Construction Grammar in Second Language Teaching

Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2016 im Fachbereich Anglistik - Linguistik, Note: 1,3, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena (Institut für Anglistik/Amerikanistik), Veranstaltung: Cognitive Linguistics: Construction Grammar, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: For more than 20 years now, the concept of constructions has been playing a more and more important role in theories of language acquisition and language use. In the 1980s Fillmore, Kay and O'Conner were the first linguists interested in constructionist approaches; and with her two books Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure and Construction at Work: The Nature of Generalization in Language Goldberg eventually paved the way for this alternative view on grammar. By now, Construction Grammar has become a wellaccepted descriptive and processing model that is based on a substantial body of scientific publications. However, the big interest of Construction Grammar research in first language acquisition and native speakers' language use contrasts the little interest in the branch of second language acquisition. It is only recently that linguists have approached the question whether second language learners' linguistic competence relies on constructions as well. Hence, it is no surprise that there has been only little interest in application of Construction Grammar in second language teaching as well. In my opinion, this is a wasted opportunity. If Construction Grammar is widely accepted in the field of first language acquisition, it is also necessary to transfer this concept to second language acquisition and teaching in order to create suitable teaching materials and methods. Thus, this paper is supposed to advocate an applied Construction Grammar in second language teaching.