Teaching English tense and aspect with the help of cognitive grammar: An empirical study

Jakub Bielak,Mirosław Pawlak

doi:10.14746/ssllt.2011.1.3.4

Abstract

Form-focused instruction is usually based on traditional practical/pedagogical grammar descriptions of grammatical features. The comparison of such traditional accounts with cognitive grammar (CG) descriptions seems to favor CG as a basis of pedagogical rules. This is due to the insistence of CG on the meaningfulness of grammar and its detailed analyses of the meanings of particular grammatical features. The differences between traditional and CG rules/descriptions are exemplified by juxtaposing the two kinds of principles concerning the use of the present simple and present progressive to refer to situations happening or existing at speech time. The descriptions provided the bases for the instructional treatment in a quasi-experimental study exploring the effectiveness of using CG descriptions of the two tenses, and of their interplay with stative (imperfective) and dynamic (perfective) verbs, and comparing this effectiveness with the value of grammar teaching relying on traditional accounts found in standard pedagogical grammars. The study involved 50 participants divided into three groups, with one of them constituting the control group and the other two being experimental ones. One of the latter received treatment based on CG descriptions and the other on traditional accounts. CG-based instruction was found to be at least moderately effective in terms of fostering mostly explicit grammatical knowledge and its effectiveness turned out be comparable to that of teaching based on traditional descriptions.

Highlights

G descriptions of the two tenses, and of their interplay with stative and dynamic verbs, and comparing this effectiveness with the value of grammar teaching relying on traditional accounts found in standard pedagogical grammars
Because grammatical descriptions used in pedagogy are, through the mediation of textbooks and pedagogical/practical grammars, based on the descriptive/reference grammars, their labeling as traditional seems to be warranted, and the label itself should be viewed as reflecting their structuralist-traditional foundations
As evidenced by some pedagogical grammars which state that contemporary linguistics enhances the descriptions they provide (e.g., Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman, 1999), modern linguistic theory may have a lot to offer to language teachers and, through their mediation, to learners

Summary

Introduction

G descriptions of the two tenses, and of their interplay with stative (imperfective) and dynamic (perfective) verbs, and comparing this effectiveness with the value of grammar teaching relying on traditional accounts found in standard pedagogical grammars. The teaching of second/foreign language grammar cannot do without descriptions of grammatical elements, which may only be produced with any degree of systematicity with the help of some theoretical assumptions, if not within the confines of some linguistic theory(ies). It is rarely openly stated, when viewed from this perspective, most grammatical descriptions employed by language teachers may be said to be traditional in nature. As evidenced by some pedagogical grammars which state that contemporary linguistics enhances the descriptions they provide (e.g., Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman, 1999), modern linguistic theory may have a lot to offer to language teachers and, through their mediation, to learners.

Methods

Results

Conclusion