networks gradually over time (n = 34), an incremental approach that is usage-based and is a best practice for cognitively demanding instruction. The third was a traditional approach that presented lists of disconnected uses but incrementally over time (n = 26). The usage-based CL approach was found to confer the most advantage for learners on a multiple-choice test, but not a fill-in-the-blank test. The findings are discussed in relation to their pedagogical applications, future directions for applied CL research, and limitations of the study.

This study explores the ability of advanced adolescent German learners of English to optimize turn design for talk-in-interaction, focusing on collaborative turn constructions and ellipses. Data deriving from recorded conversations conducted in the foreign language among German learners of English are compared to conversations between native speakers of British English and integrated into a diagnostic approach that helps identify deficits in the field of interactional skills. The results show that the two syntactic formats occur less frequently in learner conversations, which indicates that learners are less likely to use syntactic resources to bind their contribution immediately to prior talk or to the situational context. It is argued that this has a negative effect upon the sequential fit of turns and that conversational practice targeted toward a syntax for conversation would help learners achieving a more fluid interplay of conversational moves.

The present study examines the outcome of teaching second language English (L2 English) third-person singular present tense -s for declarative knowledge in two different settings, namely Sweden and Vietnam. Third person -s is one of the most studied grammatical structures in second language acquisition research. Data are collected in two classroom contexts with different teaching traditions. Participants are 76 young learners, 11–12 years old, 32 with Swedish as L1 and 44 with L1 Vietnamese. The results demonstrate differences in learner outcomes in these two groups. The Vietnamese learners outperformed the Swedish learners on the tests of declarative knowledge. The analyses of learner explanations of third-person singular present tense -s reveal that learners tend to decompose this complex rule into several features, which sometimes lead them into misconceptions. This has pedagogical implications about EFL teaching and learning for young learners.

The purpose of the study was to examine the efficacy of lexical stress diacritics on the English comprehensibility and accentedness of Korean speakers. To this end, 30 native Korean participants read aloud 15 English sentences without diacritics in the pretest. Then, they were given explicit instructions on the production of higher pitch and extended duration as a marker of English stress with musical notation provided. In the posttest, the participants read aloud the same sentences as were in the pretest but which had diacritics indicating stress placement. In the delayed posttest, two days after the pretest and the posttest, the participants read 15 sentences without diacritics again to see if the effects of the treatment were retained. Randomized speech samples were rated by three native speakers of English in relation to comprehensibility and accentedness. Findings showed that significant improvements were observed after the treatment in both comprehensibility and accentedness.