What image comes to mind when you read the following sentence? The dinosaur swam his friend to the mainland. You might be imagining a scene where ‘the dinosaur moved his friend to the mainland by swimming.’ Some of you may think that this caused-motion construction (CMC) is ungrammatical because the verb swim is intransitive. From the traditional perspective, this kind of usage is ungrammatical, or exceptional at best in that no adequate explanation can be provided for this sentence. However, under the cognitive linguistic paradigm, this sentence is just atypical and not incorrect in itself. I strongly believe that effective grammar instruction should also be able to help learners make sense of such atypical phenomena. Then, what might be the best way to teach learners to make sense of such an atypical 'dinosaur' sentence?

I received some welcome help from an image schema, which is the very first, abstract concept that emerges in the human mind as a result of a direct interaction with the world. I modified the ‘source-path-goal’ image-schema to make it learner-friendly for classroom use. Students watched a series of animations, as shown on the left, with the intention of learning CMCs implicitly. When given a Korean-to-English translation task, learners who went through this image schema learning process produced more correct atypical CMCs (such as Frank sneezed the napkin off the table) than other groups who received more traditional methods of grammar instruction. More details are provided in my M.Ed. thesis.

Profiling can be described as conceptually highlighting some aspect of a scene by zooming in and out of our attention. Looking at the picture on the left as an example, you can either see a gorilla or a lion or a tree, depending on which part of the picture you pay more attention to. Language can also be used similarly to direct attention to certain aspects of the scene. When someone says "I have elbow pain" for example, the expression profiles a specific part within the larger structure which is the arm in this case.

Based on this cognitive mechanism, I developed material to teach the definite article ‘the’. Students were taught how the definite article ‘the’ profiles a thing to single out one eligible candidate in context. Specifically, by watching a series of visual effects as shown on the left, learners were expected to implicitly understand the core principle (i.e., profiling) behind the usage of ‘the’. It is interesting to learn that the group which received this profiling-based instruction showed a better understanding of the article ‘the’, when measured with an error-correction test, than the group which were taught with a dictionary-style rule-based instruction. More details are provided in my conference presentation (2020, October 23).

One of the ways to understand the structure of a language is to practice sentence parsing. This analysis activity is usually done by adding symbols to indicate where a phrase begins and ends. However, this method is visually unobtrusive and boring. In order to solve this problem, I came up with the idea of writing down a sentence on a music staff as one would write musical notes. By putting components of a sentence hierarchically on the staff, learners are more likely to understand the relationships between phrases as well as the essential components of the sentence. In my classes, I asked my students to "play" their language notes as freely as they wanted to!

It is not an easy task for EFL learners to make the distinction between a main verb in its past tense and its past participle in a sentence, especially if their forms are identical (e.g., I am pleased that the news pleased them). Inspired by the linguistic phenomenon that the only one main verb can carry tense within a sentence, I created a story of the VERB family.

(Synopsis) A battle arose within the verb kingdom for the owner position of a sentence. The royal verb that won the war had tense as a sign of victory. They had a superpower to control time within the kingdom. The losers put special markings on them (e.g., -ing, -ed, to-) to hide their identities and serve as various roles in a sentence.

My 8th graders really loved this story-based grammar instruction. Being immersed in the story, they were able to learn the English verb system naturally (while having a lot of fun). I am thinking of expanding the story line to include more diverse aspects of the English language. If you have good storyline with Marvel characters intertwined with aspects of the English language, please let me know!

When I designed this activity, I was deeply influenced by Construction Grammar of Adele Goldberg (perhaps because I was writing my Master's thesis at that time). Instead of having my students go through a word-by-word combination process, I let them remember the pattern of the English relative constructions themselves. Using various shapes, such as rectangles, circles, triangles, and brackets, help learners visualize relative constructions and learn them as a "little" bit long word. I was able to collect empirical data that this lexico-grammar approach was effective in their production of relative constructions. Since they recognize them as a word, and do not have to go through rule-application process, the accuracy and the speed of production significantly improved.

I used a CONTAINER metaphor to teach two different usages of ‘it’. In classrooms, I prepared two empty glasses and poured water into one of them. I explained to my students that the glass filled water is full it (i.e., pronoun it), and the glass without water is empty it (i.e., impersonal it). This analogy is drawn upon the fact that language is basically about form and meaning. In this metaphor, glass is language form (here it), and water is meaning. Therefore, when it comes to full it, which has both form and meaning, students are able to trace what it refers to in context, but it is not the case for empty it because it has only form (i.e., empty glass). It was a pleasure to see my students brighten up with curiosity. The metaphor and transparent terminology (e.g., full and empty) were so intuitive that this resulted in better understanding of the difference between these two usages.

The concept of the present perfect tense is not easy to understand for Korean EFL learners, because it does not exist in the Korean language. In order to teach this abstract concept, I borrowed the idea from a famous Korean Zombie movie.

(Synopsis) A fatal zombie virus broke out, and a group of people were stuck in the PAST station. In order to find safe haven, they had to go to the PRESENT station. However, zombies were blocking the way between the 'PAST' and 'PRESENT' stations. The only way to get through the zombies is to get on the 'HAVE' train.

By showing a short animation where a 'HAVE' train connects the PAST and the PRESENT stations, my students were able to visualize the core function of the present perfect tense in English: the relevant time zone leads up to the present and the result of the action still obtained at the present time.