Applying construction grammar to teaching english periphrastic causative construction  

Oleh:

Novita, Sharon ; Wijaya, David

Jenis: Article from Proceeding
Dalam koleksi: KOLITA 16: Konferensi Linguistik Tahunan Atma Jaya Keenam Belas Tingkat Internasional, page 442-445.
Topik: English periphrastic constructions; Construction grammar; task-supported language teaching; Indonesian EFL learners
Fulltext: 442-445 Sharon Novita, David Wijaya.pdf (329.0KB)

Isi artikel

English periphrastic causative constructions are complex constructions that convey the notion of causation through causative verbs (i.e. have, make, get, and cause) and complements (i.e. to infinitive, present participle, and bare infinitive). Corpus research has revealed that even advanced learners experience considerable difficulty in using these constructions as they are highly complex (Gilquin, 2010). One major problem is the lack of precise descriptions of the semantic and pragmatic aspects in most ELT grammar books. In these books, the descriptions of the constructions are limited to syntactic issues, ignoring the semantic and pragmatic distinctions among the constructions. A Construction Grammar analysis of the constructions, based on the Cognitive Linguistics theories of action chain, causation, and interpersonal relations, reveals that the causative verbs are different from each other in terms of semantic aspects and pragmatic contexts. Have, for instance, expresses a hierarchical relationship between the causer and the cause, and therefore usually refers to a professional service (e.g. have one’s hair cut). As a solution, a grammatical unit based on this analysis could be very helpful for English learners. In this paper, a pedagogical treatment that consists of such grammatical unit and some pedagogic tasks were devised. The instruction made use of visual aids to instruct learners about the concept of action chain, along with the meanings, forms, and contextual uses of the constructions. The tasks comprised an input-based, consciousness-raising task that required participants to connect the form to its function and two output-based tasks that provided contexts for learners to practice the constructions meaningfully. To examine the effectiveness of the treatment, an experimental study was conducted with 31 high school students aged 16 to 18. A controlled production task was administered as pre-, immediate post-, and delayed post-tests to measure learning. The results show that the participants significantly improved in the immediate post-test, and the effect was durable to two weeks after treatment. The findings of this study indicate a strong pedagogical value of combining insights from construction grammar and pedagogic tasks to teach the constructions

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