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Effects of cognitive linguistics-informed instruction on L2 learners’ behavioural and neurocognitive processing of English prepositions
Date Issued
2026
Publisher
The Chinese University of Hong Kong Library
ISSN
1026-2652
2333-7192
Citation
Asian Journal of English Language Teaching, 2026, vol. 35(3), pp. 122-155.
Description
Open access
Type
Peer Reviewed Journal Article
Abstract
The present study investigated the effects of cognitive linguistics (CL)-informed instruction on the L2 learning and processing of matched and mismatched prepositional phrases. An acceptability judgement test (AJT) containing 180 target items across 12 prepositional usages assessed behavioural and neural responses to semantic anomalies involving in, at, and over. Forty-six Chinese learners of English were recruited. Of these, 44 completed the pretest, a 60-minute computer-assisted training, and the posttest, thereby providing complete behavioural data; 41 also provided usable ERP data. Learners were randomly assigned to either CL-informed instruction, which provided schematic diagrams and cognitive-semantic explanations, or traditional definition-oriented instruction, which provided rule-of-thumb definitions and exemplars. Twelve L1 English speakers were recruited, of whom 11 contributed usable comparison data. Behaviourally, the CL-informed group showed greater improvements in accuracy than the traditional group for target and distractor prepositions. ERP analyses revealed instruction-by-time differences in N400 responses to distractor and unacceptable prepositions, indicating different changes in sensitivity to semantic anomalies. In post-training comparisons, the CL-informed group did not differ significantly from the L1 group in accuracy or reaction time, whereas the traditional group remained less accurate in the distractor and unacceptable conditions. For the ERP measures, the CL-informed group did not differ significantly from the L1 group on the analysed components, whereas the traditional group showed reduced P600 amplitudes in specific sentence conditions.
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