Cognitive Linguistics–Inspired Empirical Study of Chinese EFL Teaching

Youmei Gao

doi:10.4236/ce.2011.24050

Abstract

Aiming to verify how and why insightfulness of the CL-inspired approach can facilitate L2 or FL learners in the process of learning English as a second or a foreign language, an empirical study of Chinese EFL learners has been carried out in the authentic Chinese EFL classroom on the campus of Tianjin Foreign Studies University. After the classroom treatment, it has been found that the EG outperformed the CG by 21.7% based on the results from the delayed posttest in Experiment 1; by 6.73% in Experiment 2; by 6.61% in Experiment 3; by 21.7% in Experiment 4. The study has concluded that through awakening students’ metaphoric awareness and analyzing features of the image schematic structure, the CL-inspired approach benefits L2 or FL learners in the process of learning English as a foreign language with respect to lexical and grammatical competence, metaphorical and pragmatic or sociolinguist competence, including semantic comprehension in reading, writing and translation, particularly in terms of long-term retention of memory.

Highlights

The cognitive framework has been recently reported to be able to help L2 or FL learners acquire the target materials in an effective manner and achieve long-term retention in memory
Experiment 1 (EXP1), the results from the pretest show no significant difference statistically found between the two classes, suggesting that the participants were at the same level in terms of their lexical metaphor competence, if any difference was found after teaching, the methods or approaches adopted in the experiment should take effect
Experiment 3 (EXP3), the results from the three tests show that there is no significant difference found between the two classes from the pretest, suggesting that the participants were at the same level in terms of their idiomatic competence, if any difference was found after teaching, the methods or approaches adopted in the experiment should take effect

Summary

Introduction

The cognitive framework has been recently reported to be able to help L2 or FL learners acquire the target materials in an effective manner and achieve long-term retention in memory. Boers, 1999, Boers & Demecheleer, 2004; Lazar, 1996; Littlemore, 2001a) suggest that the cognitive framework can assist L2 or FL learners to acquire figurative expressions in an effective manner and achieve long-term retention in memory. How it works in the authentic Chinese university EFL classrooms remains as a not or at least not fully touched upon area until very recently. The more puzzling situation is that despite the fact that the significance of lexical learning is fully agreed in the foreign language world, yet the desirable proposal for how the lexis can be better acquired, in terms of advanced usage such as metaphors, set phrases, idioms and proverbs is still not available (Gao, 2010)

Methods

Results

Conclusion