Applying constructional approach to second language teaching and learning

¹ Pushkin Leningrad State University, Department of Romance and Germanic Philology and Linguodidactics, Saint-Petersburg, Russia
² Saint-Petersburg State University of Economics, Department of Theory and Practice of the English Language and Translation, Saint-Petersburg, Russia

^* Corresponding author: medvedeva.s@unecon.ru

Abstract

The inevitability of addressing constructional approach in modern linguodidactics is caused by the crisis in teaching practices aimed at providing students with a set of static information. The ever- and fast-changing nature of the modern system of knowledge leads to the necessity of teaching students how to search for, analyze and critically assess actual language data. The paper discusses problems and prospects of applying constructional approach in second language teaching and learning and posits an algorithm of studying construction semantics of the ‘noun + get + adjective’ construction as an example. The research methods include analysis and synthesis for identifying problems and prospects of introducing constructional approach in second language learning. A set of resultative meanings of the ‘noun + get + adjective’ construction is obtained by way of semantic clusterisation. As a result, major advantages and challenges of applying constructional approach to second language teaching and learning are established. The paper emphasizes the need for students to have a sufficient theoretical basis in language typology and corpus linguistics. The current research also offers an algorithm of construction analysis and includes a listing of key resultative meanings of the ‘noun + get + adjective’ construction and its restrictions. The results can be of certain interest for corpus linguistics and construction semantics. Prospects for the future research in this field reside in developing strategies aimed at introducing construction grammar in the learning process and cataloguing constructions within different types of languages as well as identifying dependencies between constructional patterns and types of languages.