Über Susanne Niemeier

“Run” can have other meanings than the basic motion meaning mentioned above, for example in “Mary runs a company”. In this case, it has become a transitive verb and demands a direct object. In this case, the basic motion sense has been metaphorically extended.

For more information on KRASHEN’s model see, for example, VANPATTEN/WILLIAMS 2013: 24–27.

Incidentally, this is not completely true, as on the one hand also natural language settings can involve a focus on language structure, for example, when a second language speaker says something to a native speaker and then asks a metalinguistic question, such as “Did I say that correctly?” or “Can one say it like this?”. On the other hand, also language instruction can involve acquisition elements. For instance, when learners first encounter the past tense –ed morpheme, they need to pay attention to adding it to every regular verb form when using this verb in the past, but once they have passed this initial stage, they just add the morpheme automatically, without thinking about it any longer. Indeed, newer research frequently uses only the term “acquisition” in order to refer to both acquisition (in KRASHEN’s sense) and learning.

HULSTIJN & DE GRAFF 1994 argue, for example, that simple forms or rules are best acquired through the use of implicit methods, whereas more complex grammatical phenomena are easier to acquire through explicit methods.

These projects were located in Québec, which is officially bilingual in French and English with French as the majority language. Whereas the native French speakers are usually able to communicate in English as well (mainly due to the fact that they are geographically surrounded by huge English language majorities), the English speakers are generally monolingual. In order to change this imbalance, school projects were developed in which native English speakers went to a French-speaking school and were surrounded by French from the very first day onwards, all day long, where every subject was taught in French and where some of the schools did not even tolerate English during the breaks. When these learners left the schools, they were usually quite fluent in French and had furthermore developed an interest for Franco-Canadian culture. However, the grammatical correctness of their French utterances left a lot to be desired, as the learners had only received communicative input in French but grammar had never been taught explicitly or been explained to them and had not developed on its own, which contradicts KRASHEN’s claim that grammar develops as a by-product of communication.

As suggested, for example, by THORNBURY (2006), although other scholars do not all agree. For instance, KUMARAVADIVELU (1993) mentions that tasks can be incorporated into a variety of methods.

This is in line with COOK’s (2016: 4) primary assumption about foreign language teaching, namely that “the basis for teaching is the spoken, not the written language”.

But see COOK (2016: 291), who forcefully argues against a task-based syllabus by stating that tasks “cannot realistically form the core of any language teaching classroom that sees its students as people engaged with the world”.

The term “task-supported” is not used in this book for two reasons – first of all, not every researcher makes this differentiation and second, the term “task-based” is already so very much entrenched that it can be seen as a cover term for different instructional formats involving tasks. In the same vein, SAMUDA/BYGATE (2008: 80) state that “more recently ‘task-based’ has come to be rather loosely applied as an umbrella term to refer to any context in which tasks are used, whether as an occasional activity to fill a gap in a lesson plan, or as the central mode of instruction”.

This example is used again in the next sub-chapter.

The main claim of cognitive grammar is that form is meaningful, therefore, from a CG point of view, the contrast between form and meaning in this utterance is untenable as the grammatical structure also conveys meaning.

R. ELLIS (2003: 210) speaks of a “bewildering array of types of task”. For more information on pedagogic, rhetorical, cognitive and psycholinguistic classifications of tasks, please refer to chapter 7 of R. ELLIS’ book.

It cannot be stressed enough that the learners’ motivation is crucial in all kinds of learning and is to a certain extent dependent on the teacher’s ability to actually motivate his/her learners, cf. also GUILLOTEAUX/DÖRNYEI 2008: 72f., who speak about “the belief held by many education experts that student motivation is related to the teacher’s motivational practice”.

In this respect, R. ELLIS (2003: 8) differentiates between ‘task outcome’ and ‘task aim’, claiming that an ‘outcome’ does not necessarily have to involve language, as, for example, when the learners have to draw pictures and then show each other the pictures without using language. If the learners verbalise their outcomes, then – at least for R. ELLIS – the ‘aim’ of the task has been reached. As this book is only interested in a verbalised ‘outcome’ or product and consequently in an overlap of R. ELLIS’ ‘outcome’ and ‘aim’, the task reports need to consist of verbal productions by the learners. They are meant to improve their grammatical and their communicative competences at the same time, for which language use is a precondition.

These somewhat macabre examples work best if the salad in question is, for example, meant for a Halloween party.

This is in line with NORRIS/ORTEGA’S recommendation that learners should be “directly asked to attend to particular forms and try to arrive at metalinguistic generalizations on their own” (2000: 437).

Modified insofar as the language focus is ‘upgraded’ and is used for systematizing the grammatical construction in question.

As mentioned before, there are currently no task-based syllabi or curricula in Germany, therefore, R. ELLIS’ idea is not applicable anyway. If tasks are only inserted into the foreign language classroom on an irregular basis, they may just as well be consciousness-raising ones. In this way, ECKERTH’s idea comes closest to the perspective of this book, with the slight difference that the two lesson foci, i.e., the communicative and the grammatical one, are seen to be of equal importance in this book, whereas for ECKERTH, a lesson has either a grammar focus or a communicative focus, but not both at the same time.

As a reminder: ECKERTH’s use of focused ‘consciousness-raising tasks’ corresponds to what FOTOS calls ‘grammar consciousness-raising tasks’. Vice versa, what FOTOS calls ‘communicative consciousness-raising tasks’ are unfocused tasks for ECKERTH.

There are a number of very useful introductions to cognitive grammar, see, for example, LANGACKER 1987, 2006, 2009, 2013, RADDEN/DIRVEN 2007 or TAYLOR 2002.

This book comes back to conceptual metaphor theory in the chapters on teaching prepositions and phrasal verbs (chapters 10 and 11), in which the notion of metaphor is explained in more detail.

By convention, conceptual metaphors are always written in small capital letters.

This is called an ‘image schema’ by cognitive linguists, i.e., an underlying and subconscious coherent structure, which explains what something in the world is like. Image schemas can be seen as the mental representations of external physical experiences.

This theory is revisited in the chapter on modality (chapter 7), where it is explained in more detail.

LANGACKER first used the name “Space Grammar”, as the notion of space is the most basic one for human beings (having been born into space and moving in space), but after a while renamed his theory because people erroneously thought that he was talking about space travel and astronauts (personal communication).

This is discussed in more detail in the chapter on the passive voice (chapter 9).

An example for a phenomenon influenced by sociocultural experiences is the TV (from French “tu” vs. “vous”) distinction that German has and English does not have, i.e., the German choice between “du” and “Sie” when addressing a person. The choice of construal in a TV language is based on the perceived social distance between two persons. If the usage norms are violated, this can have severe consequences for a language user. The TV distinction disappeared from English already in Shakespearian times, is currently disappearing from Spanish and may at some point disappear from German as well, but as long as it is still there, the choice of pronoun carries social meaning.

For more information on embodiment, please consult, e.g., ZIEMKE,/ZLATEV/FRANK (eds.) 2007.

This can be related to earliest childhood experiences in which the parents hold their infants close to their bodies, keeping them warm.

Again, this is discussed in more detail later, in the chapter on prepositions (chapter 10).

This topic is picked up again and explained in more detail in the chapter on aspect (chapter 6) as well as in the chapter on articles (chapter 14).

This was due to the fact that Russian was found to have two different terms for what English and German label as ‘blue’, namely one word for dark blue (‘siniy’) and one word for light blue (‘goluboj’), and these colours are perceived by native speakers of Russians as equally distinct as blue and green are for English or German speakers. Welsh, on the other hand, lumps grey, blue and green together in one basic colour term, ‘glas’.

Author’s note: polysemy refers to different but related meanings of words or grammatical constructions which share the same form. In the cognitive-linguistic view, radial networks of meaning consist of a central prototype and of a number of non-prototypical exemplars scattered around the prototype, which are not necessarily related to each other but are all explainable via the prototype. The word or the grammatical construction is then called ‘polysemous’ (from Ancient Greek: poly = many, sem = meaning).

According to LANGACKER (2008: 81), the notion of “usage event” refers to “actual instances of language use, in their full phonetic detail and contextual understanding”.

Author’s note: as René DIRVEN was my doctoral supervisor and as I was working for and with him in those days, I helped organise this conference and thus personally witnessed the ‘birth’ of what was going to become a very important academic field.

Author’s note: I was elected president of the GCLA from 2012–2014 and am still a board member at the time of writing this book (2017).

Cf., among a number of similar utterances, CHOMSKY 1966: 52, where he says “I am, frankly, rather sceptical when it comes to the significance, for teaching languages, of such insights and understandings as have been obtained in linguistics and psychology”.

The most popular approaches in this field are by FAUCONNIER (e.g., 1994), LANGACKER (e.g., 2009), RADDEN/DIRVEN (2007) and TAYLOR (2002). Among these, LANGACKER’s approach is the best-known one in the cognitive community.

For more information on count nouns vs. mass nouns, please consult the chapter on articles (chapter 14).

The use of the progressive aspect is explained in more detail in the chapter on aspect (chapter 7).

Trajector-landmark relationships are sometimes also called figure-ground relationships.

This use is also possible, of course, but only in specific situations, as, for example, in a furniture showroom, where a salesperson might say to a potential client “Which table do you like better? The one under the chandelier or the one close to the window?” In this case, the table is ‘in profile’ and the chandelier just serves as the backdrop. This is explained in more detail in the chapter on prepositions (chapter 10).

This is the case for both direct and indirect objects, as both of them can form passives. Compare, for example, “Peter gave Mary flowers” vs. “Mary was given flowers (by Peter)” vs. “Flowers, were given to Mary (by Peter)”. In each of these sentences, the primary focus is on the first element mentioned. For more information, please consult the chapter on the passive voice (chapter 9).

More on iconicity can be found in the chapter on verb complementation (chapter 12).

This can be seen in research results as well. When participants were asked for their impressions concerning the new way of grammar explanation, quite a number of learners claimed to like the cognitive approach but, if they had the choice, they wanted to go back to the rule-and-exception paradigm, as it is quite hard to change one’s habits.

What the two phenomena of count nouns/mass nouns and the progressive aspect/non-progressive aspect have in common is elucidated in the chapter on aspect (chapter 6).

For more detailed information on progressivity vs. non-progressivity, please consult the chapter on aspect (chapter 6).

For concrete examples, see the second part of this book.

For more details, please consult the chapter on aspect (chapter 6).

For more details, please consult the chapters on prepositions and phrasal verbs (chapters 10 and 11).

For more information on prepositional meanings, please see the chapter on prepositions (chapter 10).

These were orientational metaphors such as MORE IS UP for phrasal verbs as, for example, in “Hurry up, please!”, or HAPPY IS UP for phrasal verbs as, for example, in “my mood lightened up”, or VISIBLE IS OUT for phrasal verbs as, for example, in “he came out with the truth” etc. For more information, please consult the chapter on phrasal verbs (chapter 11).

So far, this study is nowhere to be found, therefore only the summary from the ROCHE/SUÑER (2016) article can be reported here.

These studies are by REIF (2012), BIELAK/PAWLAK (2011) and KERMER (2016).

Author’s note: I have tried out this approach for six consecutive terms (so far) with German students of English aiming at becoming English teachers – which is of course not comparable to an empirical study in a concrete and controlled classroom setting – and it worked out well in nearly all cases, although some of the students had problems with adhering to the cognitive grammar approach. In the end, however, most of the students were quite thankful for having been shown a way how to make grammar teaching more interesting and more motivating.

Not all of the chosen grammar topics can be used with an audience of beginners, as, for example, the passive voice, aspect, phrasal verbs or the conditional forms are not normally introduced to non-advanced learners. Vice versa, there are topics which are more suitable for beginners than for more advanced learners, such as prepositions, pronouns or articles, but which can just as well be returned to in higher grades, involving more complexity than during their first introduction.

For more detailed information on the future, please consult RADDEN/DIRVEN (2007: 225), as the future is not discussed any further in this book.

For a discussion of modality, please consult chapter 7.

For a discussion of aspect, please consult the next chapter (chapter 6).

RADDEN/DIRVEN (2007: 204) call the simple tenses ‘deictic tenses’, as they relate to speech time, “the only moment that is available to us in our perception of time”.

The s-inflection for the third person singular can be seen as a leftover from Old English. While the endings for the first person disappeared after the Old English period, the endings for the second and the third person became -est and -eth in Middle English (cf. CRYSTAL 1995: 44). After the Middle English period, “the final simplification to the modern system […] took place” (ibid.), so that present-day English only has two forms, namely the third person singular form and the basic form for all other persons.

Only the verbs to be, to do, to go and to have have special third person singular forms, namely is, does, goes and has.

As mentioned before, it is next to impossible to really separate tense and aspect. The topic of boundedness/unboundedness is picked up again in the chapter on aspect (chapter 6), and also in the chapter on articles (chapter 14).

For example, when somebody arrives at school in the morning and says “You can’t imagine what happened yesterday! I drive along Main Street on my bicycle, suddenly a police car comes up behind me, overtakes me, forces me to stop, then the officer jumps out and says …”

It is of course equally important to talk about one’s dislikes, but as an introduction to the third person singular negation would be too much for one single lesson, this topic should be left for a follow-up lesson.

The differences between count nouns and mass nouns are explained in detail in chapter 14.2.2.

Alternatively, pizzas for famous pop stars, soccer players etc. can be created. The teacher example was chosen because preparing a pizza for a teacher is more likely to happen than making pizza for celebrities. Furthermore, it may be more intriguing to find a ‘mystery ingredient’ for persons one really knows and not only admires from afar.

From my own experience, I can confirm that the learners normally enjoy a ‘mystery ingredient’ very much and are usually very creative in selecting it. This mystery ingredient does not necessarily contribute to the learners’ exposure to the third person singular –s, due to the fact that it may not be introduced by the chunk “S/he likes XY on her pizza”, because it might be an ingredient that will not be liked very much. However, this procedure adds some fun and motivation for the learners.

Every worksheet carries the name of a different teacher, and – if possible – half of the teachers should be male, the other half female.

If there is no time for a transfer, the following exercise should be given for homework.

A sequence of events is usually interpreted iconically, i.e., the chronology of the events is seen as represented by the chronology in which they are reported. For example, there is quite some difference between saying “Gina married and had a baby” and “Gina had a baby and married”.

Such facts can of course be confirmed or negated, i.e., both “Peter went to Canada last year” and “Peter did not go to Canada last year” are seen as facts.

This stands in contrast to the present tense, which is related to immediate reality.

For more details, please see the chapter on conditionals (chapter 8).

Please note that the expression “-ed morpheme” is used for the non-prototypical cases and not the expression ‘past tense’. The expression ‘past tense’ just relates to the temporal use of the –ed morpheme, whereas its use in conditionals etc. has nothing to do with the past tense, although all uses share the notion of ‘distance’, of whatever kind.

If the class in question does not have a partner class abroad, there are many other possibilities: either an English-speaking partner class can be invented, or one of the German learners may spend an exchange year abroad and inform the others about their experiences or the class mascot – which is usually introduced as speaking only English – has gone for a travel, and so forth.

Interestingly enough, there is no English equivalent for this term.

The learners may use verbs which are irregular in the past tense. In this case, the teacher should just use the correct past tense form and not comment on this any further, unless someone asks about the form.

Please consult sub-chapter 2.2.2 for advice on how to form learner groups. For the task at hand, the snippets for determining the group membership could be named A through E, corresponding to the letters on the damaged emails.

It is not possible to compare the past tense to the ‘real’ present tense in this case (see the analysis of the present tense in sub-chapter 5.2.2), as this cannot be used for bounded events such as “rent a car” or “walk through the rainforest” in the present, but can only be used to talk about habits.

The chunks “When I was younger” or “When I was 3 years old …” can of course also be used. However, in this case, the form ‘was’ should be left unexplained, unless a learner asks about it.

For more information on tense, please consult chapter 5.

For more information on modality, please consult chapter 7.

Information on the perfective aspect, i.e., the present perfective and the past perfective, can be found, for example, in MATLOCK 2011.

LANGACKER (2008: 147) calls inherently unbounded situations “imperfective”, while he calls inherently bounded situations “perfective”. This book has chosen not to adopt his terminology, as this could lead to confusion with the German notion of “Imperfekt” and the perfective aspect.

It needs to be added at this point that although the majority of nouns behave in a similar way in English and in German, a number of nouns exist that behave differently in the two languages, for example “information”, which is a mass noun in English, vs. “eine Information”, which is a count noun in German.

For a more thorough discussion and for suggestions how to apply these ideas to teaching, please consult NIEMEIER 2008.

It needs to be added at this point that there is some variability concerning the use of the progressive aspect between the various varieties of English. Standard Irish English, for example, is known to use the progressive aspect more widely than Standard British English does. In Standard Irish English, it is, for example, quite common to say “Who is this car belonging to?” (cf. also CRYSTAL 1995: 338).

‘Idealised situation’ is to be understood in the sense of SMITH (2009: 9), who claims that “when speakers talk about actual situations, they invoke abstract representations, or idealised situation types. The idealised situation types are abstractions that represent the properties characteristic of different situations”.

It is far easier to compare the two different grammatical aspects while using the past tense, as the problem concerning the duration of the situation interferes when using the present tense. When somebody says “Nick plays tennis”, this can only be understood in the sense of a habit, namely that Nick plays tennis on a regular basis or that it is his hobby, cf. also page 84f. This durational and epistemic problem does not exist for the past tense.

For more information on the concept of plexity, please consult EVANS/GREEN (2006: 519).

German has a similar distribution of verbs of involuntary vs. voluntary sensory perception, which, however, is organised differently concerning its grammatical construction, as it is partly achieved via prefixation: sehen vs. ansehen/betrachten, hören vs. zuhören/lauschen, fühlen vs. befühlen/anfassen, riechen vs. beschnuppern.

This is explained in more detail in the chapter on the meaning of the present tense (chapter 5.2.2).

A keyhole stencil is also a good idea for later lessons, in which the teacher can hold it up whenever the learners use aspect incorrectly, as it reminds them of having to pay attention to the middle phase of an action without the teacher’s verbal interference being necessary (cf. NIEMEIER 2008).

Please consult sub-chapter 2.2.2 for advice on how to form learner groups. For the task at hand, the snippets for determining group membership could have little pictures of sports paraphernalia on them, such as a football, a tennis racket, a baseball cap and so on.

Not all learners will be able to perform due to time reasons, therefore the teacher has to control the time allotted for the pantomime game, as s/he needs at least ten minutes for the language focus at the end of the lesson.

For more details, please consult, for example, DECLERCK 2011.

Instead of the expression ‘intensional verbs’, RADDEN/DIRVEN (2007: 242) use the term ‘mental expressions’, which, according to them, “includes cognition verbs like believe, judge, conclude and doubt and complex expressions such as be of the opinion, have the impression, as far as I can tell, etc.”

For more information on conditionals, please consult the following chapter.

CRYSTAL (1995: 315) quotes some evidence from American dialects in which double modals occur, as, for example, might could or might can. Such occurrences tend to correlate socially with the lower social class and regionally with the American Lower South. Such forms also existed in Middle English, especially in Northern British regions, where they partly still exist. For instance, RADDEN/DIRVEN (2007: 242) quote the current Scottish example “You shouldn’t ought to have done that”.

For more details, please consult the sub-chapter on the meaning of the past tense (chapter 5.3.2), especially concerning the non-prototypical uses of the –ed morpheme.

For more information about a cognitive grammar perspective on the negation of modals, see RADDEN 2014.

However, not everybody agrees on this restriction, as is discussed in more detail in sub-chapter 7.2.2.

Please see footnote 23 for an explanation of ‘image schema’.

It is interesting in this context that need to is used together with the goal preposition to, see also the chapter on prepositions (chapter 10).

Please compare to the notion of distance expressed by the –ed morpheme, as described in the sub-chapter on the past tense (chapter 5.3.2). Although would is an irregular form, it still includes this meaning. It does not refer to the past tense but to another type of distance, namely social distance.

Such as, for example, in “Do you really need to do this?” (meaning: do you really have enough compelling evidence for thinking that what you want to do is good?) or in “He needn’t be a Londoner – he could just have acquired the accent” (meaning: my reasoning leads me to the conclusion that if someone speaks with a London accent, there is no compelling evidence that this person was actually born in London, as he could have picked up the accent in another way).

She argues that “unfortunately, one of the continuing, unexplained exceptions is can’s lack of epistemic extension, but no analysis has been able to satisfactorily explain this” (TYLER 2008: 470).

Quite a number of scholars call the function of must ‘logical necessity’. However, according to RADDEN/DIRVEN (2007: 250), “this term is misleading: if necessity was a matter of logic, the deduction reached from given premises would always have to be true”.

In the context of the difference between may and can, DIRVEN/RADDEN (2007: 25) report the example of warnings on cigarette packets, which at the beginning read “Smoking may damage your health” and then had to be changed to “Smoking can damage your health”, implying that the damage potential of cigarettes is not a subjective view (as in may) but one which is corroborated by scientific evidence and is therefore more objective (as in can).

This ‘right-hand side’ refers to the timeline model for verb tenses, which is frequently used in teaching English grammar. This timeline is of course only a culture-related metaphor, as it is a well-entrenched belief in Western cultures that the future is ‘ahead of us’ and that the past lies ‘behind us’, or, relating to the timeline, that the future is on the right-hand side and the past is on the left-hand side, the reason being, amongst other things, that Western cultures read from left to right and therefore have embodied this type of chronology, i.e., what is on the left side comes first and what is on the right side comes later.

This is by far not the case in all cultures, as, for example, the Aymara – an indigenous group living in South America, mainly in Bolivia, Peru and Chile – see the future as lying behind them (as they cannot see it, having no eyes at the backs of their heads) and the past as lying in front of them (as it has already happened and they know about it, i.e., have witnessed it happen), cf. also EVANS 2013: 244f.

Furthermore, in cultures where script is read from the right to the left, as, for example, in Arabian cultures, the embodied chronology of events goes from the right (where the past would then be located) to the left (where the future is then assumed to reside). On the one hand, this is another example for the notion of embodiment, and on the other hand, this can be seen as proof for the fact that cultures live and understand life according to different underlying conceptualizations.

The ‘pounds` from the original example were replaced by ‘kilos’. Furthermore, the obvious exaggeration (as nobody can lift 1000 kg) may make the picture more memorable.

My thanks go to my student Bruno Rischar for having developed this adaptation.

Again, my thanks go to my student Bruno Rischar for having developed this adaptation.

The other modal verbs can be visualised in a similar way. For inspiration, please see TYLER (2008, 2012) or TYLER ET AL. (2010).

For advice on how to form learner groups, please see sub-chapter 2.2.2. In this case, it would be a good idea to let the learners draw snippets with animal pictures on them in order to build ‘group kangaroo’, ‘group lion’, ‘group giraffe’ and so on.

If the answers are negative, a simple ‘no’ is enough, as the negated modals have not yet been introduced.

EL-BOUZ 2016 reports on the teaching of German modals and presents her examples, her teaching experiment and her results.

There is only a limited number of other possibilities, the only alternatives being only if, even if, except if or “a word or phrase that has a meaning similar to if, only if (e.g., provided) or except if (viz. unless)”, (cf. DECLERCK/REED 2001: 9).

The label ‘factual’ does not make any sense from a cognitive grammar point of view, as the situation in a conditional clause is by definition theoretical, i.e., non-factual. However, the label ‘factual’ fits when a habitual activity is described, as, for example, in “If the sun comes out, we (always) go for a walk”.

For information on distal modals, please consult sub-chapter 7.3.

See also TAYLOR (cf. 1997: 302), who provides the following two examples: a) “If he said that (and we heard him say it!), he’s a liar” and b) “If he said that, he’d be a liar”. Both sentences share the same if-clause, but in a) the condition can be interpreted as factual, whereas it is hypothetical in b), the reason for the difference in meaning lying in the speaker’s background knowledge, i.e., outside the linguistic coding.

Other explicit space builders are, for example, ‘possibly …’ or ‘(Tom) believes that …’. Grammatical markers for tense, aspect and modality are not explicit space builders themselves but provide the hearer with clues concerning the space that is relevant at that point (cf. FAUCONNIER 1994: 29).

This is described in more detail in sub-chapter 5.3.2.

The very common learner mistake of using would in the if-clause is an interference from German, where such a construction is possible (“Falls er anrufen würde, dann …”). In English, however, distance from reality can only be signaled once per clause, and this is done by the if in the if-clause and by a distal modal such as would in the main clause.

More information on iconicity can be found in chapter 12.2.1.

For more information on modality, please consult chapter 7.

As it is quite expensive to get to some of these locations, also smaller towns can be used. All tourist information centres should be able to send materials on request. Furthermore, if no trip abroad is planned, the lesson can just as well focus on an imaginary trip.

For advice on how to form learner groups, please see sub-chapter 2.2.2. In this case, it would be a good idea to let the learners draw snippets with city sights on them in order to build the groups, as, for example, The Tower of London, The London Eye, The Houses of Parliament, Golden Gate Bridge, the Empire State Building, Sydney Opera etc. However, these pictures are only meant for the group formation and have nothing to do with the cities that the groups then work on.

There should not be too much information as the learners will then be distracted from writing their sentences. Basic touristic information showing some famous sights is enough for this purpose.

As the groups consist of five people, everybody can then utter (at least) one sentence. Should the groups be smaller, the number of sentences can either be reduced or doubled (six sentences per group for groups of three, for example).

Cf. BIELAK/PAWLAK/MYSTKOWSKA-WIERTELAK (2013: 586), who also state that speakers of English “tend to associate focal prominence with agency”.

The terms ‘agent’ and ‘patient’ designate semantic roles, with ‘agent’ referring to the active part, which brings up energy for an action, and ‘patient’ referring to the passive part, who or which is the recipient or the goal of the agent’s energy.

It is important to differentiate between the grammatical notions of, on the one hand, ‘subject’ and ‘object’, which refer to positions in a sentence and, on the other hand, the participant roles of ‘agent’ and ‘patient’, which refer to the semantic roles of the entities involved, as these do not always coincide.

For example, CHEN/OLLER (2008: 391) explain that “the use of “John got promoted” suggests a sense of favourable affectedness as contrasted to the neutral “John was promoted””.

Please consult chapter 1 for an explanation of the PPP method.

As the passive in German is quite similar to the English passive, ROCHE/SUÑER’s (2016) grammatical metaphors and grammar animations can be used for English as well.

This approach has not yet been sufficiently tested, only a small-scale study of an intervention with thirteeen students exists, which, however, has not yet been published. ROCHE/SUÑER (2016: 105) report concerning this study, which was conducted by SUÑER/ARNETT, that “the results show that the participants improved significantly on the immediate post-test”.

This detective game could of course also focus on a theft in the actual classroom, but in this case persons known to everybody involved would have to be the suspects (and the culprit), which would not be a good idea. And even if a foreign class is the ‘victim’ in the current case study, it is important that – after the lesson – the teacher stresses the fact that in fact no crime was committed after all, although this takes away some of the authenticity of the situation.

If no partner class exists, a fictive class will also do.

For advice on how to form learner groups, please see sub-chapter 2.2.2. In this case, it would be a good idea to let the learners draw snippets with colours which correspond to the names of the six witnesses.

As a reminder: polysemy refers to the fact that an expression has multiple but related meanings.

This is already indicated by its name, as a preposition is positioned before (pre) the noun/pronoun it refers to.

LAKOFF/TURNER (1989) actually argue – and prove – that all poetic metaphors ultimately rely on the same conceptual metaphors used by all people of the culture in question. Poets and writers are just better at producing innovative and outstanding linguistic metaphors than the common person. If poets’ and writers’ conceptual metaphors underlying their linguistic metaphors were not known to the audience, it would be difficult to understand literary texts.

As a convention, conceptual metaphors are always written in small capitals.

Please consult sub-chapter 11.2 for a cognitive grammar perspective on phrasal verbs.

The meaning of to is also important for the topic of verb complementation, as one of the complementisers is the to-infinitive, cf. chapter 12.2.2.

The preposition with has not developed a temporal meaning.

For more information on all prepositions in their basic as well as in their extended meanings, please consult RADDEN/DIRVEN 2007 (chapter 12).

Further analyses of to can be found in EVANS/TYLER 2004 as well as in TYLER/MUELLER/HO 2011.

Please consult chapter 12 for an account of verb complementation.

If English is only taught from the third grade onwards, as is the case in the majority of the German federal states, then prepositions should only be systematised in the fourth grade. If, however, English is taught from the first grade onwards, the introduction of the spatial prepositions is already possible in the third grade.

Interestingly enough, both in front of as well as behind refer to body parts (the front and the buttocks, respectively) and are therefore examples of embodied meaning.

In case the past tense has not yet been introduced, the report can also use the present tense, which makes it more lively (cf. sub-chapter 5.2.2): “Imagine: the toaster is in the fridge, the TV is on the kitchen table etc.”

For advice on how to form learner groups, please see sub-chapter 2.2.2. In this case, it would be a good idea to let the learners draw snippets with pieces of furniture on them, so that there is a ‘group bed’, a ‘group wardrobe’, a ‘group table’, a ‘group mirror’ and a ‘group chair’, for instance.

This argument should not be mixed up with the fact that zero-dimensional prepositions can indeed metaphorize (see sub-chapter 10.2), as motion is no conceptual ingredient of a preposition which is necessary for its metaphorization. It is, however, necessary for the particles in phrasal verbs to be conceptually compatible with the verbs themselves, and the vast majority of the verbs used in phrasal verbs are verbs of motion and therefore need particles that can refer to physical or abstract motion.

RUDZKA-OSTYN actually mentions four additional meaning clusters, but the explanations for the fourth meaning cluster are relatively unconvincing, which is why this fourth cluster (‘covering an area completely/reaching the highest limit’ with examples such as “we need to leave, finish up your drink” or “the government is covering up the scandal”) can be subsumed under the first cluster of extended meanings (‘reaching a goal, an end, a limit’).

This is not only my personal impression but also that of a number of my students who worked with RUDZKA-OSTYN’s book.

RUDZKA-OSTYN mentions four additional meaning clusters for down. However, her fourth meaning cluster refers to “movements of eating or writing” (RUDZKA-OSTYN 2003: 112), such as in “he wrote down every word I said” or “he gulped down a whole litre of water”. These meanings are not metaphorical but relate to physical actions and involve an actual downward movement (the position of the pen and the way the food/drink has to take for ending up in the stomach). Therefore, they can be subsumed under the central meaning.

Again, RUDZKA-OSTYN actually mentions six clusters of extended meanings, the first one of them being ‘eat or inviting to eat away from home’. As this sense is not metaphorical and as a ‘real’ container (the house, the home, the flat) is involved, this sense has been added to the central sense in the explanations above.

Please also consult the analysis of the preposition in, see sub-chapter 10.2.1.

The meanings of the preposition in and those of the particle in are identical, so RUDZKA-OSTYN’s analyses do make sense. However, they are out of place in a chapter on phrasal verbs. For her meaning cluster of ‘atmospheric circumstances as containers’, RUDZKA-OSTYN gives examples such as “I hate walking in the rain” or “we got lost in the dark” (RUDZKA-OSTYN 2003: 51). Following DIRVEN’s definition of phrasal verbs (2001), these examples do not contain any phrasal verbs (which need to have a certain degree of idiomaticity) but instead feature verb + preposition constructions (i.e., abstract uses of the preposition in, cf. sub-chapter 10.2.1). The same applies to RUDZKA-OSTYN’s cluster of meanings called ‘time viewed as a container’ (RUDZKA-OSTYN 2003: 52) with examples such as “I will go there in a few days” or “it happened in 1968”. Again, these are no phrasal verbs but verb + preposition constructions (temporal uses of the preposition in, cf. sub-chapter 10.2.1). Lastly, the cluster of ‘sets or groups viewed as containers’ (ibid.: 55) does not refer to phrasal verbs either but again to prepositions.