Conceptual frameworks and L2 pedagogy: The case of French prepositions

Prepositions have historically posed challenges to second language (L2) learners, due largely to the fact that prepositions in the first language (L1) typically do not overlap in meaning, function, or use with L2 prepositions. Three prepositions in French, à, dans, and en, reflect this very issue. This chapter presents results from three instructional workshops involving students and teachers of French at a large public university in the northeastern U.S. We introduced our conceptualization-based framework for the target prepositions, based on discourse analysis of a corpus and designed to provide L2 learners and teachers with a unified and systematic conceptual mapping of the trajector and landmark relationships for each preposition, together with other symbols that graphically illustrate the meanings for each form. The combined Cognitive Linguistic (CL) (Langacker, 2008a, 2008b; Taylor, 2002; Tyler, 2012b) and Sociocultural Theoretical (SCT) (Vygotsky, 2012) Concept-Based Instructional (CBI) (see Haenen, 2001) approach helped early intermediate French L2 learners/teachers better understand these three French prepositions and be able to use them appropriately.