Abstract Summary
Acquisition of the English prepositions in, on, and at for L2 learners are possibly the most difficult grammatical features to master. This presentation shows that cross-linguistic semantic and metacognitive complexity is responsible for this difficulty and that explicit instruction is required for the enhancement of their prototypical, polysemous, and abstract usages.
Abstract :
This study investigates L2 learners’ acquisition of the spatial and temporal prepositionsin, on, and at through explicit instruction incorporating spatial primitives and schematic integrations (Mandler & Cánovas, 2014). The Cross-linguistic Image Scheme Differential (CISD) Hypothesis (Johnson, 1987; Lakoff, 1987; Shintani, Mori & Ohmori, 2015; Authors, 2019) provides an approach by which explicit instruction facilitates learners’ comprehension of many obscure prototypical and non-prototypical features of prepositional usages that are difficult for L2 learners (Feist & Gentner, 2003, 2012; Gentner & Bowerman, 2009; Jamrozik & Gentner, 2015). Understanding the schematic differences between languages allows us to focus on areas that require explicit instruction for more successful L2 learning. This inquiry leads to two research questions: 1. Does the CISD Hypothesis predict difficultly in learning in, on, and at features for L2 learners? and 2. Does treatment incorporating schematic integrations for in, on, and at have a significant effect on learning and acquisition? For this investigation, a mixed-methods approach was conducted with first-year university students in Japan. The treatment group received an in-class task that allowed for participants to receive bilingual instruction in English and Japanese including schematic integration explanations, model sentences, and opportunities to write new sentences that were shared with classmates. The results show that immediate post-treatment results indicate learners could attain high accuracy scores of well over 90% on the targeted usages of inand on. Pre- and delayed post-test ANOVA results reveal that the treatment significantly helped elevate and maintain participants' accuracy scores well beyond their initial pretest scores while the control group did not significantly change.This presentation elaborates on the main implications of this study: further extending students' understanding and acquisition of spatial and temporal prepositions, and generalizing these findings to other prepositions, adpositions, and languages.
