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This volume links Cognitive Grammar explanations to the area of second-language learning and instructed grammar teaching. It represents a contribution to empirically based knowledge promoting a new perspective on the process of teaching and learning about English language structures. The theoretical part of the book provides an overview of the basic tenets of Cognitive Grammar, and discusses elements of the theory that are of crucial importance for understanding English tense and aspect structures. The second part brings together these two fields of study and tests a Cognitive Grammar approach to teaching tense and aspect to less advanced learners of English. To this end, an experimental study was conducted, comparing the effects of Cognitive Grammar-inspired instruction on the language learning process with those of teaching methods which employ more traditional grammatical descriptions. As such, the book is of particular relevance to Cognitive Grammar research, and second-language learning and teaching research, and for learners and teachers of a foreign language.
The focus on communication in TBLT often comes at the expense of form. In this book, the task-based approach is enhanced and coupled with insights into (cognitive) grammar, an approach which sees grammar as meaningful. The book shows how grammar teaching can be integrated into a communicative lesson in a non-explicit way, i.e., "by the backdoor". The learners are involved in situations that they may also encounter outside their classrooms and they are given communicative tasks they are to work on and solve, usually with a partner or in small groups. What teachers need to invest for preparing such lessons is their own creativity, as they have to come up with communicative situations which guide the learners into using a specific grammatical structure. The book first discusses the didactic and the linguistic theories involved and then translates these theoretical perspectives into actual teaching practice, focusing on the following grammatical phenomena: tense, aspect, modality, conditionals, passive voice, prepositions, phrasal verbs, verb complementation, pronouns and articles.