Cognitive Linguistic Approaches to Teaching Vocabulary and Phraseology

Frank Boers, Seth Lindstromberg, Frank Boers, Seth Lindstromberg

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9783110196306
• eBook ISBN: 9783110199161
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Mastering the vocabulary of a foreign language is one of the most daunting tasks that language learners face. The immensity of the task is underscored by the realisation that it is not only single words but also numerous standardised phrases (idioms, collocations, etc.) that need to be acquired. There is thus a clear need for instructional methods that help learners tackle this task, and yet few proposals for vocabulary instruction have so far gone beyond techniques for rote-learning and familiar means of promoting of noticing. The reason for this is that vocabulary and phraseology have long been assumed arbitrary.

The volume offers a long-overdue alternative by exploring and exploiting the presence of linguistic 'motivation' - or, systematic non-arbitrariness - in the lexicon. The first half of the volume reports ample empirical evidence of the pedagogical effectiveness of presenting vocabulary to learners as non-arbitrary. The data reported indicate that the proposed instructional methods can benefit when both the nature of the target lexis and the basic cognitive orientations of particular learners are taken into account. The first half of the book mostly targets lexis that has already attracted a fair amount of attention from Cognitive Linguists in the past (e.g. phrasal verbs and figurative idioms). The second half broadens the scope considerably by revealing the non-arbitrariness of diverse other lexical patterns, including collocations and word partnerships generally. This is achieved by recognising some long-neglected dimensions of linguistic motivation - etymological and phonological motivation, in particular. Concrete suggestions are made for putting the non-arbitrary nature of words and phrases to good use in instructed language learning.

The volume is therefore of interest not only to applied linguists and researchers in Second Language Acquisition/Foreign Language Teaching, but also to second and foreign language teaching professionals.

Table of contents

• Frontmatter
• Table of contents
• How cognitive linguistics can foster effective vocabulary teaching
• Using conceptual metaphors and metonymies in vocabulary teaching
• Conceptual metaphoric meaning clues in two idiom presentation methods
• How cognitive linguistic motivations influence the learning of phrasal verbs
• A discovery approach to figurative language learning with the use of corpora
• Variables in the mnemonic effectiveness of pictorial elucidation
• Reasoning figuratively in early EFL: Some implications for the development of vocabulary
• Translating the senses: Teaching the metaphors in winespeak
• What bilingual word associations can tell us
• Factors which influence the process of collocation
• The notion of boundedness/unboundedness in the foreign language classroom
• Structural elaboration by the sound (and feel) of it
• A quantitative comparison of the English and Spanish repertoires of figurative idioms
• From empirical findings to pedagogical practice
• Backmatter