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A cognitive linguistic approach to pedagogical grammar: Current results and future directions.

De Knop, Sabine;De Rycker, Teun
(2008) 33rd International LAUD Symposium,thème: “Cognitive Approaches to Second/Foreign Language Processing: Theory and Pedagogy”. — Location: Universität Koblenz-Landau, Campus Landau (10.March.2008)

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As observed in the introduction to Cognitive Linguistics: Current Applications and Future Perspectives, language pedagogy is interdisciplinary in character, crossing over into and closely collaborating with, among others, psycholinguistics and educational psychology. What Cognitive Linguistics (CL) brings to this multifaceted field of study – more than any other contemporary form of linguistics – is “a strong conceptual unity” (Kristiansen et al. 2006: 14). It is this unity in theoretical assumptions, basic units and constructs that is expected to offer a better insight into the nature of language and grammar and further improve the efficiency and effectiveness of existing second and foreign language teaching. It is no coincidence then that the past few years have witnessed a growing interest in cognitively oriented applied research (Pütz et al. 2001; Achard and Niemeier 2004; Tyler et al. 2005; Robinson and Ellis in press 2008). In this presentation we address two general questions. First, apart from this conceptual unity, what else does CL theory and description have to offer to language teaching and especially pedagogical grammar (PG)? Note that we take “pedagogical grammar,” the bridge between theory and practice, to metonymically stand for (i) research into pedagogical grammar and grammar pedagogy as a process and (ii) the outcome of that research in the form of a pedagogical grammar package for a given language. Compared with the areas of lexis and metaphor and their rich and varied research tradition within the CL framework (Boers and Lindstromberg 2006 and forthcoming; Littlemore and Low 2006), pedagogical grammar has received only scant attention. This imbalance motivates our second question: What are currently the main strands of grammar research into the CL-PG interface, what results have these studies yielded so far and what can we expect for the future? In answering both questions we present the main research results of the 14 papers of the edited volume Cognitive Approaches to Pedagogical Grammar – to be published in 2008 (De Knop and De Rycker, in preparation). The main conclusions to be drawn are the following. First, on the theoretical level, PG needs meta-theoretical categories and rules (as schemas) for learners. Compositional and non-compositional constructions, enriched by the principles and representations of blending theory, are both part and parcel of language learning, including a large amount of idiomatic chunks. Usage-based learning materials are not identical to corpus data but are to be filtered from them according to pedagogic parameters. Second, on the level of tools for teaching, a cognitive redefinition of contrastive linguistics incorporates the notion of language-specific extensions of central concepts within a network associated with a given form or forms, such as the diminutive and the so-called middle constructions (part of which is the se reflexive) in Spanish. Similarly, error analysis is cognitively redefined as a struggle of the native language’s preferential choices over the target language’s conceptual distinctions. In the same vein, the old notions of “grammatical” or even “communicative competence” are subsumed and/or replaced by the wider and all-encompassing notion of conceptual fluency. Third, on the level of conceptual learning problems, three typologically distinct conceptualisations are analyzed as major instances of learning problems: (i) the different conceptualisation and expressions of motion in Romance verb-framed vs. Germanic satellite-framedconstructions; (ii) aspectual distinctions such as the Slavic imperfective/perfective ones vs. Germanic progressiveaspect; and (iii) the conceptualisation of diverse types of multifaceted action in English vs. the lack of it in Chinese. References Achard, Michel, and Susanne Niemeier (eds.) 2004 Cognitive Linguistics, Second Language Acquisition, and Foreign Language Teaching. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Boers, Frank, and Seth Lindstromberg 2006 Cognitive linguistic applications in second or foreign language instruction: Rationale, proposals, and evaluation. In Kristiansen, Gitte, Michel Achard, René Dirven, and Francisco Ruiz de Mendoza (eds.), Cognitive Linguistics: Current Application and, Future Perspectives, 305–355. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. forthc. Not So Arbitrary: Cognitive Linguistic Approaches to Teaching Vocabulary and Phraseology. Berlin; New York: Mouton de Gruyter. De Knop, Sabine, and Teun De Rycker in prep. Cognitive Approaches to Pedagogical Grammar. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kristiansen, Gitte, Michel Achard, René Dirven, and Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez (eds.), 2006 Cognitive Linguistics: Current Applications and Future Perspectives (Applications of Cognitive Linguistics 1). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Littlemore, Jeannette, and Graham D. Low 2006 Figurative Thinking and Foreign Language Learning. Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Pütz, Martin, Susanne Niemeier, and René Dirven (eds.) 2001 Applied Cognitive Linguistics. Volume I: Theory and Language Acquisition. Volume II: Language pedagogy. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Robinson, Peter, and Nick C. Ellis (eds.) in press Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics and SLA. London: Routledge. Tyler, Andrea, Mari Takada, Yiyoung Kim, and Diana Marinova (eds), 2005 Language in Use: Cognitive and Discourse Perspectives to Language and Language Learning. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.
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De Knop, S., & De Rycker, T. (2008). A cognitive linguistic approach to pedagogical grammar: Current results and future directions. 33rd International LAUD Symposium,thème: “Cognitive Approaches to Second/Foreign Language Processing: Theory and Pedagogy”., Universität Koblenz-Landau, Campus Landau. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/190109