A cognitive linguistics application to second language pedagogy: The English preposition tutor

Abstract

Image schemas are proposed to visualize conceptual representations and to connect the basic spatial senses with the more abstract, metaphorical senses of prepositions (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Some empirical studies (e.g., Tyler, Mueller & Ho, 2010) found positive learning outcomes when L2 learners were taught English prepositions with schematic drawings. Yet, most of these studies were done in classroom settings where instruction on schema was blended with other cognitive linguistics (CL) methods, which made it impossible to examine its individual effectiveness.

This study investigates the effects of teaching English prepositions (in, at, over) with image schema in a computer-based tutorial system. Sixty-four Cantonese-speaking intermediate EFL learners were randomly assigned to one of the three groups: 1) schema feedback (SF); 2) metalinguistic rule feedback (RF); and 3) corrective feedback (CF). On each training screen, they were presented with a picture stimulus and two sentences that only differed on the prepositions (e.g., Ben jumped over the ditch vs. Ben jumped towards the ditch). They were asked to choose the sentence that matched the picture and were given immediate feedback. They received training on six pairs of usage, each of which contains a spatial sense (e.g., in a box) and a metaphorical sense (e.g., in love) that share the same schema (CONTAINMENT). They went through a pretest, training, and a posttest. The tests included two parts: a cloze test and a translation test, both at the sentential level.

We observed significant learning effects from all of the three feedback groups in both tests. This confirms the instructional effectiveness of the tutor. Regarding the distinction of feedback, we did not observe a difference among the feedback groups in the cloze test. But in the translation test, the SF group significantly outperformed the RF and CF groups on the learning of metaphorical senses.