Looking at learners' conceptual development through written verbalization: Computer-based mediation for English prepositions

Abstract

Informed by principles grounded in Cognitive Linguistics (CL) and Sociocultural theory (SCT), second language (L2) researchers have called for a greater emphasis on promoting learners’ conceptual understanding of grammar rather than simply expanding their rule-based knowledge. The present study investigated the effects of usage-based instruction supported by animated schematic diagrams and conceptual explanations of usages when teaching the English prepositions in, at, and over. 71 year-one English majors were randomly assigned to one of four instructional groups. The three treatment groups differed in the type of mediation materials received: (a) animated schematic diagrams and conceptual explanations of the target and distractor prepositions (b) metalinguistic explanations and sentence examples for the target and distractor prepositions, and (c) no mediation, yet with an indication of correctness after selection. The control group received only English article training. Learners’ conceptual development of English prepositions was traced at three time points (pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest) using a written verbalization cloze test. Verbalization of high-scoring participants (n = 19) from each instructional group (top 30%) was coded based on the five essential features of theoretical concepts (Negueruela, 2003): (i) explicability, (ii) generality, (iii) abstractness, (iv) systematicity, and (v) functionality.

Results indicated that learners receiving the CL-informed mediation demonstrated a higher ability in providing semantic definitions whereas learners receiving the traditional types of mediation relied heavily on rule-of-thumb definitions. Further, some rule-of-thumb definitions provided by these learners were problematic and did not correspond to their accurate response, clearly indicating a difference between rule-based knowledge and conceptual understanding. Not only do the findings provide valuable pedagogical implications to L2 grammar instruction, but more importantly they urge L2 researchers and educators to re-evaluate the widely-adopted assessment for testing learners’ knowledge on grammatical items such as prepositions.