A Cognitive Linguistic Approach to Teaching English Prepositions Xin Song First supervisor: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schnotz Second supervisor: J. Prof. Dr. Constanze Juchem-Grundmann Date for submission: 13.06.2013 Author Note Xin Song, Department of Psychology, University of Koblenz-Landau Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Xin Song, Department of Psychology, University of Koblenz-Landau, Landau, Germany 76829. E-Mail: [email protected] Acknowledgements Acknowledgements The most important thing I have learnt in doing my PhD program is that an individual can achieve nothing without others’ cooperation and assistance. That is why we need to have family, friends and society. Numerous people have helped me in doing this research project. I would like to convey my gratitude and appreciation to them, and to pass their kindness unto those who are in need of my help, which is the best way I know to show my thanks. First and foremost, my sincere thanks go to my supervisor, Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schnotz at the University of Koblenz-Landau, Campus Landau. He first sparked my interest in the field and encouraged me to carry on my research on teaching English prepositions with psycho-linguistic theoretical background. He has not only stimulated my thinking about some critical issues of the thesis, recommend the most useful reference books, reviewed the thesis draft with great care and patience, ferreted out weaknesses, provided constructive suggestions for improvement, but also spent a lot of time on giving me helpful suggestions on my experiments and statistic analysis as well as accompanying me on visiting secondary schools. In addition, his life example has had tremendous influence on me and inspired me to strive to be a meticulous, rigorous and earnest person. I very much appreciated his advice and guidance on my dissertation and other articles for publish as well as his wholehearted and faith in my ability to successfully carry out this study. I am very grateful to the Graduate School of Teaching and Learning Processes (UPGradE: Unterrichts-Prozesse Graduiertenschule der Exzellenz). During these three years living in Germany, I have benefited a lot from all the members of UPGRADE who give me great help on my daily life as well as my academic study. Special thanks are reserved for Dr. Heidrun Ludwig for arranging so many attractive English workshops for me and for always being patient to support my study. Thus, I would not only like to thank UPGRADE for the I Acknowledgements scholarship but also for the learning experience and the opportunity to gain insights into various disciplines and methodologies. My heartfelt thanks go to J. Prof. Dr. Constanze Juchem-Grundmann at the University of Koblenz-Landau, Campus Koblenz for great assistance in reviewing processing with great patience and for lots of constructive suggestions on the Cognitive Linguistics point of view. She has generously given me wonderful guidance and valuable information in the writing of my thesis, from tiny reference format error to construct long sentences with professional English expressions. I f eel very honored that she has agreed to act as a second supervisor for this PhD thesis. I am greatly indebted to my dear colleagues J. Prof. Dr. Robert Gaschler for his great assistance in statistic processing and in reviewing processing, Dr. Nora Heyne for her kind constructive suggestions on daily life in Germany, conferences overseas, contacting with secondary schools and the like, Dr. Inga Wagner and Eva Christophel for their enthusiastic and technical helps on writing dissertation and valuable advices, and Dr. Loredana Mihalca and Dr. Walter H. Schreiber for their patient guidance on SPSS analysis. My appreciation is extended to my dear friends Shan Lu, who always helps me and encourages me, Sebastian Olbrich who always considers a lot for me and provides as much help as I need and Julia Olbrich who made the time to read parts of my dissertation and made some helpful suggestions as well as their ante Angela Pinner who helps me a lot in reviewing my dissertation as a native English speaker and as a professional English teacher, Fang Zhao, Dr. Thorsten Rasch, Jochen Graf, Rahel Grueninger, Vanessa Lang, Dr. Stephanie Reuter, Cathrin Becker, Dr. Christiane Baadte, Ekaterina Graf, Guelsuem Yigit, for their unwavering support throughout the PhD dissertation and for showing me what true friendship is. My gratitude must be extended to my friends in China, J. Prof. Dr. Haoran Mao, for his wonderful lectures and giving me informative suggestions and constructive comments, Dr. II Acknowledgements Xiaoyuan Lei, for his tender staying up company and encouragement which have accompanied me through the difficult stages of the research project, Dr. Zhenyu Na and Liming Chen, for providing me with some important database for writing and analysis. Finally I would like to thank my family for their love, caring and unfailing support. A special note of appreciation goes to my dear mother Yaping Rong, and my dear father Jun Song, who have not only given me invaluable comments, shared my laughter and tears, but also put up with my writing ups and downs. I also must express thanks to my aunt Youzhuan Zhang, and uncle Guoping Rong, who helped me to carry out the experiments in China. My special thanks are reserved for my grandparents, my aunts, my uncles and my lovely cousins for their deep love and for funny jokes, important family events, surprise gifts and delicious Chinese food they shared with me when I am homesick in Germany. III Content Content Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. 1 Content ...................................................................................................................................... 4 List of tables.............................................................................................................................. 9 List of figures .......................................................................................................................... 12 Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... 1 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 1 2 Theoretical Background ....................................................................................................... 5 2.1 Research Objectives ......................................................................................................... 5 2.2 Research Strands in Teaching: Rote Learning vs. Meaningful Learning ........................ 6 2.3 Cognitive Linguistic Framework ................................................................................... 10 2.3.1 Domains: the foundation of illustrating prepositional senses .................................. 12 2.3.1.1 The definition of the concept domain ............................................................... 12 2.3.1.2 Domains for English prepositions ..................................................................... 17 2.3.2 Image Schema: the concrete structure to extend to abstract prepositional senses ... 20 2.3.2.1 What is an image schema? ................................................................................ 20 2.3.2.2 Properties of image schemas ............................................................................. 24 2.3.2.3 Categorization of image schemas ..................................................................... 26 2.3.2.4 How to illustrate concepts by image schemas? ................................................. 29 2.3.2.5 The image schemas of in, on and at .................................................................. 31 2.3.2.6 Summary ........................................................................................................... 42 2.3.3 Metaphor: the mechanism of cross-domain mappings ............................................ 44 IV Content 2.3.3.1 Conceptual metaphor ........................................................................................ 45 2.3.3.2 The nature of metaphor ..................................................................................... 46 2.3.3.3 The structure of metaphor ................................................................................. 47 2.3.3.4 Structure the abstract senses of prepositions by metaphor ............................... 50 2.4 Summary ....................................................................................................................... 57 3 Design and Methodology of the Empirical Study ............................................................ 60 3.1 Methodology of the Pilot Study: Test of Item Difficulties ............................................ 62 3.1.1 Material .................................................................................................................... 62 3.1.2 Participants .............................................................................................................. 64 3.1.3 Study procedure ....................................................................................................... 64 3.1.4 Analyses .................................................................................................................. 64 3.1.5 Summary .................................................................................................................