Applying Cognitive Linguistics in the English Language Classroom

This book promotes greater interest in cognitive linguistics (CL) among English language teaching (ELT) practitioners, while offering researchers a more direct line toward shaping pedagogy. The book presents a collection of CL-informed ready-to-use pedagogical summaries and activities that teachers without background knowledge in CL can take directly to their classrooms. Importantly, the book targets traditionally challenging areas of English instruction. Part One addresses vocabulary topics such as idioms, collocations, and phrasal verbs. Part Two tackles tricky grammar topics such as prepositions, articles, and modal verbs. Part Three takes on discourse and pragmatics topics such as cohesive devices in writing and making requests and refusals in speaking. Each chapter tackles a different topic of the English language and includes the following sections: 1) introduction of the challenge(s) with the said English language topic, 2) explanation of the CL approach and how it can mitigate the observed challenge(s), 3) practically-oriented description of the CL-inspired teaching activities, positioned within a specific pedagogical context but easily transferable to other contexts. All chapters include insights that are highly practical and easily implemented in different contexts of ELT. The ultimate goal of the volume is to motivate teachers to try new pedagogical tools and to influence English language pedagogy through the research-documented powers of applied cognitive linguistics.

Benjamin White is MATESOL Director and Peace Corps Coverdell Fellows Coordinator at Saint Michael’s College, USA.

Natalia Dolgova is Teaching Associate Professor of English for Academic Purposes at the George Washington University, USA.