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SCHEMATIC DIAGRAMS IN SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING OF ENGLISH PREPOSITIONS

A BEHAVIORAL AND EVENT-RELATED POTENTIAL STUDY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2020

Helen Zhao Open the ORCID record for Helen Zhao [Opens in a new window] ,
Shuting Huang ,
Yacong Zhou  and
Ruiming Wang
Helen Zhao
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne
Shuting Huang
Affiliation:
South China Normal University
Yacong Zhou
Affiliation:
Huanghe University of Science and Technology
Ruiming Wang*
Affiliation:
South China Normal University
*
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ruiming Wang, South China Normal University, School of Psychology, Guangzhou, China 510631. E-mail: wangrm@scnu.edu.cn
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Abstract

In the current study of applied cognitive linguistics (CL), schematic diagrams that represent generalizations of physical-spatial experience were applied in a computer-based tutor that trained English prepositions for second language (L2) learners. Behavioral and electrophysiological (ERP) measures were used to examine whether schematic-diagram feedback provided by the tutor had an instructional advantage over the minimally informed correctness feedback. Behavioral results confirmed this prediction and further revealed that the treatment difference was more striking when the participants had a lower L2 proficiency. The ERP results also supported the prediction. Violation uses of prepositions yielded an N270 and an N400. Schematic-diagram feedback motivated significant changes in brain potentials, whereas correctness feedback failed to do so. Overall, our findings suggest that CL-inspired instruction of a relatively short duration led to significant improvements in learners’ behavioral productive performance and in their sensitivity to semantic violation of preposition use during online sentence processing. The study provided strong neurolinguistic evidence for CL-inspired pedagogy in supporting L2 learning.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 42 , Issue 4 , September 2020 , pp. 721 - 748
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Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2020

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Footnotes

This project was funded by the National Social Science Foundation of China (19AYY009). We thank Man Ho Ivy Wong for her help in developing the experimental stimuli, and John Kowalski for his help programming the study.

References

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