A Cognitive Linguistics Application for Second Language Pedagogy: The English Preposition Tutor

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of teaching English prepositions using schematic diagrams inspired by cognitive linguistics in a computer-based tutorial system called the English Preposition Tutor. Training was designed based on the theoretical framework of the Competition Model and a cognitive linguistic analysis of prepositions. Sixty-four Cantonese-speaking intermediate learners of English were trained using a sentence–picture matching task. They received one of the three types of feedback: schematic diagram feedback, metalinguistic rule feedback, or correctness feedback. Only the schematic diagram feedback group was exposed to chaining between spatial senses and nonspatial senses. Re..