英語教學 English Teaching & Learning
35. 4 (Winter 2011): 43-90
A Cognitive Linguistics Approach
to Language Teaching: Processing
Instruction of Iconicity in EFL Classrooms
Yu-da Lai
Providence University
[email protected]
Abstract
The present study investigated the potential impact of cognitive
linguistics-based processing instruction (CLPI) on the acquisition
of English participle construction and its semantic functions at
sentence and discourse levels. The effectiveness of CLPI was
compared to a traditional output-based instruction (TOBI) and a
no-treatment control. A total of 108 Taiwanese EFL college
students were equally distributed into two treatment groups (CLPI
and TOBI) and a control group. CLPI consisted of grammatical
explanations couched on the concept of “iconic sequencing” and
demonstration of participles in a stretch of authentic context both
at the sentence and discourse levels. The supplementive
comprehension practice was directed to alter the way learners
process input. The TOBI consisted of explanations of grammar
rules with demonstrations of the step-by-step transformed
outcome of participles and corresponding semantic functions. The
practice was aimed at altering the way learners produce output.
An acceptability judgment test and a paraphrasing production test
were conducted prior to treatment, two days, and eight weeks
after treatment. The results suggested CLPI has greater and more
durable effects on the acquisition of English participles and their
semantic functions, proving it effective to incorporate cognitive
linguistics disciplines into existing pedagogies of foreign
language teaching.
Key Words: processing instruction, cognitive linguistics, iconic,
participle
英語教學 English Teaching & Learning
35. 4 (Winter 2011)
INTRODUCTION
There have been two core issues in second language acquisition
(SLA) studies about the role of explicit instruction of foreign
languages. The first pertains to whether instruction makes any
difference in improving learners’ acquisition process, e.g., Ellis
(1989), Krashen (1981), Long (1983), among others. The second
embraces the question of what should be taught, i.e., an issue that
leads to later controversies over teachability-learnability, e.g.,
Pienemann (1987), and form-meaning relationship, e.g., Garett (1986).
It is understandable that in the SLA literature much attention was
been paid to the above issues since whether language is a teachable
subject or a learnable behavior had been controversial in pedagogy
before the mid 80s. However, regardless of their diversified
theoretical stances, researchers do not cast doubt on the role of input
as part of successful SLA. Subsequent studies grounded on the input
hypothesis (see Krashen, 1981) further suggest that input in the form
of positive evidence alone is not enough for learners while added
focus on language form is necessary (Bowles & Montrul, 2008). In
other words, successful SLA occurs only when learners are facilitated
by some type of form-focused approaches either in spontaneous or
predetermined ways as suggested by Spada (1997, p. 73). Since input
is language that encodes meaning, foreign language instruction should
not engage learners only in repeated drills of linguistic structures
independent of communicative context, but should be structured
around a particular grammatical point where real messages are
communicated (VanPatten & Cadierno, 1993, p. 46). In particular,
explicit instruction advocated for accurate and fluent acquisition
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Lai: Processing Instruction of Iconicity in EFL Classrooms
should seek ways to direct learners to both content and form to alter
the developing linguistic system in its appropriate direction. One way
to make the process successful is via processing instruction (PI)
(VanPatten, 2002) where L2 learners are taught how to process input
in order to better acquire the underlying grammar (VanPatten, 2002, p.
764).
However, two questions remain unanswered. First, while
empirical support for PI primarily comes from the comparison
between the effectiveness of PI and traditional grammar instruction, it
has not been shown whether the same approach is still effective if
applied to acquisition of other aspects of language use, like semantic
functions of a particular grammatical construction at both the
sentence and discourse level. Second, since PI is derived from
VanPatten’s theoretical model of “input processing,” the key to its
success is predicated on a teacher’s grammatical explanation and
understanding of the underlying grammar of the input to be practiced
(Sheen, 2007). However, it is not clear in what forms and what ways
the grammatical explanation can be delivered to learners to make PI
more effective. The present study thus aims to seek answers to the
above questions by examining the effect of PI in L2 writing
classrooms on how participle positioning and its derived informative
meanings are motivated by the iconicity principle from the
perspective of cognitive linguistics.
Input Processing and Processing Instruction
SLA is generally viewed as a process consisting of different
acquisition stages (VanPatten & Cadierno, 1993), presumably
proceeding from left to right, as shown in Figure 1:
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35. 4 (Winter 2011)
I
II
III
Input  Intake  Developing System  Output
Figure 1
Stages in Second Language Acquisition
Advocators of the output hypothesis (e.g., Swain & Lapkin, 1995)
highlight Stage III because input alone is argued to be not enough for
successful acquisition, and only the production process may force
learners to move from semantic to syntactic processing. Therefore,
learner output is often manipulated in traditional instruction grounded
on the output doctrine for enhancing language acquisition. However,
VanPatten and Cadierno (1993) argued that the input in Stage I
should be emphasized as well. This is because if language teaching is
meant to assist learners to shape their linguistic system, the
instruction should be focused on the very beginning stage, i.e., the PI,
so that it can help to alter the way the input is processed by learners,
i.e., a cognitive process which VanPatten and Cadierno (1993) termed
as input processing (IP henceforth) where input is understood and
integrated into interlanguages. Note, however, that VanPatten’s PI
does not mean total exclusion of output-based activities; instead, the
main difference between PI and traditional output-based instruction
lies on what is deemed as the core for learners, i.e., structured input vs.
output practice.
VanPatten’s PI is grounded on the following fundamental
principles that underlie the theoretical IP model, as shown in (1)
(VanPatten, 1996, as cited in VanPatten, 2002, p. 758):
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(1) Principles of IP
a. Learners process input for meaning before they process it for form.
b. For learners to process form that is not meaningful, they must be
able to process informational or communicative content at no or
little cost to attention.
c. Learners possess a default strategy that assigns the agent role to
the first noun they encounter in a sentence.
d. Learners process elements in the sentence-initial position first.
Given the principles, it is reasonable to imagine that learners
may just process the input for meaning without “translating” the key
structural aspect as proper intake (Sharwood-Smith, 1993).
Accordingly, VanPatten and Cadierno (1993) emphasizes instruction
in class should make the non-salient form-meaning relationship
become more salient in the input; moreover, focused practices should
also embrace activities that can provide learners with the
opportunities of correctly interpreting the form-meaning relationship.
Unlike the traditional output-based instruction which is paradigmatic
in nature, PI is a non-paradigmatically meaning-based approach,
serving to lead learners to be aware of the communicative function of
a particular form and to shape the appropriate intake at the same time
(Benati, 2001). The three basic components of PI are listed in (2)
(Sheen, 2007):
(2) Components of PI
a. Learners are provided with explanations of the grammar.
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b. Learners are alerted to problems they may encounter with the
input, particularly those caused by differences between the
grammar of the target language and the L1.
c. Learners then do task-essential exercises where they need to
understand the structure to understand the meaning.
The components imply that although PI differs from the outputbased instruction in how activities are operationalized, the two types
of instruction undergo similar procedures: grammatical explanations,
activities, and focused practices. The emphasis of PI, in particular, has
been put on how to make class activities “meaningful” and
“communicative” by providing learners with many instances of the
same grammatical form-meaning relationship (Benati, 2001).
However, VanPatten and followers (e.g., Benati, 2001; Cheng, 1995;
Farley, 2000) have not considered how the first step in PI can be
improved, i.e., how grammatical explanations can be presented. If the
rationale for PI is grounded on the assumption that SLA proceeds
from input to intake, the “well-done-is-half-done” theory should also
apply to the first step herein. However, before exploring how “input”
can be better presented, one has to answer what the “processor” of
learners is designed to create.
A New Approach to L2 Instruction: Cognitive Linguistics
If we view the structure of the “processor” as designed to be
adapted uniquely to understanding the nature of everything it
encounters in the real world, it is not just the learner himself who
teaches the learner language, so does the language itself (Grundy,
2004). This suggests that language acquisition is determined, at least
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Lai: Processing Instruction of Iconicity in EFL Classrooms
in part, by the cognitive structures. Therefore, language teachers
should know both how to make the constructions of the target
language in harmony with the nature of the processor (i.e., human
mind) and how to present them to make successful acquisition happen,
the above of which are respectively referred to as PI component (2a)
and (2b). Theories of cognitive linguistics (CL henceforth) should
suffice to provide pedagogical insights that indicate how the “first
step” of PI can be improved.
Different from formal linguists who view language and its
components as autonomous from each other, functional cognitionbased linguists believe language is a symbolization of the conceptual
content structured on the interacting relation with the outside world
and specific cultural conventions in societies. Endeavoring to
investigate the relation among language structure, thought, and reality,
the functional-cognitive school of thought provides natural
explanations for linguistic structures (Tai, 1989). Compared with the
“unnaturalness” underlying traditional grammatical instruction, the
“naturalness” underpinning the CL disciplines should enable
instructors to provide learners with motivated grammatical
explanations for particular form-meaning relations in compliance with
the cognitive structure of learners’ “processor”.
Several attempts have been made to connect cognitive
principles and foreign language teaching in different aspects, and
many useful suggestions have been provided to teaching methodology
and learning strategies in L2 classrooms (for detailed references, see
Holme, 2004; Pütz & Niemeier, 2001; Pütz, Niemeier, & Dirven,
2011). However, most contributions made to highlight the usefulness
of the CL disciplines have not been empirically validated but only
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subject to theoretical and pedagogically suggestive descriptions; in
addition, efforts have been made primarily in lexis teaching/learning,
e.g., the image-schema-based instruction of polysemous words (e.g.,
Morimoto & Loewen, 2007) and enhancement of metaphoric
awareness in learning idiomatic expressions (e.g., Boers, 2000, 2004).
In other words, connections between the explicit PI of grammar and
CL principles have not been made. The following discussion will be
focused on a major CL principle iconicity and its applicability to a
rarely discussed grammatical construction in EFL classrooms, namely
the participle structure.
Iconicity and Participle Positioning
Iconicity has been one of the central research agendas in the CL
field. Its basic tenet is that the structure of language reflects the
structure of experience to a certain extent (Croft, 2003, p. 102). The
notion of iconicity, according to Ungerer and Schmid (1996),
subsumes a wide variety of different principles, like iconic
sequencing, iconic proximity, and iconic quantity. The current study
concentrates on iconic sequencing since the research focus is on the
linear positioning of participles and the associated semantic relations.
Iconic sequencing refers to the diagrammatic similarity
between orders of linguistic elements and events experienced in the
outside world. Several studies have demonstrated iconicity to be a
crucial factor that may influence the clause order in complex
sentences. Conditional clauses, for example, have been argued to
precede the main clause because conditional clauses are often
conceptualized as events prior to those in the main clauses (see
Haiman, 1983); purpose clauses, on the other hand, are usually
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positioned after the main clause because they are conceptualized as
the result state or the intended endpoint of the activities expressed in
the associated main clause (see Greenberg, 1966); the same reasoning
also explains the tendency of positioning causal adverbial clauses led
by since and because (especially in scientific articles, Diessel, 2005)
and clauses led by the after subordinator (Clark, 1971) prior to the
main clauses. Note that, iconicity is not an absolute but a
supplementary determinant of the linear order of the elements in
English complex sentences. The distributional properties of the
adverbial clauses are not overall consistent with the iconicity
principle in the corpus data (Diessel, 2008) because in addition to
iconicity, the ordering may be subject to interaction with other factors
like processing pressure, e.g., Hawkin’s (1994) constituent
recognition domain, and discourse pragmatics, e.g., the old-new
information structure (Diessel, 2005). Furthermore, subordinators
explicitly marking the relationship between associated clauses may
further contribute to the ordering flexibility (Wang, 2001).
However, if the above subordinate clauses are replaced by
participles, their ordering may be more constrained. Consider the
following two examples from Chu (1999, p. 7) in (3) and (4):
(3)
a. Because Karen was cheated by a salesman, she was very upset.
b. Karen was very upset because she was cheated by a salesman.
c. Cheated by a salesman, Karen was very upset.
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(4)
a. After Amy opened the brightly wrapped package, she discovered a
small wooden box held shut by a silver clasp.
b. Amy discovered a small wooden box held shut by a silver clasp
after she opened the brightly wrapped package.
c. Amy opened the brightly wrapped package, discovering a small
wooden box held shut by a silver clasp.
Unlike the flexibility manifested by the positioning of
subordinate clauses either before or after the main clause as in (3a-b)
and (4a-b), (3c) and (4c) demonstrate that a particular ordering
between participle and main clauses, but not the other way around,
can better reveal their respective associated relationships, i.e.,
cause/reason and posteriority (in Kortmann’s terms, 1995). Therefore,
a sentence like “Karen was very upset, cheated by a salesman” or
“Discovering a small wooden box held shut by a silver clasp, Amy
opened the brightly wrapped package” sounds awkward. The
awkwardness can be explained in terms of their non-iconic
positioning in relation to the main clauses: a causal event after an
effect event and a posterior event before an anterior event. But why
does the iconic positioning device matter for this construction in
expressing its semantic relations?
As has been pointed out (e.g., Kortmann, 1995; Quirk,
Greenbaum, Leech, & Svartvik, 1985; also see Liu’s review for detail,
2009), a participle can bear various logical roles subject to different
interpretations because no explicit subordinator overtly specifies the
logical connections between a participle and its superordinate clause.
Consider (5):
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(5) Crossing the street, Jeff found a one-hundred dollar bill.
The participle in (5) could generate either a temporal overlap or an
anteriority reading, showing how multiple interpretations can be
drawn from the same participle. The example is just a tip of the
icerberg. Kortmann (1995) pointed out the number of the interclausal
semantic relations could be as many as 24. As semantically
diversified a participle could be, the interpretation is strongly
correlated with its position. For example, in Kortmann’s
categorizations (1991, p. 137), participles identified to express
anteriority, condition, cause, or instrument tend to be positioned prior
to main clauses, whereas those interpreted as posteriority, result,
purpose, addition, or exemplification/specification are prone to a final
position. Of particular relevance, the semantic interpretations in
different positions are also found to be correlates of the degrees of
“informativeness.” That is, participles in initial but not final positions
are usually more informative ones that “require more knowledge or
(contextually substantiated) evidence” (Kortmann, 1991, p. 119) to
identify their semantic relations with main clauses. The correlation
among the degrees of “informativeness,” interpretations, and
participle positioning may not be a coincidence. Kortmann (1991)
found that the degree of informativeness is an indicator of how often
explicit lexical subordinators are used. The above relationship is
conceivable because if a more informative semantic relation is more
difficult to interpret, only more explicit linguistic augmentation can
help to facilitate the interpretation process. However, without
subordinators, the compact information conveyed by participles has to
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be “unzipped” via some other indirect way, i.e., appropriate
positioning. Recalling Kortmann’s categorization of participles prone
to initial positions, as in (6), we argue that their positioning is
operationalized via the same conceptualization of a more general CL
principle, i.e., iconic sequencing. That is, the conditions or events
expressed by participles in (6) all have to be fulfilled or accomplished
prior to those expressed by main clauses.
(6)
a. Identifying himself, he announced, “I have a message for Anna
from Miss Preyscott.” (anteriority) (Kortmann, 1991, p. 125)
b. Rigorously applied, this would free all party leaders from
answering questions outside their own constituencies. (condition)
(Kortmann, 1991, p. 158)
c. Often suffering at the hands of unsympathetic orchestral
musicians, …, Shapey forbade performances of his work in 1969.
(cause/reason) (Kortmann, 1991, p. 125)
d. […] utilizing the ready-made evidence, Peter’s estranged wife
sued successfully for divorce. (instrument) (Kortmann, 1991, p.
126)
Previous studies targeting the use of participles by EFL learners
(e.g., Chan, 1998; Granger, 1997; Liu, 2009) have highlighted the
need to give proper emphasis in teaching procedures and appropriate
explanation in textbooks for this construction. This is especially true
for EFL classrooms in Taiwan. According to my own experience in
learning English participles at high school, students are taught how to
construct participles step by step with repeated transformation-based
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output drills in sentence combination, but the semantic relations
represented by participles and their positions are usually ignored. In
line with my observation, Liu (2009) argued that the misleading
presentation of two sentences in combination practice as free variants
of finite counterparts and prescribed examples in the main textbooks
adopted in the curriculum, as in (7) and (8), often leads Taiwanese
students to believe any two propositions can be connected with a
participle and deprives them of chances in practicing constructing
participles in different positions to express different semantic
relations.
(7) Lesson 3, Book I, Far-East English Reader (Shi, Lin, & Brooks,
2007)
J. K. Rowling was a single mother, and she lived in a small
apartment with her baby daughter.
a. Delete the connectives in the coordinate or subordinate clause.
b. Delete the subject in the coordinate or subordinate clause when it
is the same person or the same thing as the subject in the main
clause. However, keep the subject if it is different from the main
subject.
c. Change the verb in the coordinate or subordinate clause into its
present participle form. Copula verb may be optional.
J. K. Rowling was a single mother, living in a small apartment
with her baby daughter.
(Liu, 2009, p. 92, example 17)
(8) Lesson 3, Book I, Far-East English Reader
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Combine each pair of sentences using the “S + V …, V-ing …”
pattern.
Norah Jones is now a very popular singer.
She has released two best-selling jazz albums.

(Liu, 2009, p. 93-94, example 18)
It is no wonder to observe that the common and serious
problems in Taiwanese EFL learners’ usage of participles include
problematic ordering distribution, misapplication due to incorrect
logical connections (Liu, 2009), and difficulties in distinguishing the
functions of adverbial participles from main clauses (Chan, 1998; Liu,
2009). Therefore, even after intensive instruction in high school,
college students in my writing classes rarely use participles in their
work. Even when they do, it is not uncommon to see a sentence like
“Karen was very upset, cheated by a salesman,” where the
interclausal relation (i.e., cause or anteriority) and the positioning are
not rhetorically matched, not to mention that the students have
difficulties inferring the possible semantic relations that a participle
could bear in different positions.
Given the above review, the integration of the CL concept
“iconicity” into the teaching procedure should be a viable starting
point to make PI more effective. Yet, no attempt has been made to
empirically investigate this issue. As one of the first attempts to
establish a link among EFL grammar/composition, CL theory, and PI,
the present study addressed the following research questions.
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Research Questions
(1) Is there any difference between CL-based PI (CLPI) and
traditional output-based instruction (TOBI) in learners’
performances in a judgment test of appropriateness between
participle orderings and semantic functions?
(2) Is there any difference between CLPI and TOBI in learners’
performances in a written test of participalizing appropriate
clauses in contexts?
(3) Would the positive effects in learners’ performances under
different treatments, if any, be retained over time in different
manners?
PRESENT STUDY
With the intent to investigate the effectiveness of incorporation
of CL concepts as a way of altering the means by which L2 learners
process input, a one-semester long case study was conducted on the
performances of college students in three EFL composition classes
under different treatments. The design and settings are detailed in the
following sections.
Participants
The participants were 108 sophomore English majors from
three composition classes in a private university in central Taiwan.
The course objectives of the three classes were the same, and aimed at
familiarizing learners with the necessary paraphrasing skills in writing.
All the learners spoke Chinese as their L1 and had studied English as
a school subject for at least seven years. Since it was difficult to
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randomize the participants, the three intact classes were directly used:
two as experimental groups, with the first (N = 36) receiving CLPI
and the second (N = 36) receiving TOBI, and the third (N = 36)
serving as the control group under no particular instruction on the
target form but subject to exposure to the target form in accordance
with the scheduled syllabus. The participants were all at the
intermediate level of the General English Proficiency Test developed
by the Language Training and Testing Center in Taiwan or at
equivalent levels in other English proficiency tests.
Instruction Procedures
CL-based PI (CLPI). The instruction was carried out within
the regular class hour by the researcher of the current study in the
medium of Chinese. Following the guidelines mentioned earlier in (2),
the lesson plan for CLPI consisted of the following three phases.
In Phase I, to offer a review of English participle constructions,
the instructor presented learners a total of six sentence pairs like (9a)
and invited them to examine the interclausal semantic relations (Task
1, Appendix A). After guided discussion, the instructor wrote a
combined sentence with the subordinator(s) that appropriately
expressed the possible semantic relations between the two clauses
such as (9b) and the participle equivalent as in (9c). Reading aloud
the subordinated and participalized versions of the sentences, the
instructor invited the learners to repeat after him. The procedure
repeats itself in each sentence pair and ends with a brief explanation
of what a participle is and looks like. Phase I took about thirty
minutes.
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(9)
a. The old heavyweight suffered a series of hard jabs to his stomach
and a powerful punch to his jaw. He was dazed and reeling in the
boxing ring.
b. Because/After the old heavyweight suffered a series of hard jabs
to his stomach and a powerful punch to his jaw, he was dazed and
reeling in the boxing ring.
c. Suffering a series of hard jabs to his stomach and a powerful
punch to his jaw, the old heavy weight was dazed and reeling in
the boxing ring.
It was assumed the instruction in the first phase could provide
structured input for learners although the activity type might not
exactly conform to the defining features for PI as originally conceived
by VanPatten (2004), where structured-input activities are suggested
to be referential and affective and provide learners with opportunities
to hear and see the input. Referential activities are referred to as those
where learners have to respond to a question with an answer that is
either right or wrong, whereas affective ones are those where
learners’ opinions or affective responses are elicited about the
meaning of the entire sentence. The activity administered here was
considered to be referential and affective in nature. It was referential
because when learners were asked to examine the interclausal
semantic relations and associate them with appropriate connectors,
the task itself was a structured-input association activity as suggested
by VanPatten (2004). It was also affective because the association
task proceeded in an interactive way where learners had to discuss
with other classmates and express their own opinions over what the
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interclausal relations were. The discussion activity in turn provided
learners with both oral and written structured input from each other
(see Banati, 2001). In light of the above, learners were expected to
engage themselves in processing input sentences in a controlled
situation.
In Phase II, the instructor presented learners with two Chinese
pairs (Task 2 in Appendix A), which differed from each other in the
temporal sequencing of events. Serving to preset the stage for linking
the L1 and the L2, the activity aimed at directing learners to “unearth”
the CL principle “iconic sequencing” or “temporal sequence” in Tai’s
terms (1985, 1989) that underlies their L1 Chinese. According to Tai
(1985), the principle of temporal sequence (PTS) can capture the most
general tendency of word order in Chinese, e.g., the natural
serialization of two temporally-conjoined clauses as in (10), and also
provide a natural account for many cases of meaning contrast
resulting from different word orders like (11) (for a detailed
discussion on PTS, see Tai, 1985, 1989).
(10) (Tai, 1985, p. 50, example 1)
a. Wo chi-guo fan, ni (zai) da dianhua gei wo.
I eat-asp meal, you (then) make telephone to I
‘Call me after I have finished dinner.’
b. *Ni (zai) da dianhua gei wo, wo chi-guo fan.
(11) (Tai, 1985, p. 54, example 19-20)
a. Ta zuo gonggong qiche dao zher.
He ride bus
arrive here
‘He came here by bus.’
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b. Ta dao zher zuo gonggong qiche.
‘He came here to ride in a bus’
(10a) is a grammatical sentence as the order of the events conjoined
by the temporal connective zai “then” obeys the PTS; whereas (10b)
is ungrammatical because what is perceived as a later event (i.e., da
dianhua gei wo) is positioned prior to a clause expressing an earlier
event (i.e., wo chi-guo fan). The pair of sentences in (11) shows that
the PTS also modulates how different interpretations can be induced
via different orders of the dao “to” phrase and the conveyance
expression; (11a) indicates the event of riding in a bus precedes the
event of getting here whereas (11b) suggests the reverse meaning.
Therefore, if the PTS indeed has an independent motivation and
substantial explanatory power in Chinese grammar, the activity in
Phase II should be able to enhance Chinese learners’ awareness of the
underlying iconic motivation and relate it to the same cognitive
mechanism underlying participle positioning in L2 English.
After the above instruction, the instructor then directed
learners’ attention to a temporal sequencing image-schema
accompanied with example sentences. The schema was meant to
direct learners to the common CL principle shared by their L1 and L2
and to reinforce the grammatical explanation to be more CL-based in
nature. The activities in Phase II lasted for about twenty minutes.
Phase III required learners to work through a written activity
where they were pushed to process and interpret participles in
different positions within contextual frames in three different
passages respectively extracted from the China Post and Fredrickson
and Wedel (1984) (Task 3 in Appendix A). The design of the activity
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had many advantages: first, it served to provide learners with
meaningful focused practice; second, it engaged learners in a rich
context to show the backgrounding nature of participles within the
contextual flow; last, learners were not presented with structured
input in longer stretches of text/speech before they were involved in
processing shorter input sentences. Learners were invited to share
their interpretations and answers, followed by the instructor’s
comments on their opinions. Phase III took about twenty minutes.
Traditional output-based instruction (TOBI). TOBI was
provided during regular class hours in the medium of Chinese by an
instructor who had no CL background but was well-versed in
traditional instruction. As with CLPI, the TOBI procedure consisted
of three phases, respectively allocated with thirty, twenty, and twenty
minutes.
Phase I proceeded with a review of participle construction by
following the step-by-step transformation-based approach (see (7) for
the procedure). The instructor first directed learners’ attention to the
prescribed steps of the transformation process, and then put “the
theory” into “practice” by transforming the given finite clauses into
participles. Different from Phase I in CLPI, learners were
immediately engaged in sentence combination drills (Task 1 in
Appendix B). The activity was meant to familiarize learners with
producing the correct participle form at the sentence level.
Phase II aimed at acquainting learners with the discourse and
semantic functions that a participle could bear. The instructor
elaborated these ideas without reference to how the diversified
semantic relations can be derived from the core CL concept of iconic
sequencing. Instead, the instructor offered learners an inventory-like
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list of the semantic functions associated with a participle in different
positions, with corresponding example sentences. The lecture also
included the backgrounding nature of a participle clause in relation to
a main clause foregrounded in discourse.
In Phase III, the sentence combination practice was constructed
to familiarize learners with producing participles in different positions
that appropriately expressed the assigned semantic functions (Task 2
in Appendix B). As with CLPI, the instructor invited a few learners to
share their answers and gave comments.
Tests and Scoring
To evaluate the treatment effects, an acceptability judgment test
(AJT) and a paraphrasing production test (PPT) were administered
based on a pre-test and post-test procedure. Pre-tests were
administered two weeks before the instructional treatments at the
beginning of the semester (Week 2), while post-tests were set
respectively right after (Week 5) and two months after the treatments
(Week 14). The testing sessions were identical except for the
presentation orders of the test items. All the participants first
completed the AJT and then the PPT. The testing and scoring
procedures of the two tests are detailed as follows.
Acceptability judgment test (AJT). The participants were given
20nminutes to complete the AJT. This test was designed to measure
the receptive knowledge gained at interpreting the interclausal
semantic relations conveyed by participle positioning at the sentence
level. The test consisted of thirteen pairs of semantically related finite
clauses followed by four combined versions of the given sentences as
choices (Appendix C). The choices varied in what served as
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participles and their ordering in relation to the main clauses.
Participants were asked to circle the one(s) which they thought
was/were the most appropriate to describe the semantic relation
between the given finite clauses.
All the choices were subject to pre-judgment for their
appropriateness in expressing the semantic relations of the given
clauses. The pre-judgment was done by five English native readers,
all graduate students of non-linguistics backgrounds studying at
Washington University in the U.S. Their preferred choice(s) for the
thirteen test items were used as the scoring standard. The choices
receiving above 60% agreement (3 out of 5) were treated as the most
appropriate, 40% agreement (2 out of 5) as acceptable, and below
20% agreement (1 out of 5) as inappropriate. Raw scores of the
participants were calculated as follows: two points given to choices
defined as the most appropriate, one point to those classified as
acceptable, and zero points to those deemed inappropriate.
Paraphrasing production test (PPT). A 60-minute period was
devoted to the PPT. This test was administered to assess the
productive knowledge participants had gained in gained at producing
participle constructions at the discourse level. The test consisted of
six passages extracted from the exercise in Morenberg and Sommers
(2008), and was depictive or narrative in nature. Each passage was
missing a sentence that contributed to textual coherence (Appendix C).
Participants were asked to closely examine the passages and then
sharpen the focus of the passages by converting the redundant
sentences into participles. No Chinese translations were provided for
the passages, but glosses in Chinese were given for obviously difficult
lexis. The raw scores were calculated as follows: two points to
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passages where the target sentences were correctly chosen to be
participalized and put in the appropriate positions, one point to those
where only one of the above requirements was fulfilled, and zero
points to those where none of the above was fulfilled. The total
possible score for this test was twelve.
The overall experimental procedures are summarized in Figure 2.
Pre-test (AJT: 20 minutes & PPT: 60 minutes)
Two weeks
Instruction (CLPI & TOBI: 70 minutes each)
Two days
Post-test 1 (AJT: 20 minutes & PPT: 60 minutes)
Eight weeks
Post-test 2 (AJT: 20 minutes & PPT: 60 minutes)
Figure 2
Overall Experimental Procedures of the Study
RESULTS
Acceptability Judgment Test
The mean AJT scores on the pre- and post-tests from the three
groups are reported in Table 1.
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35. 4 (Winter 2011)
Table 1
Descriptive Statistics of the AJT Scores
Instruction
CLPI
TOBI
Control
Test time
Mean
SD
Mean
SD
Mean
SD
Pre-test
12.56
2.17
11.92
2.01
12.03
1.52
Post-test 1
15.69
2.08
14.56
3.29
12.56
1.21
Post-test 2
15.33
1.79
13.81
2.41
12.42
1.56
To examine the relative effectiveness of CLPI and TOBI, the
raw AJT scores were entered into a two-way ANOVA with repeated
measures taking Instruction as the between- and Test time as the
within-subject factors. The results of the ANOVA analysis are
summarized in Table 2:
Table 2
ANOVA Results of AJT Scores
SS
df
MS
F
p
Instruction
260.04
2
130.02
33.03
0.001
Test time
267.52
2
133.76
25.92
0.001
83.38
4
20.84
5.29
0.001
Source of Variation
Instruction*Test time
As Table 2 suggests, the two-way ANOVA analysis generated
main effects of both instruction type and test time (p’s < .001), and
their interaction also reached significance (p < .001), as shown in
Figure 3.
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Lai: Processing Instruction of Iconicity in EFL Classrooms
Figure 3
Means Scores of Acceptability Judgment Test
Post hoc Tuckey tests suggested that, on the pre-test, there were
no significant differences among the three groups, showing that no
particular group had gained better knowledge about the target
construction prior to the instruction treatment. Instead, the source of
the interaction mainly came from the following contrasts on the posttests.
In terms of the treatment effectiveness, both the CLPI and
TOBI groups outperformed the control group (p’s < .05) on Post-test
1, but the two treatment groups did not differ from each other (p
= .334); as for Post-test 2, the CLPI group performed better than both
the TOBI and the control groups (p’s < .05), but a better performance
was not observed between the TOBI and the control group (p = .112).
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35. 4 (Winter 2011)
In terms of the time effects, participants under both the CLPI
and TOBI treatments showed significant improvement from the pretest to Post-test 1 (p’s < .05); though the scores of both the CLPI and
TOBI groups on Post-test 2 declined slightly from Post-test 1,
however, the difference was only numerical (p’s < .998). This
suggests that the positive effects under both the CLPI and TOBI
treatments were still maintained after a period of time. The significant
contrast between the pre-test and Post-test 2 under the two treatment
groups also illustrates this point (p’s < .05).
Paraphrasing Production Test
The mean PPT scores on the pre- and post-tests from the three
groups are reported in Table 3.
Table 3
Descriptive Statistics of the PPT Scores
Instruction
CLPI
TOBI
Control
Test time
Mean
SD
Mean
SD
Mean
SD
Pre-test
3.72
1.30
3.92
1.50
3.81
1.53
Post-test 1
6.50
1.32
5.14
0.83
3.83
1.18
Post-test 2
6.11
1.14
4.00
0.83
3.72
0.74
A two-way ANOVA with repeated measures was administered
on the raw PPT scores, with Instruction as the between- and Test time
as the within-subject factors. The results of the ANOVA analysis are
summarized in Table 4:
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Table 4
ANOVA Results of PPT Scores
SS
df
MS
F
p
Instruction
98.46
2
49.23
46.44
0.001
Test time
153.35
2
76.68
36.58
0.001
98.24
4
24.56
23.17
0.001
Source of Variation
Instruction*Test time
The two-way ANOVA analysis revealed main effects of
instruction type and test time (p’s < .001), and a significant
interaction of the above factors (p < .005), as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4
Means Scores of Paraphrasing Production Test
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Post hoc Tuckey tests suggested no significant differences
among the three groups (p’s < .99) on the pre-test. This demonstrated
that any effect found in the post-tests should be attributed to treatment
differences rather than students’ prior knowledge about the target
structure. The source of the interaction can be identified from the
contrasts on the post-tests.
In terms of the treatment effectiveness, on Post-test 1, the CLPI
group performed significantly better than the TOBI group (p < .001),
who in turn outperformed the control group (p < .05); on Post-test 2,
the CLPI group still outranked the other two groups, but the
superiority did not remain between the TOBI and the control groups
(p = .986).
In terms of the time effects, the improvement from pre-test to
Post-test 1 by the two treatment groups both reached significance (p’s
< .05) while the increase in the scores of the control group was only
numerical (p > 1), as shown in Figure 4 where one observes a great
increase in both the CLPI and TOBI groups’ scores and a level remain
in the control group’s score. However, the positive effects under
different treatments did not pattern the same over a period of time
(from pre-test to Post-test 2). That is, the positive effect was
significant only in the CLPI group (p < .001), but not in the other two
(p’s > 1).
DISCUSSION
Overall, the data collected through the AJT and PPT revealed
that learners under both the CLPI and TOBI treatments could enjoy
immediate instructional benefits both in judging whether the semantic
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relations matched the participle positions in relation to main clauses
and in participalizing the appropriate clauses in the correct positions
within a particular context. However, the treatment effects on both
tasks differed in the degree of effectiveness and varied with the
timing of the tests administered. In light of the findings in the present
study, the three research questions can be addressed as follows.
In the first research question, CLPI was hypothesized to
demonstrate an overall advantage in an interpretation-based AJT.
Although the CLPI learners performed better overall than the TOBI
learners and the control group, the statistical analysis indicated that
the TOBI learners still demonstrated improvement from the pre-test to
Post-test 1 and performed in a similar manner to the CLPI learners on
Post-test 1. A possible explanation is that TOBI was not purely a
grammar instruction consisting of only grammatical mechanical drills;
instead, it might contain “semi” meaning-oriented activities (see
Appendix B). Therefore, although the TOBI learners connected the
semantic relations between a participle and its positioning via rote
learning, the reinforcement in terms of a form-meaning connection
might have also created some meaningful output, which in turn served
as input to other learners. However, TOBI only sufficed to enable
learners to handle the interpretation task at the sentence level and
right after the instruction. In other words, the treatment effectiveness
of TOBI was not as strong or long as CLPI.
In the second research question, the CLPI learners were
hypothesized to perform as well as the TOBI learners in a productionbased PPT. The findings revealed two important points: First, both
treatment groups outperformed the control on Post-test 1 and made
significant improvement; second, the effectiveness of CLPI in the
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production task was even greater than TOBI. These results suggested
that even though the CLPI learners were not engaged in focused
output-form practice, they still could perform equally well on a
production task, and sometimes even better. In line with the earlier
studies, e.g., Benati (2001), Van Patten and Cadierno (1993), the
findings provide empirical support for the impact of PI on the
development of learners’ linguistic system. More importantly, the
findings also reinforce previous PI research limited to the acquisition
of verbal morphology by demonstrating the impact of CLPI on the
acquisition of English participles and their semantic functions at the
sentence and discourse levels.
In the last research question, the treatment effects were
hypothesized to remain over a period of time. The results suggested
that only CLPI could provide stable and long-lasting instruction
effects on both the AJT and PPT. TOBI, however, could only render
immediate effects for learners in handling both tasks on Post-test 1
but not Post-test 2. The absence of the delayed effect under TOBI was
not surprising as it describes most of the EFL writing classrooms in
Taiwan where college students still have had difficulty using English
participles in their writing even after intensive instruction in high
school. However, the presence of the delayed CLPI effects for more
than two months is significant because previous studies like Benati
(2001) and Cadierno (1995) did not examine the retention of effects
for more than four weeks. Several factors may jointly contribute to
the findings: First, the grammatical explanation in CLPI made the
form-meaning relation between participles and positioning ready to be
processed because its “naturalness” conformed to the cognitive
structure of learners’ “processor;” second, the image-schema form of
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Lai: Processing Instruction of Iconicity in EFL Classrooms
the CL concept may have further facilitated the converting process
from input to intake. As Redzimska (2008, p. 141) suggested that
“iconicity may serve as one of mechanisms underlying the process of
metaphor creation”, the mapping between order of linguistic elements
and experience of event sequencing in the real world can be viewed as
metaphorical extension grounded on the mapping between the source
and target domains. Studies on the acquisition of figurative usages of
idioms (e.g., Boers, 2000, 2004) and polysemous words (e.g.,
Morimoto & Loewen, 2007) have proven it essential to make the
metaphorical extension imagery and explicit for better vocabulary
retention. Therefore, it is possible that image-schema has facilitated
the conceptualization of the form-meaning relation. Last, the iconic
participle positioning made reference to L1 Chinese which shared the
same conceptualization principle. As a way of making use of learners’
L1 without inducing negative cross-linguistic influence, the approach
is in line with Morimoto and Loewen (2007) who viewed one’s L1 as
a valuable resource rather than a thing to be avoided in L2 learning.
CONCLUSION
The current study investigated the effectiveness of CLPI on the
acquisition of English participles and their semantic functions at the
sentence and discourse levels by Taiwanese EFL learners studying in
university. Some implications can be drawn from the outcome of the
study at both the theoretical and pedagogical levels.
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35. 4 (Winter 2011)
Theoretical Implications
The study made contributions not only to the current SLA
research on the role of input processing but also to the discussion on
the value of CL disciplines in foreign language teaching and learning.
This has been done via the establishment of links between EFL
grammar/composition teaching, CL theories, and PI. In respect to the
above, the findings on both the interpretation and production tasks
lend support to VanPatten’s (1996) IP model and prove its
effectiveness is not just limited to acquisition of verbal morphology at
the beginner level. More importantly, the incorporation of the CL
concept “iconicity” into PI further adds the treatment effectiveness
and also demonstrates the theoretical value of CL researchers’
discussion on the relation between linguistic forms and cognitive
mechanisms.
Pedagogical Implications
The present results indicate that although both CLPI and TOBI
can facilitate the learning process of English participle construction,
CLPI still generates better and longer effectiveness. This implies that
the traditional step-by-step presentation of the transformed participle
outcome can be reduced to a minimum and replaced by presentation
of ample example sentences in different positions in a stretch of
authentic text. This approach shows where a participle naturally
occurs with its inferred interclausal semantic relations at the sentence
level and provides a supplementive grounding function at the
discourse level (see Liu, 2009, p. 101). In particular, the first part can
be done via guided discussion and close examination of semantic
relations between finite clauses, followed by presentation of their
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Lai: Processing Instruction of Iconicity in EFL Classrooms
corresponding participle versions and a summary with the imageschema of the CL concept “iconicity.” The second part can start with
a warm-up presentation of two versions of the same paragraph that
varies in participle positioning as in (12), followed by an invitation
for students’ comments on which version is better.
(12)
[Clanging its bell, the empty cable car approaches as if slightly drunk.
/ The empty cable car approaches, clanging its bell and swaying as
though slightly drunk.] The harsh, metallic grinding of the brakes
drowns out the babbling of the people waiting in line. […]
Following the students’ comments, instructors can further
elaborate on the relation between participle positioning and its
semantic functions. After words, more passages containing participles
in different positions can be presented for additional discussion.
These context-dependent and meaning-focused teaching procedures
should suffice to encourage learners to invest more cognitive effort in
deeper processing and raise their awareness of the semantic, discourse,
and communicative functions of the participles at the same time.
Although the study has shown that CL-based grammatical
explanations can serve as a way of improving the effectiveness of PI,
there remains room for future research. First, more CL-based PI
research targeting the discourse or pragmatic functions of different
structures is necessary. Second, further research could include
different types of treatment activities, and experimental designs. Due
to the limitations set by the course objectives of the present study,
options of types and modalities of in-class activities were relatively
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confining. Although researchers (e.g., Marsden, 2006) have shown
that not all the principles and procedures suggested by VanPatten for
PI are necessary, it would be best to design modality-specific
treatment activities, one for listening and one for reading, to exert the
greatest effects. Moreover, different structured referential activities
other than the group discussion-based activities in the present study
may better match the teaching practices currently adopted in Taiwan’s
EFL classrooms. Some other experimental considerations include
inclusion of distractor items in the tests or randomized assignment of
participants into either experimental or control groups.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Yu-da Lai is currently an assistant professor in the Department
of English Language, Literature, and Linguistics at Providence
University. He received his Ph.D. degree in linguistics from National
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Taiwan Normal University. His research interests include processing
issues at both lexical and sentential levels in Chinese as L1 and in
English as L2, and the interface between SLA and cognition with
special attention to how research of cognitive linguistics can be
applied to SLA.
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APPENDIX A
Sample Materials/Worksheet for CLPI
TASK 1 Read the following pairs of English sentences, and indicate
the possible semantic relations between the two clauses in
each pair.
(1)
The old heavyweight suffered a series of hard jabs to his stomach and
a powerful punch to his jaw. He was dazed and reeling in the boxing
ring.
________________________________________________________
(2)
Your students talk to you. They always feel that their problems will
be solved.
________________________________________________________
TASK 2 Read the Chinese pairs, and try to figure out what
distinguishes the two sentences in each pair.
(1)
a. 小明到圖書館拿書。
b. 小明拿書到圖書館。
(2)
a. 小明搭火車到台北。
b. 小明到台北搭火車。
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
Extension of logical roles and semantic functions of a participle
and its ordering:
EVENT 1
EVENT 2
EVENT 3
Time
[Order of linguistic forms]
小明
小明
拿書
到圖館
到圖書館
拿書
Suffering a series of hard jabs, the old heavy weight was dazed…
The boat struck a rock, throwing the crew into the sea.
TASK 3 Read the following passages, and then indicate the possible
semantic relations that the underlined participle(s) can play
by writing down the corresponding subordinators:
(1)

Semantic relations: a. ________________ b. ________________
“[a] Riding a surge of six consecutive primary victories going into the
convention, Arling won his first ballot nomination even more easily
than expected, [b] piling up 2,789 votes to 1,321 for five different
regional, favorite son, and single-issue dark horse candidates.”
(extracted from Fredrickson & Wedel, 1984, pp. 95-96)
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(2)
Semantic relations: a. _____________________
“A ruling party lawmaker yesterday made a public apology after he
was widely criticized for having taken his personal revenge to a
legislative meeting by railing at a customs officer who had stopped
him at the airport for a luggage search. […] He emptied his bag,
[a] showing his underwear and sweaters that he said were in the bag
at the time of the airport row to prove that he was not carrying any
cigarettes. […]”
(2006/3/18, The China Post)

*Note. There were a total of six sentence pairs in Task 1 and three
passages in Task 2 in the full version of the CLPI worksheet.
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APPENDIX B
Sample Materials/Worksheet for TOBI
☆ Steps to participle construction:
a. Delete the connectives in the coordinate or subordinate clause.
b. Delete the subject in the coordinate or subordinate clause when it
is the same person or the same thing as the subject in the main
clause. However, keep the subject if it is different from the main
subject.
c. Change the verb in the coordinate or subordinate clause into its
present or past participle form. A copula verb may be optional.
Example:
Michael Jordan is a great figure on the basketball court, and he
always impresses
a b c: impressing
everyone with his special skills
TASK 1 Read the following pairs of English sentences, and convert
them into participle clauses by following the above steps.
(1) Because the old heavyweight suffered a series of hard jabs to his
stomach and a powerful punch to his jaw, he was dazed and
reeling in the boxing ring.
_____________________________________________________
(2) After your students talk to you, they always feel that their
problems will be solved.
_____________________________________________________
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☆ Discourse functions of a participle clause: elaborating, extending,
and enhancing the message expressed by the main clause
☆ Semantic functions of a participle clause:

V-ing/V-ed, S + V …
anteriority, condition, cause, and instrument

S + V …, V-ing/V-ed …
posteriority, temporal overlap, result, purpose, addition
TASK 2 Combine the following pairs of sentences using “S + V …,
V-ing/V-ed …” or “V-ing/V-ed, S + V …” to appropriately
show the assigned semantic relations:
(1) Purpose
The man quietly sneaked away from the car accident.
The man successfully avoided the inspection of the police officer.
_____________________________________________________
(2) Instrument
Jack utilized the recording as evidence.
He successfully defended himself and freed himself from the
charge.
_____________________________________________________
*Note. There were six sentence pairs respectively in Task 1 and Task
2 in the full version of the TOBI worksheet.
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APPENDIX C
Sample Test Sentences
Acceptability judgment test
(1)
Karen was cheated by a salesman.
Thus she was very upset.
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
Karen was very upset, cheated by a salesman.
Being very upset, Karen was cheated by a salesman.
Cheated by a salesman, Karen was very upset.
Karen was cheated by a salesman, being very upset.
(2)
Mike backed away slowly in order to avoid eye contact with his
father.
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
Backing away slowly, Mike avoided eye contact with his father.
Mike avoided eye contact with his father, backing away slowly.
Avoiding eye contact with his father, Mike backed away slowly.
Mike backed away slowly, avoiding eye contact.
Paraphrasing production test
(1)
Marbles were just about the most popular game for centuries in Asia,
Europe, and both the America. Playing marbles was especially
popular in small-town America, particularly during the Great
Depression. Marbles were cheap in those days, costing only a nickel.
In recent decades, thousands of members have been attending the
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Marble Collectors Society of America annual show. The members
trade marbles for $75 to $300. The most expensive marble, the goldbanded Lutz, was made in Germany before World War I and is worth
over $5,000.
(2)
As smoke began to fill the kitchen, the janitor sprinted out of the
cafeteria. She coughed painfully and raced for the school’s front door.
She gasped for air. She strained to hear the fire engines. But all that
she could hear were her own rasping efforts to inhale. Would she be
able to make it outside, or would she pass out? Her chest tightened,
but with a final lunge, she burst through the door and gulped down the
cold winter air.
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認知語言學為基礎之語言教學法：以象似性原則
融合輸入處理教學法於英語課堂之成效為例
摘要
本文旨在比較以「認知語言學為基礎之輸入處理教
學 法 」 (cognitive linguistics-based processing
instruction, CLPI) 與「輸出導向式之傳統教學法」
(traditional output-based instruction, TOBI) 應用於英
語教學的成效，並以分詞構句相對於主句之不同位
置所隱含的語義功能做為教學成效的評估標的。研
究參與對象為三個班級共 108 位之英語系大二學
生 ， 其 中 兩 班 為 實 驗 組 ， 分 別 接 受 CLPI 與
TOBI，另一班則為不進行教學之對照組。CLPI 的
內涵包括以語境呈現分詞構句於不同位置所隱含的
語義、「順序象似性」為基礎的解釋與處理輸入練
習；TOBI 則包括了文法規則的解釋、衍生方式的
改寫導引、條列方式呈現語義功能並立即給予輸出
練習。資料蒐集分別於教學前、教學後二天與後八
週實施「接受度測驗」與「改寫測驗」以評量學習
者理解與輸出分詞構句及其語義的能力。結果顯示
CLPI 組於「接受度測驗」與「改寫測驗」的成效
與其持續性皆優於 TOBI 組，不僅說明了 CLPI 對
學習者的文法系統轉化與輸出有正面效益外，也證
明了功能學派所提出的語言解釋應用在語言教學法
上的實用價值。
關鍵詞：輸入處理教學法
分詞構句
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認知語言學
象似性